Actor and director Mark Robbins finds beauty and connection in his work

Mark Robbins is one of those actors who lends marquee appeal to local shows. Even if he may not think so.

“I have no indication that I have an actual following,” Robbins told The Kansas City Star in 2012. “I don’t even see any quantifiable reason for people to be more inclined to come see a show because I’m in it.”

Everybody else does, though — and has for a while now. As one of the founding members of Kansas City Actors Theatre, Robbins has been a longtime fixture of KC’s theater community, bringing depth and intelligence to scores of roles since the late 1970s as an actor and, later, similarly deep insights from the director’s chair.

Robbins says he gravitated toward the theater because he lacked ability in other fields. “I realized that I had no aptitude in any other endeavor,” he tells me in an e-mail. That, too, is a little hard to believe, but the work he has chosen clearly suits him.

Robbins is busy right now, directing KC Actors Theatre’s A Number, by Caryl Churchill, which opens this week, and appearing February 6 in Adventures of Don Quixote with Bach Aria Soloists. While preparing for these shows, he answered my questions by e-mail.

The Pitch: What brought you to KC or kept you here?

Robbins: I came here in 1979, fresh out of grad school, for the prospect of work at the Missouri Repertory Theatre. I stayed for the next 37-some-odd years because the work was plentiful and challenging, and the living was comfortable and relatively inexpensive.

What drew you into acting?

The fact that I seemed to have a talent for it, and it kept me in constant contact with very pretty women.

What originally lit the theater spark?

Being an introvert in an unfamiliar high school and suddenly finding myself being applauded by my drama class after doing a scene from The Subject Was Roses.

Where did you train?

Undergrad at Webster College in St. Louis, then grad school at Wayne State University in Detroit.

How are you affected by the audience?

Alternatively buoyed up and completely terrified.

What drew you into directing?

Initially, it was a mounting frustration with what I believed were missteps and mistakes made by working directors. I thought I could do it, if not better then at least as well, if given the opportunity. Now, after much humbling experience, I have a much greater respect for the job, and I really enjoy the total focus and engagement it demands.

When did you start directing plays?

My first professional directing gig was handed me by Cynthia Levin in 1997. She asked me to direct Molly Sweeney for the Unicorn, and it must have worked out OK — she’s had me direct at the Unicorn several times since.

What do you appreciate about playwright Caryl Churchill, and what is it about A Number, in particular, that you connect to or find compelling?

The things I like best about Churchill are her keen ear for language and her willingness to morph in style from one play to the next. In A Number, I love the fragmented sentences and what they do to the characters’ attempts to either communicate or hide information. She is also a bit of a lefty, which greatly appeals to me, as I am, too. Given that, I really like the fact that in A Number, she takes a chronically hot-button issue and does not politicize it. Instead, she examines what sort of existential effect it has on the characters and uses it as a way to tell a classic father-son story in a new and unexpected way.

As an actor or as a director, what’s the worst thing that has happened to you during a performance?

As an actor, knocking myself in the skull with my own goddamned sword while playing Macbeth. As a director, sitting helpless in total silence while one of my actors completely lost her memory of what happened next in a play.

What’s the best thing?

As an actor, completing an eight-and-a-half-hour performance of Nicholas Nickleby and accepting a long standing ovation from a packed house while the company gave it right back to them. As a director, the feeling of satisfaction when a project is completed successfully.

What’s one of your favorite roles?

Roy Cohn in Angels in America.

And a favorite show?

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.

What’s the best part about what you do?

The variety and the relative autonomy.

What’s the hardest part?

It used to be dealing with the periods, sometimes very long, of unemployment. Now it’s getting to be mainly the learning of lines.

How did you become involved in the Bach Aria Soloists event?

Last year, I narrated Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat with the Bach Aria Soloists, and we enjoyed that so much that Elizabeth [Suh] thought to include me in the present music and narration project, which is inspired by Don Quixote.

When will we see you next onstage?

I’ll be rehearsing in Roof of the World at the KC Rep while simultaneously performing as a narrator with Bach Aria Soloists.