Illustration by Matt K. Shrugg   It was September of 2012, and Stephanie Gularte expected nothing less than a disaster. She whispered as much to a colleague seated next to her as the house lights dimmed for the first preview of that year’s season opener, Enron, which she was helming. Written by British playwright Lucy Prebble and based on the shocking 2001 demise of the eponymous Texas utility giant, the cautionary fable sustains a tone of surreal dread as reptilian monsters dance through scenes and a chorus of actors outfitted as blind mice mock the action. But as re-imagined by Capital Stage, the haunting tale of American greed and excess was worthy of any stage in America. Gularte’s then-husband and Capital Stage co-founder Jonathan Williams was a revelation as visionary/con man Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron CEO believing his own deception. Striking light patterns cut across the stage and eerie sound effects pushed a gothic mood. It was a signature production for a young company then in its eighth season and eager to distinguish itself with challenging titles, experimentation and creative risks. “Somehow it came together,” Gularte recalls. “I thought that was a really memorable evolution in our capabilities—bringing more technology, but still centered around story and character, which is always what, to me, Capital Stage has been about.” Aaron Wilton in Capital Stage’s ambitious, darkly comic 2012 production of Enron  (Photo by Charr Crail, courtesy of Capital Stage) This fall, the company embarks on its 20th anniversary season, a milestone all the more impressive considering its humble origins in a cramped space on the lower deck of the Delta King riverboat in Old Sacramento. Growing out of the Delta King Theatre (itself established in 1999) the troupe changed its name and founded Capital Stage in 2005. The current artistic director—B Street Theatre alum Michael Stevenson—has assembled a customarily provocative slate of plays for what will be his 10th year leading the company. The six-show season is led by two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Fairview, an acerbic racial comedy from 2018 by Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Sanaz Toossi’s English, about four Iranians learning English and which The New York Times  called “both contemplative and comic.” Particularly noteworthy is an unusual three-company collaboration in October on Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers, a dramedy about two young Asian immigrant women trying to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner in 1973. This Northern California premiere at Capital Stage will be co-produced with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto and Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, eventually playing at those theaters as well. The first iteration of Capital Stage came about through a meeting of like minds animated by youthful energy and ambition. Gularte and co-founder Peter Mohrmann met while working with Synergy Stage, a community theater off-shoot of Sacramento City College. Neither was precious about what being an actor or director really meant. They didn’t go on stage to be seen by friends, or deconstruct classics to showcase how clever they were. They saw no reason their tight budgets and limited space should deter them from staging cutting-edge modern plays in Sacramento. Gularte started producing and directing for the Delta King in their tiny 115-seat venue even as the Murder on the Delta King  mystery dinner theater was active in the room next door. It was not unusual to find a gurney blocking the connecting hallway with a bleeding “patient” waiting for an entrance cue or for tipsy patrons to loudly and mistakenly plop down in the wrong theater. While not the perfect performance venue, it was the one they had, and the Delta King owners were happy to have them bringing paying customers to the boat. A charismatic, shape-shifting actor from Placerville, Gularte cut her teeth on stage as a student at Sacramento State, and also found satisfying performance opportunities in the Bay Area, including playing multiple characters in The Blue Room  at Theatre on San Pedro Square, where she met Capital Stage’s eventual third co-founder (and her future husband) Jonathan Williams. A formidable theater-making team, Gularte, Mohrmann and Williams shared ideas about the kinds of work they wanted to do—with characters that could be flawed and unlikable, themes that might be controversial, and endings less than happy. The trio believed plays didn’t have to be dark or “serious” to achieve this. More importantly, they could sustain full seasons of unusual work, even in an environment where Sacramentans might least expect to find it. “It was always kind of doing the impossible in a lot of ways—these controversial, meaty pieces in the middle of a tourist [area],” says Stevenson, who used to ride his bike to Old Sacramento to perform in the company’s early days at the Delta King. “Everybody was like, ‘This is never going to work.’ And John and Steph and Peter just kept on doing their work.” Scott Coopwood and Capital Stage co-founder Stephanie Gularte in a 2007 production of Dirty Story  by Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley. (Courtesy of Capital Stage) In 2011, Capital Stage moved to midtown, redesigning and rebuilding an old firearms store on J Street into a 125-seat theater. Gularte stepped down as artistic director in 2014 and moved to Florida the following year; Williams succeeded her as producing artistic director for a season until he also amicably departed. Mohrmann, the only founder still living in the region (in Davis), contributes occasionally to Capital Stage as an actor and director but isn’t involved day-to-day. Under Stevenson’s leadership, the company has worked to attract younger audiences while mounting major works from cutting-edge playwrights across the cultural spectrum, including Larissa Fast-Horse’s performative-wokeness satire The Thanksgiving Play, Qui Nguyen’s family refugee comedy Vietgone, and the subversive racial satire An Octoroon  by two-time Pulitzer finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Stevenson also steadily guided the company through the Covid-19 pandemic with smartly presented virtual performances that kept them in the public eye. “Our audience has been incredibly loyal,” he says. “We’re almost back up to pre-pandemic levels in terms of subscribers.” Nevertheless, he acknowledges the difficulty of building and sustaining theater audiences even as the pandemic’s impact has waned since 2020. “It changed people’s habits,” he observes. “People literally got out of the physical habit of going out and being out with other people, which I think we’re slowly coming back from.” Capital Stage’s institutional resilience stands out as theaters around the country have struggled. In March, the organization unveiled a five-year strategic plan developed with Michael Kaiser, a renowned arts consultant who previously served as the president of the Kennedy Center for the Arts. The heady agenda focuses on gaining a national presence, leaning into strategies like co-productions of new contemporary works. The upcoming Heart Sellers collaboration with their highly respected peers in Berkeley and Palo Alto falls into this category. Meanwhile, looking toward the future isn’t keeping Stevenson from reflecting on the significance of a generational success story in Sacramento’s diverse theater scene. “I’m so glad that people are still hungry for this kind of challenging storytelling—to look at societal issues and to be part of a community discussing them,” he says. “The fact that we still exist for that is pretty amazing. Twenty years? It just makes me very proud.” You Might Also Like Madame Director – B Street Theatre’s New Artist Director, Lindsay Burch Sowing the Seeds of Change (One Theater Seat at a Time) – Sacramento’s Celebration Arts Q&A with Jeremy Ganter, Executive Director of the Mondavi Center