Published Sunday
August 15, 2004

One man, many talents

BY BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD HERALD STAFF WRITER

For a guy who barely made it onto a boat out as Saigon fell, the latest transition for Don Nguyen cuts a smaller wake. Nguyen, 32, says he's accomplished all he wanted to as artistic director at the Shelterbelt Theatre, a post he's held since 1999. This month he becomes a free agent, starting with directing Terrence McNally's "The Lisbon Traviata" for SNAP Productions. He also wants to return to writing.

But he's unlikely to let any of his skills rust. In the past two seasons alone, Nguyen earned Theater Arts Guild award nominations for playwriting, acting, set design, lighting design, sound design, directing musicals and directing drama. He's won four.

You wouldn't find a glimmer of drama in his first 18 years, other than what life provided.

Nguyen's father was a South Vietnamese naval officer. The family left the country at the last possible moment in 1975, as the Viet Cong entered Saigon. Don was 3. His father carried him and his older sister on a swaying rope bridge to the ship.

"The ship was moving because of all the people, and it was crushing people next to the dock," he said. "Everyone was fighting to get on board."

At one point Dau Nguyen dropped his toddler son.

But he caught him, the family made the boat, and in Guam they learned that a family in Milford, Neb., would sponsor their U.S. beginning in Lincoln. While their parents worked, Nguyen said, the kids mostly raised each other.

At Lincoln High, Nguyen (pronounced new-WIN), was a self-described "big jock" in gymnastics and diving. "I thought theater people were very strange," he said with a laugh.

He entered the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an architecture major. "I was very introverted," he said. "And drafting got boring."

At home, he noticed one of the few things that always made his father laugh: Jack Tripper.

"My father loved 'Three's Company,'" Nguyen said. "He laughed so hard. I wanted to be Jack Tripper. If I could make my father laugh like that . . . ."

As a sophomore, he took a theater class. By his junior year, he told his parents he was switching majors.

Dad's response: "So, you want to do pre-med, pre-law?"

Where: SNAP/Shelterbelt Theatre, 3225 California St.

When: Thursday-Sept 12; 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays. No performance Aug. 26.

Tickets: $15 adults, $12 students, senior citizens, TAG members

Information: 341-2757

Favorite play: "Angels in America"

Favorite actors: Burt Lancaster, Ingrid Bergman

Favorite director: Alfred Hitchcock

Favorite movie: "The Hustler"

Favorite music: U2, They Might Be Giants

Show he'd love to direct: "Sweeney Todd"

Role he'd love to play: Petrucchio in "The Taming of the Shrew"

Favorite local production he wasn't a part of: "Ping Pong Diplomacy," Shelterbelt

His mother, Tuyet, couldn't conceive that anyone could make a living doing theater.

But switch he did. Soon he had the lead in a college play, "The Bear," by Chekhov. On opening night, Nguyen's ears filtered the huge crowd response. He heard only one laugh.

"I could hear my father. And it was just like 'Three's Company.' I was hanging onto Dad's laugh."

His signature role in Omaha may be his first, Song Liling in "M. Butterfly," which earned him a 1994 acting award from the Omaha Community Playhouse.

But, partly to make Dad happy, partly as a fallback, he finished his degree at Bellevue University - in marketing. He makes his living as a full-time computer programmer and Web site designer.

He used it all at the Shelterbelt, where he began doing marketing work in 1997. Around 1999 or 2000, he said, he "woke up one day and found that everyone was gone." Key Shelterbelt staffers had moved on, and Nguyen was all that was left holding the theater's door open.

"It was my own insanity to keep it going," he said. "I hate quitting."

He wrote scripts, directed, acted, did sound, lights, scenery - sometimes all for the same show.

That passion for doing it all, he said, also is a weakness: "Spreading myself too thin, biting off more than I can chew. I'll make it happen, but I'll sacrifice 160 hours of sleep."

Daena Schweiger, who succeeds Nguyen as the Shelterbelt's artistic director, attests to that. In 2002 she wrote and directed "Love Is Strange," about domestic abuse. Nguyen popped into the Shelterbelt to see how auditions were going. No men were there. Schweiger asked him to read a scene with the actress who later became the lead.

"It was like magic, the chemistry was there," Schweiger said. "I sat there saying, 'You have got to play this part.'"

But Nguyen was designing a Bellevue Little Theatre set while directing "South Pacific" at the Chanticleer Theatre. He said no. Then he said he'd sleep on it.

Of course, he did it, and won that year's lead-actor TAG award for comedy-drama.

Erika Hall, this year's TAG winner for lead actress in a musical ("Annie Get Your Gun" at the Playhouse), said Nguyen pulled multiple all-nighters to get "The Who's Tommy" opened, including filming and editing an opening that couldn't be done on a small stage.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone so talented in so many areas as Don. He has a sort of theatrical Midas touch."

Schweiger said she hopes to build on Nguyen's work at the Shelterbelt, continuing to stage original scripts and regional premieres.

"The Lisbon Traviata" opens Friday. Nguyen said directing has supplanted acting as his favorite task.

"It forces you to look deeper into a script, get a view of the whole show," he said. "You're in control of the whole machine."

To fellow actors and directors, it's that perspective that lifts Nguyen above many of his peers.

"He's a little scary," said TAG President Jennifer Gilg, "and I mean that in a complimentary way, because he's so insightful at such a young age. The depth of his vision is stunning."

And he knows how to use the whole bag of theatrical tricks to achieve that vision, she said.

"He's very specific, and he's always right."