To say things haven’t been going well for Katherine Stewart’s first foray into running a theater would be an understatement.

Her debut production for Mesa-based Desert Rose Theatre, a “Romeo and Juliet” in February, suffered more tragedy behind the stage than on it.

During rehearsals, six actors left. One got a paying gig. One skipped too many rehearsals.

“Another gentleman,” Stewart says, “came in, took one look around and decided it was beneath him.”

A last-minute emergency forced Stewart herself — an Equity actress with credits at most of the Valley’s professional theaters — to perform as the friar, with script in hand.

Undeterred, Stewart is mounting her second production: Jean Anouilh’s Joan of Arc drama, “The Lark.”

But problems have continued to plague the playhouse.

She had to postpone the opening for a week when the lighting system broke. And because her volunteer cast has other obligations, she can do the production this weekend only, not the two-weekend run she’d hoped for.

Then there are the cockroaches. A husky one ventured out onto the stage during a rehearsal last week, sending several actresses running off the stage.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” she says.
But the Mesa actress-turned-artistic director simply shrugs.

“It’s terrible,” she says, “but it’s funny.”

ON HER OWN

Located in a small storefront in a grungy strip mall on University Drive just west of Alma School Road, Desert Rose’s neighbors include an Avon distributor, a Peter Piper Pizza, a Hispanic mercado and several vacancies.

Stewart hasn't yet put up signage — unless fliers on the front doors count.

“We just turn on the lights,” she says, “and try to flag people down.”
It’s a storefront haunted by memories of the last theater company that tried to make a go there. The Ensemble Theatre put on “Romeo and Juliet” in 2003 and disbanded shortly thereafter.

Stewart, who says she financed the theater with temp jobs, inherited Ensemble’s antiquated lighting system and an equally out-of-date soda machine in the lobby. She and friends tore out the rest to build their own stage and seating for an audience of 50.

Stewart loves the space, she says, because of the intimacy it affords between the actors and their audience.

“We can tell secrets to them,” she says.

MADE FOR CLASSICS

Last month, Stewart performed “Henry V” for Southwest Shakespeare in the outdoor Mesa Amphitheatre. Over the past five years, she’s played to large audiences with Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Jewish Theatre Company and Phoenix Theatre.

But like many actors, Stewart harbored a desire to create her own theater company.

“I guess I got tired of auditioning for the 11,000th production of whatever show that was being done in town,” she sighs. “There are all these great shows that nobody does.”

Classic theater is her passion. She says she was made for the classics — literally.

“I get sent out for (television) pilots and commercials, but people say I have a look for classic theater,” says Stewart, who won’t give her age, but is in her mid- to late 20s. “I look like a young English girl: Long hair, cheekbones. I don’t have a very contemporary look.”

It’s fitting, then, that Stewart’s playing Joan of Arc in Desert Rose’s current show, which she’s also directing. “The Lark’s” story centers on the trial of Jeanne d’Arc, the French heroine who, guided by God, led a fight against England’s siege of Orleans, only to be tried for heresy and burned at the stake.

A young woman with ambition in the face of huge obstacles? The comparison is hard to ignore.