Take Me Out to the Playhouse

Portraying a historical figure onstage is never simple. But actor Sterling R. Macer Jr., who’s about to play baseball legend Jackie Robinson at the Pasadena Playhouse, is well aware that he’s got some big cleats to fill.

Macer created the role of Robinson in the 1995 Old Globe Theatre premiere of Ed Schmidt’s “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” a drama about a meeting between Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey, Robinson and others. Now, he’s reprising that role in a new production of the play opening today, directed by Sheldon Epps.

The timing of this production makes it especially poignant. “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” is being presented as Pasadena celebrates the 50th anniversary of its local hero breaking major league baseball’s color barrier.

Set in a hotel room in 1947, the drama portrays behind-the-scenes talks in which dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, boxing great Joe Louis and actor Paul Robeson are told of Robinson’s pending promotion. It also reveals the compromises Robinson made in order to make it into the majors.

“For the first three years, [Robinson] made a deal with Mr. Rickey that he wouldn’t fight back against the racial epithets and slurs and whatever, and that he’d be on his best behavior,” explains the charismatic Macer during a recent talk at the theater. “The hotel room becomes a test for that. And the play becomes a microcosm of his first three years in major league baseball.”

The crux of the matter is the price of success--an issue that remains all too familiar to Macer and his fellow cast members. “We--every guy in this show--sit around and talk about how these issues that these guys were dealing with 50 years ago and the ones we’re dealing with today are the same,” Macer says.

“It’s [about] what we’re asked to do to move up and how we have to choose our battles,” he continues. “I don’t know a single black man in America who can’t relate on some level to having to make that choice to be on one’s best behavior in order to move up the ladder.”

The compromises Robinson may have made aren’t, of course, what’s most widely known about his fabled career. “So much of what we know about Jackie Robinson comes out of the public’s perception,” Macer says. “The things I knew were that Jackie Robinson was a great player who was this affable guy and who was the first black ballplayer.”

“Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” presents another side of the famous athlete. “This play is set in a very private setting, where Jackie is probably at his point of highest stress, where he’s not quite sure what his fate’s going to be,” Macer says. “The play is taking certain liberties because it’s in a private setting.

“In other words, it’s seeing him at what might happen to be his worst.”

In order to understand who Robinson really was, Macer had to reach beyond the myth. “From the time he was a little kid, he was known as a fighter,” Macer says. “I had no idea he cut a three-year deal to not say anything, because it was completely opposite of what his character was known to be.”

Consequently, Macer’s efforts to understand Robinson focused on the ballplayer’s later experiences. “My preparation really became about coming to a complete understanding of what [Robinson] went through during those first three years, and then understanding what he had to swallow, and then applying those same things in the space of the more compressed environment in this play.

“It was a difficult task to create that persona of the person who always fights back, and then sit on it,” Macer continues. “It’s a tough existence, to live Jackie Robinson’s life onstage every night and understand that it’s a microcosm of his most difficult years in the major leagues. It’s not always the most pleasant thing.”

Director Epps says that what makes Macer right for the part is that he has that “fire in the belly that any ambitious person has to have to overcome huge obstacles. He’s perfectly suited looks-wise, but also temperamentally.”

“Sterling has a real ability to express a lot without words, which is a large part of what Jackie has to do in this play,” says Epps, who directed the play’s previous stagings at the Old Globe, the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey and L.A. Theatre Works/KCRW radio in Santa Monica, all with Macer as Robinson.

“It’s about him not losing his temper, not screaming back, even when he’s being insulted,” Epps continues. “It’s important to have somebody who really understands what it means to continue the tension of a moment.”

And while Macer’s ability to convey Robinson’s repressed anger may not trace to any single experience he’s had, growing up black in America was, he says, inspiration enough.

The actor, who is in his early 30s but declines to be specific, was raised in Springfield, Mo., and Fort Wayne, Ind. One of three children and the only son of a General Electric executive father and a registered nurse mother, Macer grew up in what he describes as “your basic Midwestern-size family of five, your basic middle-class upbringing.”

His interest in performing was sparked by a junior high school acting competition. “There was a citywide competition and my friend and I did ‘The Odd Couple’ and we won,” he recalls. “I got the pat on the back for that, and it felt good.”

A football player in high school, Macer continued to pursue his interest in theater, despite the ribbings he often took from his friends. “I was a jock, that was my thing,” Macer says. “I lived this sort of double life all through high school. I’d be a jock, and then I’d go hang out with the theater geeks, and never the twain shall meet.”

At Southwest Missouri State, he majored in “football, basically, minored in fraternal life.” Yet he ended up with a degree in theater in spite of himself.

Then, after toying briefly with the idea of going to law school, Macer decided to get serious about acting. “It was literally a calling that I couldn’t ignore,” he says.

Macer went straight from college into drama school at the Old Globe Theatre/University of San Diego Professional Training Program, graduating from the two-year course of study with a master of fine arts degree in 1989.

In addition to numerous roles at the Globe and in the previous stagings of “Mr. Rickey,” Macer’s most notable theater outings have included “Romeo and Juliet” at the Dallas Theatre Center in 1989 and Athol Fugard’s “My Children! My Africa!” at the La Jolla Playhouse and the Henry Fonda Theatre here in 1990.

On screen, he most recently co-starred in the NBC miniseries “The Beast.” He also has a recurring role on the CBS series “The Client,” and in 1993-94 co-starred in the series “Harts of the West,” also on CBS.

Yet in both work arenas, Macer, like Robinson before him, has had to consider the trade-off between speaking his mind and advancing in his field. “I’ve definitely faced situations where I’ve had to make that choice,” he says. “In the entertainment industry, it is literally a constant thing.”

In the past, Macer feels he made choices that may have been too rash. “As a young man, there were times when I should have held my tongue and turned the other cheek--it would’ve been better for me career-wise--and I didn’t,” he says.

Fortunately, fate has cut him some slack. “I’ve gone pressing the self-destruct button many times, and it just didn’t go off,” Macer says. “It has been nothing but the grace of God. I can say that flat-out: I’ve been blessed.”

Not surprisingly then, Macer is more than happy to just wait to see what comes his way next. “My plan, first and foremost, is to follow God’s plan,” he says. “That’s been made very clear to me, and every time I step outside of that, I kinda get thwacked on the head.”

*

“MR. RICKEY CALLS A MEETING,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Dates: Opens today, 5 p.m. Runs Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. Prices: $13.50-$42.50. Phone: Tele-charge, (800) 233-3123.