Triple-threat in Germantown

Director, pro-golfer, cabinetmaker shines in each discipline

Ken Marini is a household name to many regular theatergoers in the Greater Philadelphia area. The Mt. Airy resident, who has a woodworking studio in Germantown, was one of the founders of People’s Light and Theatre in Chester County in 1974, and he has directed dozens of plays at area theaters. What is not so well known is that Ken is also a skilled cabinetmaker and a former professional golfer. (Photos by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

by CLARK GROOME

According to Ken Marini, “When I was little, we lived in Georgia. A neighbor shared a twin. There was a big porch. The neighbor gave me a hammer and a bag of nails. Mom said that when I left, that porch was completely filled with nails. I’d just sit there for hours and pound nails into the porch.”

Marini, a well-known theater director who also spent time as a professional golfer, noted in a recent interview that it may have been on that Georgia porch that his interest in woodworking began.

Woodworking, carpentry and cabinetmaking are now, along with directing, a major part of his life. The 57-year artist has recently set up a studio in Germantown where he creates cabinets, most of them on commission. It is both an escape from and a complement to his life in the theater.

Marini was a speech and drama major at West Texas State College. It was there that, when he wasn’t playing golf, he began directing. At that point in his life, however, golf was the thing. He wanted to join the PGA tour, something which finances didn’t allow him to do.

After a short time in grad school at Bowling Green University in Ohio he came to Philadelphia and became involved with the Hedgerow Theatre. It was there that he met Danny Fruchter and the others with whom, in 1974, he founded People’s Light and Theatre in Strode’s Mill, Chester County.

It was at that point that he put another link in the chain that has led to his current passion for woodworking and cabinetmaking.

“We built the first building,” he said. “The only thing we didn’t make in that building were the windows. We did all the doors, all the stairs.”

After several years at Strode’s Mill and later at Chester Springs, People’s Light moved to its current campus in Malvern. As one of the company’s founders, Marini not only directed but served as its production manager.

With some time off to work in public relations in New York and a stint as a teaching golf pro, he spend most of his theatrical life at People’s Light during which time he directed more than 20 plays, among them Lou Lippa’s six-hour adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, one of the most acclaimed local productions of the 1990s.

Then, in 1991, Ken was engaged as artistic director of the Cheltenham Center for the Arts, a respected but financially troubled company that he ran until the Center’s board pulled the plug in 1997. While there he did a lot of directing, earned a great deal of acclaim for the work produced and continued on occasion to work elsewhere, in one case directing Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), Russia.

After Cheltenham’s theater closed, he moved to New York with his wife, actress Susan Wilder, and their son Nicky. And it was there, when the lucrative directing gigs he needed didn’t materialize, that another step along his artistic cabinetmaking path occurred.

“We bought an apartment on 125th Street and Riverside Drive. I had to totally renovate the apartment. I tore it apart and redid it. In doing that, the building super saw what I did.

“There was a guy in the building,” Marini recalls, “who needed work done. He hired me. I went in and made cabinets, drawers and doors. All sizes. It was like building for somebody’s yacht because every square inch was cabinets for him.

“The other people in the building saw what I did. I [also] built everything that was in the lobby. The architects saw it and asked me to build stuff. The building that we had the apartment in had a very small workspace, They let me rent it so I could build for other people. That was my first studio.”

Ultimately, he and his wife split. She and their son returned to Philadelphia.

While still living in New York, Marini continued to direct for People’s Light and other theaters in the area, notably Hedgerow. Last fall he decided to move back to Philadelphia to be near Nicky, now 14. Since Ken’s ex-wife and son lived in Mt. Airy, he too moved there and established his studio on E. Herman Street in Germantown.

While he says that “Directing is still my main [career],” Marini clearly loves making cabinets and working with wood. “I always enjoyed making stuff. It took a lot of time to hone that craft. I would do theater, do a little bit of this, then do the theater stuff again.

“The process of directing a play and of building a cabinet are really fairly similar. In cabinetry you really have to, to do it right, do it step by step. You can’t skip a step. If you get rushed or frustrated and say, ‘Oh , to hell with it’ or ‘I’m gonna do this now and fix it later,’ you’re in trouble. You’re gonna get a bad review. You’re going to spend a lot of time later on.

“It’s the same thing in theater. You’ve got to do the tablework, you’ve got to get the story right; you’ve got to use the right material: actors, designers and so forth.”

With directing “all of a sudden you realize, ‘Well, this isn’t going exactly where I want it,’ so you have to shift and make adjustments. It’s the same way with cabinetry. The wood will tell you a lot of what you want to have happen.”

Since most of his career as a director has taken place in Philadelphia, when he returned to Philadelphia , Ken got a job as a directing instructor at the University of the Arts.

“As a director you have ideas. You try to transmit those ideas to your actors. Sometimes the ideas don’t work or the understanding of the idea from the actors’ point of view has triggered them in a way you could never have imagined. All of a sudden what they’re doing is better than what you anticipated. In woodworking it’s the same thing. You want to do something, and wood is sitting there saying ‘it would be a lot better if you did this.’”

Marini is a believer that the best theatrical directing is done with such a light touch that the director’s involvement is almost invisible. The same is true in cabinetmaking.

“You look at a lot of people’s cabinetry,” he notes, “and their technique is so fabulous that when you look at the piece, that’s what you see. You see his technique, his ability to do all that stuff. It doesn’t speak to me because what it says is, ‘Admire my craftsmanship.’

“Then you’ll see a piece of furniture that when you see it, you’re like, ‘wow.’ The proportions are simple. It’s beautiful. There’s nothing that draws attention to itself. The unit speaks as a whole.”

Marini, who is booked as a director, with the exception of this summer, through the spring of 2006, says that he is interested in doing cabinets for which he receives a commission but that he no longer has the time to do kitchens or apartments. In fact, when asked what would happen if he were asked to direct and make a cabinet at the same time, both paying the same and having an identical conclusion date, he says, “I’d do both; then I’d take a rest.”don’t work or the understanding of the idea from the actors’ point of view has triggered them in a way you could never have imagined. All of a sudden what they’re doing is better than what you anticipated. In woodworking it’s the same thing. You want to do something, and wood is sitting there saying ‘it would be a lot better if you did this.’”

Marini is a believer that the best theatrical directing is done with such a light touch that the director’s involvement is almost invisible. The same is true in cabinetmaking.

“You look at a lot of people’s cabinetry,” he notes, “and their technique is so fabulous that when you look at the piece, that’s what you see. You see his technique, his ability to do all that stuff. It doesn’t speak to me because what it says is, ‘Admire my craftsmanship.’

“Then you’ll see a piece of furniture that when you see it, you’re like, ‘wow.’ The proportions are simple. It’s beautiful. There’s nothing that draws attention to itself. The unit speaks as a whole.”

Marini, who is booked as a director, with the exception of this summer, through the spring of 2006, says that he is interested in doing cabinets for which he receives a commission but that he no longer has the time to do kitchens or apartments. In fact, when asked what would happen if he were asked to direct and make a cabinet at the same time, both paying the same and having an identical conclusion date, he says, “I’d do both; then I’d take a rest.”