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Dean Hepker
Dean made his Quicksilver Productions debut playing “The
Chocolate Soldier” in Debbie Weitzell’s Arms and
the Man, for which he received rave reviews from the Tucson
Weekly, who later praised him for his first role with me, playing
Aegisthus in The Oresteia. Blessed with a beautiful body, an
innate masculine sexiness, and a gorgeous speaking voice that
echoed in any theater, big or little, Dean was an excellent
instinctual actor to boot, and he took a fairly minor role in
The Oresteia to some very noticeable new heights- certainly
I’d never thought of Aegisthus as sympathetic until I
watched him in the part. For our next collaboration I cast Dean
in the title role in Faust Part 1, a pleasant surprise as I
hadn’t expected him to even audition, and though the production
got mixed reviews Dean remained an object of praise, and rightfully
so, drabbing himself down substantially but turning up his more
subtle acting skills to play one of literature’s more
complicated leading men. Not that this type of role was ever
hard or alien for Dean- I had actually first seen him playing
the Marquis de Sade in Marat/Sade with Millennium Theater Company,
and his resume was filled with classical productions, including
The Birthday Party, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure
for Measure and Love’s Labours Lost. The last show we
did together was the original production of The Exiled, where
Dean got to channel a little Marquis de Sade into creating the
role of Enrique. Interestingly enough, this was the only time
the character was ever sort of vaguely lovable, as opposed to
Jeff Popelka’s more openly a bastard rendering, or Chris
Kelly’s vaguely predatory sex maniac version of the role.
Dean was as profane as his successors, but we worked in a lot
of stage business of him avoiding anything sexual or naughty-
arranging flowers in one scene, playing chess with Josh Galyen
in another. At the end, when he walked off into the sunset with
Amanda Karam’s Jenny, you kind of found yourself thinking,
“There they go. What a cute couple.” But that was
the thing about Dean- he was always vaguely loveable and good
at makeing relatively unlikable characters just a little bit
more snuggly than you expected. And who says there’s no
room for unexpected snuggles in the theater?
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