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The Man with Many Faces

Samuel Sheng, the man behind, and on, the scene.

By Jenny Walty

Most people play many roles in life, but Samuel Sheng takes this human condition to extremes. He never ceases to surprise, particularly in his current appearance in Café Depresso.

A self-labeled “dark comedy,” the play by Tom Vegh is in its third production, opening with a new adaptation for San Francisco at Exit Theater with an entirely local cast. Based on the true-life murder of Lance Penny, the play takes an oblique route, which is driven by its characters. The audience experiences the story through the eyes of a therapist and his therapy group, as they try to cope with the disappearance of two members.

The five supporting character roles that Sheng plays bring immediacy to the central drama. These roles — Dr. Packard, Terry’s psychologist; Rodrigo, the poetry writing baristo at the group’s favorite cafe; Dante, the cyber sex club owner; Flounders, one of the tweaked out suspects in the murder case; and Tanner, one of the group members who goes missing before implicating himself in the murder — surround the group’s personal problems. Sheng’s ability to ground his characters in the daily activities of their lives allows the other characters to wallow in their inability to cope. They must continually return to the mundane (or not so mundane) realities of social interaction.

In the dark comedy Café Depresso, Tanner (Sheng) tries to cope with all the voices in his head while the barfly (Barbara Early) feeds him more bad whiskey.

Sheng’s Dr. Packard has no qualms about stringing Terry along, holding back answers, taunting him with his addiction to donuts, all to get him to come in for an appointment. His response to his client’s anxiety is amusement — and some derision. He’s seen everything and takes no responsibility for his patient’s actions, cautioning Terry to do the same. Through his insistence on the boundaries of the patient/therapist relationship, Packard betrays the inherent, co-dependent nature of the exchange. He is dependent on his client for his salary, just as Terry is dependent on him for judgment.

Flounders is another instrumental character in the plot. As Tanner’s ex-boyfriend, he makes Terry understand who Tanner really was through his environment. When Terry finds him wearing a ripped T-shirt and a dog collar, drunk, tweaking on a cocktail of drugs, Flounders flips out, knocking down chairs and squeaking “Who are you? Stay away from me!” When he finally calms down enough to answer Terry’s questions about Tanner, it’s a struggle to call up facts in a coherent order, to recognize significance and meaning.

Sheng thrives on the diverse portfolio of characters he creates for the play. At one point he plays three different characters back to back, and he admits it’s a challenge to keep them straight, but, he says, it was a risk worth taking.

“It actually just fell into my lap at the right time, at the right moment. I wanted something where I played multiple characters. The last couple pieces I played smaller roles in larger productions. I wanted to get back into challenging myself as an actor.”

He developed distinctive accents to help keep in character. Dr. Packard projects a strong Hong Kong British accent; Tanner speaks with a Georgian southern drawl; Rodrigo has a California skater accent; Dante’s character talks with a “Euro” intonation; Flounder’s voice is higher pitched and faster paced.

Though none of his characters in Café Depresso were written as Asian Americans, Sheng had no problems portraying them. He says: “I try to do colorblind casting. Even though a part is written for a white person, I can play it. If someone can bring me in, I can do the work. I like to portray real life, instead of the stereotypical roles that Asians tend to be associated with.”

In effort to make that a reality for more Asian American actors, Sheng has become a strong supporter of the API arts community.

“One of the most frustrating things, especially if you’re a kid, you watch the new Star Wars movie and you say, ‘Oh my gosh, there are no Asian people in space.’ They could have put one person in there that had a line. There’s a lack of representation on TV and in the movies.”

Sheng is particularly critical of the slew of television shows set in San Francisco. Even though the Bay Area is 33 percent Asian America, in many of these series, Asian American actors are relegated to playing gangsters, if anything at all. In the recent poll of the Screen Actors Guild, Asian Americans comprised 2 percent of the television, film and theater work force.

Although API actors can find more work in Los Angeles than in San Francisco, Sheng isn’t planning to pack his bags anytime soon. In the four years he’s lived in San Francisco, the community of Asian American actors has become his second family.

“We help each other out because we all know that if a part doesn’t go to us, it’s going to go to one of our friends. It’s no use to be competitive like in Los Angeles — the sheer numbers breed competition. Here it’s more like ‘I heard about this job you’d be perfect for,’ and then it it’s reciprocal.”

Sheng has also delved into producing. Last year, after making a New Year’s resolution to produce a film, Sheng worked on the independent feature film SF, directed by Phil Gordon. Sheng had acted in two Gordon films; in SF, which will be wrapping up in the next few months, he got his first chance to produce.

“I had thought about going back to school for producing, but instead I got to learn the process as I went along,” Sheng says, “so I read a whole bunch of books. I took whatever I knew from the past, I talked to people I knew, and I got it done. It was a challenge; it really came down to the nuts and bolts of organizing.”

SF is based on Romeo and Juliet but set in a white high school with an Asian American gang. During production, the production crew ran into some major obstacles. One week before filming began, the crew lost their location, a school where about a third of the film was to be shot. They had to scramble for substitutes and were forced to cut or rewrite scenes in some cases. Another major challenge came with the start of rainy season on the first day of shooting. The books Sheng read must have helped, because the project was only three days over budget.

Speaking with Sheng, his passion is right on the surface. He wants to change the world. He takes to heart the responsibility to portray real people so kids can watch TV and movies, and be able to find positive roles for themselves.

“I want to have more Asian writers, I want to have more Asian producers, more Asian directors.”