Steve Noll knows as well as anyone that you can’t always get what you want.

In 2009 — when he couldn’t interest Madison’s LGBT theater troupe StageQ in Bert Royal’s Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead — he decided to create a theater company and produce it himself.

Under the banner of OUT!Cast Theatre, Noll tapped the resources of StageQ, which he served as a board member, and did five “after-hours” productions of Dog Sees God, which chronicles the imagined high school adventures of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang as they discover drugs, sex and suicide.

In its year-end wrap-up, Wisconsin State Journal critics listed Dog Sees God as one of the year’s 10 best plays. The play also made money for Noll and StageQ, which initially insisted on anonymity because it didn’t want to be affiliated with a play in which a gay character commits suicide.

The show’s success charted a course that has led to a growing presence of OUT!Cast and its impresario on the Madison theater scene.

Noll’s theatrical brand has propelled his one-man theater career into a string of more than a dozen productions on local stages.

Noll’s plays are always produced in conjunction with other groups, including The Madison Theatre Guild and StageQ, as co-productions with OUT!Cast. He sometimes produces, sometimes directs and sometimes does both, which makes the OUT!Cast brand a convenient moniker.

“I never wanted to say, “A Steve Noll production directed by Steve Noll,” he says with humor.

As a marketing instructor by day at Madison College, he understands the value of brand.

Likewise, his current role as part of Madison’s theater scene is the sum total of all the Capital City native’s career decisions.

From videos to film to advertising to theater

Noll graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, majoring in speech with an emphasis on radio, TV and film. He wanted to become a filmmaker, but didn’t know how to break into pictures. Much to his parents’ chagrin, he got a part-time job at the former Video Max store on Madison’s west side.

Noll’s natural gregariousness and film knowledge made him a hit with management, which promoted him to store manager.

When the opportunity arose, he ended his retail run and became a regional rep for the video distribution firm that served the store.

The new position took Noll closer to the heart of the film business as the would-be moviemaker started meeting production people and movie stars.

Surely, he thought, I am on my way.

“I once ran into Tony Curtis coming out of a porn exhibit at a video convention in Las Vegas and we ended up talking about Operation Petticoat,” Noll says. “I once got drunk with Burt Reynolds at the top of an L.A. skyscraper and had to send him away when he kept hitting on a female colleague.”

But Noll says his role in the film distribution business turned his love of moviemaking magic into just another business.

In addition, by the late 1990s, the video scene had changed and local video stores were closing in favor of new distribution technologies. With his position eliminated after five years, Noll returned to Madison to re-evaluate his options.

“In the video store, I learned that while customers would say, ‘I like this, this and this,’ what they really meant was “I want that, that and that,’” he said. “I learned a lot about people and what they really wanted.”

A chance lunch with a representative from Madison-based Bensman Advertising led to a job offer. Noll went on to earn a master’s degree in marketing and his teaching post at Madison College.

During the same period, he saw an ad for volunteer ushers at the Bartell Theatre for a Mercury Players Theatre production of Paul Rudnick’s gay-themed play Jeffrey. He was captivated by the experience and ended up ushering for the play’s entire run, watching each performance in the process.

“What I discovered immediately is that every performance was different,” Noll says. “It wasn’t the actors onstage, but the people in the audience who caused the show to change each night based on their response. Once again, it was all about what’s going on in the consumers’ minds.”

That was a start for Noll, who came back the next year and ended up stage-managing a production of Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. The wannabe filmmaker had discovered the magic of theater.

Agree to disagree

Noll become more deeply immersed in the Madison theater scene, eventually joining the board of StageQ, which was not always a comfortable situation — either for the upstart impresario or his board colleagues.

In 2004, Noll pushed StageQ to produce Corpus Christi, Terrence McNally’s reimagining of Jesus Christ and his disciples as gay. The impact on everyone was dramatic.

Opening night attracted as many or more protestors than it did audience members, including a large out-of-state contingent of fundamental Christians who staged a massive rally down the block from the Bartell Theatre.

“It got so much attention that it freaked out StageQ founder Tom McClurg, who was kind of introverted,” Noll says. “We had a falling out over it and I stepped away.”

Noll “dropped out” for about 18 months, working at the ad agency and pursuing his online master’s degree through Atlanta’s American Continental University. Eventually, he went back to the StageQ board with the idea of producing some shows.

That’s where Dog Sees God comes in.

“My friend Nick Kaprelian suggested the idea because he wanted to play CB,” says Noll, referring to the thinly veiled Charlie Brown character. “StageQ didn’t like the fact that the gay teen character killed himself at the end and passed on it.”

Noll, Kaprelian and mutual friend Chrissie Valdez found themselves dejected, sitting at a bar near the Bartell wondering what to do, when the idea of mounting the production themselves came up in the conversation.

“We agreed that we were outcasts from the gay theater scene at that point, which led to the name OUT!Cast,” Noll says, noting that it was a poke at the StageQ board.

Kaprelian played CB, Noll directed and Valdez produced the show. The play was a hit.

Different visions

Noll next suggested to StageQ’s board that it produce It’s Murder, Mary, writer Andrew Black’s reimagining of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with an all-gay male cast.

After three years of waiting with no result, Noll determined he and StageQ had different artistic visions.

OUT!Cast had a second show to schedule.

Since that time, Noll has been involved in about 10 other productions, including Xanadu, The Rocky Horror Show, Bare: A Pop Opera, and Z-Town: A Zombie Musical.

Not all of them appeared under the OUT!Cast banner, but Noll’s involvement guarantees the same artistic ethos of his other productions.

“I usually co-produce with someone from the partnering theater company,” says Noll. “Then I decide if I also want to direct. This way I have pretty firm creative control over the show, including the budget and the basic vision.” 

Next season, Noll will produce Rock of Ages, a co-production with MTG, the same partner group with which he did The Nance earlier this spring. He also will be directing the thriller Wait Until Dark for MTG this fall, which he says will tap his creative side.

“I am going to try my hand at playwriting and maybe venture back into filmmaking,” he says. “I think It’s Murder, Mary would make a great low-budget movie if we could find a big old Victorian house to use.”

Would Noll be as successful at filmmaking as he has been a theater producer? Perhaps, and maybe he’d even get the chance to catch up with Burt Reynolds for one more nightcap.

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