A Sole Practitioner With Many Advisors

I have been blessed with so many inspiring mentors, collaborators, and advisors, every step of the way.

~ Steve Barberio

Hello and thanks for stopping by. I’m Steve Barberio and hopefully I can help you. I have enjoyed many successes throughout my career and have learned from projects that fell short in some way, or even bombed completely. There is so much more to learn!

Back in 1979, I took my first professional gig at a summer stock theater, after an excellent freshman year at UW-Madison. As an apprentice, working for $25 per week, I took the advice of a stage and screen pro who urged me to go back to Minneapolis to finish my degree, but audition and volunteer in the booming Twin Cities theater industry. She was so right!

Less than 10 years later, I was as the first full employee at Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins, a small suburb just west of Minneapolis. Back then it was called Child’s Play Theatre a small community based nonprofit theatre that had survived the closing of the Minnetonka Theater in 1984.

It wasn’t long before we out grew our space. In 1991, I approached the City of Hopkins with a plan to improve the 65% vacancy rate on Mainstreet by building a new home for STC. A progressive city council recognized the opportunity and worked with us and the Hopkins School District.

Six years later we opened the Hopkins Center for the Arts! Stages Theatre has been thriving ever since and the Hopkins central business district. Retail and housing development has been booming on Mainstreet for over 20 years due in large part to the excitement and vitality brought to Hopkins by the performing and visual arts.

The early years as a theater by and for young people solidified our commitment to putting children and youth at the center of our work. I pushed us to add artistic programming for teen actors and audiences by adding Next Stage productions, two or three times per year.

Sandy Boren-Barrett joined our team in 1990 to lead our theatre education department and to become an artistic associate. We quickly grew our acting, movement, and other drama classes in schools and community education sites across the Twin Cities.

In the early 2000’s I led an initiative to start the Mainstreet School of the Arts, which is now PiM Arts High School in Eden Prairie, to meet a growing demand for education rooted in the arts. This effort was to further meet the demand for quality arts programming in the western suburbs.

As someone who is Jewish, I have spent a good deal of my career working in the Jewish community. From my first job as a theatre director, I have endeavored to express my Jewish identity through my artistic work.

The impact of our work was recognized across the country and I was fortunate to serve in state and national arts education leadership roles, while leading Stages into the new century. I became active in the national theatre organizations: American Alliance for Theatre Education, TYA, TCG, and the first steering committee of the Arts Education Partnership.

Since leaving Stages Theatre, I have worked with many inspiring organizations and individuals. I served as the executive director of three nonprofits: A dance education organization in Washington, D.C., a private K-5 Jewish elementary school, and a Reform synagogue in the Twin Cities. I have also built a strong coaching and facilitation practice.

My work as an advisor has taken many forms over my career, but my purpose to help people find and build character has remained constant throughout the many different roles I have had and the organizations I have advised. Today, working at the intersection of arts and commerce, I enjoy being of help to emerging and established artists and arts entrepreneurs.

A Holocaust Mosaic, produced by Stages Theatre with the Minnesota JCC in 2000.