
‘Medea,’ starring Elizabeth Heflin, right, was one of the REP’s productions during the 2023-24 season.
The man who will take over the University of Delaware’s professional theatre company and run its theater/dance department is a familiar face who’s been involved with the programs for 32 years.
Steve Tague, an actor, director and instructor, has been named producing artistic director of the Resident Ensemble Players, known as the REP, and chair of Theatre and Dance.
He succeeds Sanford “Sandy” Robbins, who founded the program 34 years ago, but left in 2022, a year after the university gutted his budget.
As an interim director, Tague already has rebuilt the REP’s season and audiences enough from the shallows of the pandemic to be able to raise the number of productions from four to five for the 24-25 season.
Now Tague will embrace additional challenges during his five-year appointment:
- Starting a theater major and dance major for the first time in 35 years at the university.
- Spearheading a scholarship fund for theater and dance majors.
- Seeking sponsorships for the REP season and shows, which the university is allowing for the first time in the theater’s history.
- Searching for a way to renovate the department’s old theater to use for student productions.
- Setting up a council to advise him, help strengthen community connections to the program and perhaps even mount its own campaigns.
Robbins said he was pleased to hear about the appointment of Tague, with whom he worked for years.
“The administration made a great choice in selecting Steve, who has the experience, the talent, and the taste to lead the Department and REP into the future,” Robbins said. “Now the question will be is the administration willing to commit the resources — specifically, funding, staffing, and space — to enable Steve to fulfill on what he and colleagues can provide.”
Tague: ‘Satisfy broad coalition’
The REP has long been an object of envy from regional theater programs for its stellar sets, costumes, guest directors and more, paid for by its deep University pockets. Since 2006, it’s been housed in a theater complex named for former President David Roselle.

Steve Tague
Losing a large chunk of those finances as COVID hit shocked the company, already reeling from the demands of social distancing.
“That transition from the pandemic was really difficult for live theater all around the country,” Tague said. “All of the live arts, ballet, symphony, opera, everything was just really struggling to survive.”
Fortunately, Tague said, great art doesn’t equal dollars.
“That’s a dangerous, dangerous thing to say, because it needs some dollars, of course, but truly great art is possible under any circumstances, and that’s really my view,” he said. “It’s not a Pollyanna view. I just happen to think it’s the truth, and it’s been demonstrated through hundreds and hundreds of years of theater.”
Budget restrictions mean he tries to find ways to balance a show like September’s “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which doesn’t require a huge set or cast, with something like last season’s wildly successful “Death Trap,” which required a large, complex set.
“What the Constitution Means,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, needs a minimal setting of VFW flags and bunting, and its small cast allows the REP to use two student actors rather than union ones, along with company actors, he said.
“So it’s all about the acting, which is great,” Tague said.
The professional company’s mission is to offer outstanding classic, modern and contemporary plays performed in a wide variety of styles.
Tague said his aim will be for the theater to satisfy as broad a coalition as it can.
“I love lots of bells and whistles and super high tech theater. It’s really, really fun and scary, in the case of ‘Death Trap,’ or sort of politically provocative if you think of ‘In the Heat of the Night’,” Tague said. “So we need to mix all of those together in a strategic fashion that brings back the audience, because that’s probably the number one goal.
“And the way to bring back the audience is to satisfy as many of them as possible. So that’s the game, and it’s an interesting game. It’s more complicated now because of the financial challenges but that’s reality.”
Tague came to Delaware in 1992. He received his B.F.A. in theater from Illinois Wesleyan University and his M.F.A. in theater from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before moving to Newark to teach voice and movement for UD’s now-defunct Professional Theater Training Program.
He began directing some then, and continued to act regionally in summers, working at the Arden Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Delaware Theatre company and others. The REP company was born in 2008.
About 12 years ago, Tague decided to stop acting to meet the demands of family life. He and his wife, Kathleen Pirkl Tague, a member of the REP, have three children who then were attending three different schools with three different schedules.
Now the oldest is a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, the middle child is in Delaware and the father of their only grandchild, and the youngest will be a junior at UD in the fall.
Tague, 64, is not sure how many people have signed up for a theater major this fall. He won’t know until after the last day that students can drop or add a course.
There is some interest, he said, because he’s been asked by those in other programs if they could earn a double major with theater, and he’s said yes.
Ultimately, he hopes to have 15 to 20 theater majors a year, meaning that over four years, there would be about 80 students.
He expects to continue directing, but will teach less and likely not act at all as he chooses to focus on recruiting and fundraising in his role as artistic director.
Tague said he has discovered over the last two years that he really likes hanging out with theater fans and enjoys talking to them, a big plus as he pivots.
He’s pleased the university is allowing him to seek sponsorships and community input.
“It would be nice …to not worry quite so much about the number of guest actors, about can we have guest directors? Because right now, we try not to have too many of those, because they are also expensive,” he said. “Having a little more breathing room with staffing and some other things, that would be nice.
“And so the goal really is to be a little more self sufficient and a little less reliant on the largess of the university.”
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