By Khalida Sarwari
After years of building, designing, drawing and working with students, 46-year-old Los Gatos resident Andrew Breithaupt has unexpectedly found himself in the second act of his career. And it all started with a sign last summer.
Breithaupt was driving down Quito Road when he noticed a sign pointing to West Valley College. Following his intuition, he kept on driving to the campus, and once there, decided to knock on doors and ask about volunteer opportunities. He didn’t expect that on the other side of one of those doors would be an experience that would change the course of his career.
Someone asked him if he could help out in the theater arts department as a scenic painter. Figuring he could apply his background in electronic media, a subject he taught for 10 years in his native Canada at Sheridan College in Ontario, Breithaupt agreed. And so he went on to paint scenery for “A View from the Bridge,” a play by Arthur Miller that the theater arts department was getting ready to stage.
The work appealed to Breithaupt, not just because it was at once familiar and challenging but because it kept him occupied. Having moved to Los Gatos two years ago with his wife and kids, he needed something to do while awaiting his green card. When he saw the sign for West Valley College, he said it made him realize how much he enjoyed working in an academic environment.
The kids got older and more independent,” he said. “I started yearning to get back to working again. I thought in the interim it might be fun.”
During his first semester at the community college, Breithaupt was asked if he could make the following: an air cannon, a man-eating gelatinous cube, giant 10-sided colored dice that lit up, and a floating monster head the size of a washing machine with an explosive eye. Breithaupt said he was in heaven.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is a job? This is amazing,'” he said. “I used to do this just for fun, sort of build stuff. My whole life, I made my own toys and I just grew up building stuff.”
The seemingly random laundry list of tasks was for “She Kills Monsters,” an adult-themed production featuring stage combat, dark adventures, demons, fairies and monsters.
In January, Breithaupt embarked on his first stint as a set designer for “Urinetown the Musical,” a comedy that explores how without the private use of water, people must pay to urinate at public amenities. The work has required him to do research, come up with sketches and refine them, consult with director Carol Fischer and build models while working with a technical designer and a staff comprised of students. He’s found the experience to be akin to painting, except set design is three-dimensional.
“Not only does the painting have to have the right colors and composition to help set the mood, it also should give the director lots of options and ways to tell the story in their way,” he said. “It’s a real puzzle, but I’m loving piecing it together.”
The technical challenges aside, he’s also had to take into account real-world practical limitations, he said, such as budget, time, labor, safety and the stage layout. But he’s found the challenge worthwhile.
“This has been a really good launchpad for an area that I never really seriously considered as a viable career option,” he said. “I think this is the direction I would like to keep going in. I haven’t found a downside yet, except sometimes I’m a little sore when I go home.”
It’s been a long road for Breithaupt, but also a rewarding one. His wife’s work took him and their two children, ages 11 and 14, to Belgium for five years, then France for another five and now the Bay Area, where she works as a finance manager at Cisco. After years of being a stay-at-home dad and freelance artist, Breithaupt has found a new passion in set design, which he calls “a perfect convergence” of his interests and all the various mediums he’s dabbled in, from drawing and painting to designing, engineering and building.
“I come home exhausted, with paint on my shoes and a great big grin on my face every night,” he said. “It’s awesome.”
“Urinetown” will be presented at the Main Stage Theatre April 22, 23, 28, 29, 30 at 8 p.m. and April 24 and May 1 at 2 p.m. Tickets will be sold at the door for $15 general and $12 for students and seniors. To learn more about Breithaupt, visit his website at andrewtheartist.com.
