Hal Prince and Kathleen Marshall Were His TDF Mentors. Now This Actor Is Carrying on Their Legacy

In high school, Sheldon Best participated in TDF’s Wendy Wasserstein Project. He’s the first alum to return as a mentor.

—

Obie-winning actor Sheldon Best vividly remembers when he was invited to see his first Broadway show—because he didn’t want to go. “I was in junior high and I thought Broadway was, like, for old people,” he says with a chuckle. But that performance of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown “was so vibrant and energetic and fun, it changed my perspective on theatre. I realized this isn’t for old people. This is for me.“

So a few years later, when Best was at Midwood High School in Brooklyn and a teacher encouraged him to apply to TDF’s arts mentorship program the Wendy Wasserstein Project, he jumped at the opportunity. “I knew that I liked theatre, but that really exploded my exposure to shows and sent my life down a different path,” he says. “I’m a storyteller, and I think I discovered that through the Wendy Project.”

The brainchild of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Heidi Chronicles, the Wendy Project (formerly called Open Doors) began as an experiment in 1998. Wasserstein herself took eight high schoolers to seven shows on Broadway and beyond to find out if theatre could captivate the hearts and minds of a new generation. As she listened to the teens passionately discuss what they’d seen during their post-performance pizza parties, she discovered the answer was a resounding yes.

Since then, the Wendy Project has grown exponentially and even won a special Tony Honor. Last season, 39 professional artist mentors took 240 students from 30 New York City-area public schools to 180 shows with support from teachers and TDF reps. This year marks a special milestone: Best is the first Wendy Project alum to return to the program as a mentor.

While Best is thrilled to come full circle, he initially had a bit of imposter syndrome since his Wendy Project mentors were the legendary director and producer Hal Prince and director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall.

After subbing a few times, Best was asked to become a full-fledged mentor. “I said, ‘Yes, of course!’ But I had a lot of feelings,” he admits. Although for the past two decades he’s been a busy actor on stage (Sugar in Our Wounds at Manhattan Theatre Club, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner at Atlantic Theater Company, The Fires at Soho Rep) and screen, Best didn’t feel he was on the level of his Wendy Project mentors. Then he realized his journey with the program gives him a unique advantage.

“I’m with Talent Unlimited High School and the young people are so fantastic,” he says. “They share from the heart and from their journals. We’ve gone on two outings so far, Maybe Happy Ending and Ragtime, and they did not hold back” when talking about the shows’ themes, especially the latter’s treatment of racism. “It’s amazing to see them processing art and their relationship to it in real time. In my year, we saw I Am My Own Wife,” Doug Wright’s one-person play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transwoman. “I remember it sparked a conversation that was uncomfortable. But the discussion after Ragtime felt very different. There was comfort in discussing things that were uncomfortable.”

Best credits that comfort, in part, to the stories he’s told about his own Wendy Project experiences, including how his fellow student, Farrah Abuzahria who wore a hijab, related to Elphaba feeling othered and ostracized in Wicked. “That was really, really powerful,” he says. It exemplifies how “we go to the theatre to have this moment of connection and find ourselves in someone else’s world, where we can look at our problems, our relationships and our lives from another angle. I want that for my students.”

He also believes having a co-mentor, Tony-nominated performer Carolee Carmello, helps the students feel confident about voicing their opinions. “They don’t get stuck with only one adult’s perspective,” he says. “We all share what we think and feel, there is no authoritative voice. We all see different things. That gives permission for the students to see things differently among themselves as well.”

Best has many incredible anecdotes about his time as a Wendy Project participant. One of his favorites is when Kathleen Marshall invited him to see the revival of Bye Bye Birdie she was directing at Encores! because he was doing the musical at his high school. “Not only did I get an extra outing, Kathleen also came to see our production!” he says. “I could not believe that someone who was working on Broadway would come out and support young artists who were just starting out.”

Even though Best’s first Broadway experience predated the Wendy Project, he maintains the program changed his life. “Seeing shows, talking about them, getting the TDF Membership afterward to see more theatre, that shifted things for me,” he says. “The idea was, theatre is in your backyard, it’s your birthright, now you need to go see it. I’m so glad the Wendy Project exists, and I’m really glad that I still get to be a part of it. It’s about 30 hours of time with these students, but it has an outsize impact.”

Donate to TDF’s Education Programs to help us continue to inspire the next generation of theatregoers and theatre makers.

—

TDF MEMBERS: Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.