Sailing the Sea of Time

Anna Ziegler’s A Delicate Ship, the second production from local company HappySad Theatre (founded in 2025), is about memories, nostalgia, and the nature of interpersonal relationships. The show is particularly about growing from childhood to mature adult and imagining the future. The same dynamic could be applied to aspects of company co-founder and Ship’s Director Robert Rodarte. 

A native of Santa Barbara, Rodarte dove into theater at Dos Pueblos High and SBCC before moving on to New York, where he studied at Circle in the Square. There he met his wife Riley, co-founder of HappySad Theatre, and star of the play. Launching a company to perform contemporary theater was already a goal, even then. Back in town since last year after a decade away, Rodarte sees Ship as the kind of contemporary play he wasn’t able to find during his time in town before. 

“The story delves into the nitty-gritty of what it is to become an adult and what that means to different people – how one day we’re children and the next we have to grow up,” he said. “What do we have to let go of or involve in our life? There’s just such a gray area in how to do that. The show asks that question and forces you to look at yourself and wonder, am I still a kid at heart, or have I let that go?” 

A Delicate Ship – inspired by W.H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts,” which itself references the painting The Fall of Icarus – takes place in a single night. The setting is in an apartment where a young couple, Sarah and Sam, are on a Christmas Eve date. When Sarah’s childhood best friend shows up – he was and is in love with her – it forces Sarah to confront issues she’d long since pushed down. Way down.

“It’s something of a love triangle, and things are revealed to, or kept from, each other in different ways,” Rodarte said. “It’s about dealing with love and loss, and how a single moment can really shape the rest of your life. There’s the dichotomy of what we decide to follow with our heart, and what gets buried deep beneath – forever.” 

The young couple having a three-year-old boy of their own added vividly to the play’s resonance for Rodarte.

“I think a lot about the past and my own childhood, and about the future now that I have a physical clock in front of me, which is my son,” he said. “I’m always aware of time and aware of my own mortality. The play handles each of those in its own way. But these kinds of works and stories have always called to me.”

Theater friends from New York and Los Angeles – Brayden Myrick, who plays Sam, and Lior Selve as Nate, Sarah’s childhood friend – round out the cast for A Delicate Ship, which is also in line with Rodarte’s goal for HappySad as it progresses. 

“The pipeline dream with this company is to have it become a staple here in Santa Barbara, an opportunity for actors to play roles in important contemporary works,” he said. “What we’re doing is something different from what’s already in town.”

HappySad Theatre’s A Delicate Ship performs 7 pm on June 12 & 13, and 2 pm on June 14, at Center Stage Theatre. Visit https://centerstagetheater.org