Christian Heppinstall is a Bay Area theater professional living in Oakland. He currently serves as the Production Manager for San Francisco’s Left Coast Theatre Company, a five-year-old company specializing in contemporary new works focusing on LGBTQ themes. He was the Company Stage Manager for San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers. As an actor he has played with New Conservatory Theatre, Mojo Theatre, Thrillpeddlers, Left Coast Theatre Company, among others. He has also independently produced his own shows and musical cabarets at Martuni’s and The Exit Theatre.
Heppinstall is the former Artistic and Executive Director of Alaska Theatre of Youth in Anchorage, Alaska where is directed shows ranging from Hamlet to Fiddler on the Roof. In Anchorage he also staged many musicals including Cabaret, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Hair, Reefer Madness the Musical, among others.
At Alaska Theatre of Youth he created the two-year touring Young Shakespeare that toured full-length and abridged Bardian dramas to schools in Alaska. He created touring theatre for high-schoolers throughout Alaska with Young Shakespeare (taking the Bard into schools) and The Inner Circle: Changing Times (taking a teen HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention message into schools). For his work in youth theater he was recognized by both Planned Parenthood and the Municipality of Anchorage.
For two seasons Heppinstall presented the thirteen one-hour episodes series about sexual mores in contemporary America in Midnight Soapscum. The series is set in a famous and powerful San Francisco porn studio that provides the setting for the discussions about censorship, body part objectification, the cultural place of porn, etc. Though staged in Anchorage and completely set in San Francisco, these thirteen episodes have never been staged in San Francisco.
Though not a drag artist Heppinstall staged 14 episodes of the British TV show–Absolutely Fabulous–in San Francisco. For these efforts Heppinstall was hired to portray “Patsy Stone” in order to promote the 2016 Absolutely Fabulous film in the 2016 Pride Parades of LA, Sacramento and San Francisco.
