Richard Cook was in the second year of a three-year master of fine arts program at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s when Steven Kent Lockwood arrived.

He wasn’t going to spend three years there, Lockwood declared — he’d graduate in two.

“That was kind of his style in life,” said Cook, who would become Lockwood’s husband and collaborator. “He created an immediate impression in the program because he was ambitious, and he was very quickly recognized as an experienced director. And we committed to each other that year.”

Cook and Lockwood were personal and professional partners for more than five decades, earning renown within the Twin Cities arts community for co-running St. Paul’s acclaimed Park Square Theatre — with Lockwood as executive director and Cook as artistic director — for decades.

Lockwood, 79, died July 29 after years of poor health.

“The theater wouldn’t be here now if Steven hadn’t become such a fierce manager and protector,” Cook said.

“He channeled all of his acting and directing talents, costuming talents, creative talents into the business, and really became a different kind of professional on the job. It was a very intense span of joint work over many years.”

‘Loved the art form’

Lockwood was born June 20, 1946, in Superior, Wis., and grew up in St. Paul.

As a teenager, he appeared periodically onstage at the former Edyth Bush Theatre in Highland Park, and, after graduating from Hamline University, acted in and directed shows with the Shakespeare in the Streets Company.

In graduate school in Iowa, he and Cook agreed to move together to whichever city one of them found a job in first. They initially landed in Raleigh, N.C., but found the community unsupportive of their gay relationship and quickly decamped back to St. Paul, Cook said. Full-time theater work was difficult to find, so Lockwood and Cook both worked day jobs in a steel pipe factory.

Steven Kent Lockwood, left, acts in a production of “She Stoops To Conquer” in December 1980 at Park Square Theatre. (Courtesy of Richard Cook)

In 1975, Paul Mathey was looking for a director for a production of “Much Ado About Nothing” at a new theater he’d started called Park Square. A friend recommended a college classmate named Steven Kent Lockwood.

Over the next couple of years, Lockwood and Cook both continued directing and designing shows for Park Square. Meanwhile, Mathey’s health worsened, Cook said. By 1980, Mathey told Cook that he was stepping down, and the theater could either close entirely or Cook could take over for him as artistic director.

One of Cook’s first acts was to bring Lockwood on staff full time, too. In addition to directing and acting, Lockwood also oversaw the financial, ticketing and marketing operations of the theater and formally became its executive director in 1995. Lockwood retired in 2012, and Cook in 2018.

“He loved the art form, and he loved me,” Cook said. “He wanted to support what I was doing; he loved the idea of what we were doing. He was committed to it.”

‘You can really see the honor’

Executive director Steven Kent Lockwood, left, and artistic director Richard Cook pose in the Park Square Theatre ticket booth on March 24, 2003. At the time they were the longest-tenured executive director/artistic director team in Twin Cities theater, running Park Square since the early 1980s. (Joe Oden / Pioneer Press)

Running a theater is hard. Running a profitable theater is even harder.

“We were always on the edge of not being,” Cook said. “I was making some notes to myself a few days ago. I wrote down, ‘In fighting for the theater, (Steven) risked both his financial and physical health.’”

This sense of personal sacrifice for the greater vision — whether appropriate or not — immediately stood out to C. Michael-jon Pease, who was hired as development director in 2000 and ultimately succeeded Lockwood as executive director from 2012 to 2020. Pease recalls hearing about one moment earlier in the theater’s history when Lockwood had to sell his personal baby grand piano to make payroll.

“When you’re working alongside someone like that, you can really see the honor,” Pease said. “(Lockwood and Cook) never asked us to do anything they hadn’t already done and weren’t willing to do. All jobs are equal when they need to get done. And then we can take a breath and get back to what everyone is actually best at, but no job is beneath you.”

To Cook, that was Lockwood: He knew what he wanted, and he was willing to do what it took to make it happen. He made his drinks notoriously strong, cooked meals with plenty of butter, and knew everyone’s names and stories — especially those of staff at favorite establishments like the River Room and Iron Horse restaurants at the former downtown St. Paul Dayton’s, later Macy’s, and Fitger’s Inn in Duluth.

Steven Kent Lockwood raises a toast during a trip to Duluth in fall 2010. (Courtesy of Richard Cook)

With this in mind, Cook said, it makes sense that Lockwood’s first passion, even before theater, was opera.

“Opera is such an intense, overwhelmingly emotional art form,” Cook said, “and it was a good match for him and his personality: Big, a bit overblown but intensely committed in terms of both the virtuosity, which he admired, and the musicality, which he responded to with such total empathy.”

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In their St. Paul home, Lockwood had amassed a collection of some 3,000 CDs of operatic recordings — all of which he actively listened to, Cook said — and continued acquiring discs till the week he died, even as his health was failing.

“I know Steven loved me, but his first love was Maria Callas,” Cook said, referring to the particularly influential 20th-century Greek-American soprano. “So in his last few days, I played arias by Maria Callas. Hopefully, it went with him.”

Lockwood is survived by husband Richard Cook, his partner of 53 years, and preceded in death by parents Bessie and Edward. No public memorial services were held, but Cook said Lockwood had a particular affinity for charities Second Harvest Heartland and Union Gospel Mission.