When Mark Spondike isn’t providing music education to students at Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts school, he’s appearing onstage in the region, incluing with the Pittsburgh Opera.

Next month, he’ll have a man’s fate in his hands, as the foreman of the jury in Prime Stage Theatre’s upcoming production of “Twelve Angry Men.”

The classic work, which began as a televised play and has since been adapted for stage and film, explores the deliberations of a jury sitting a case in which a teen is accused of murdering his abusive father.

Spondike, 60, of Shaler spoke recently with TribLive about helping to stage such a well-known drama.

“Twelve Angry Men” runs May 2-11 at the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East in Pittsburgh’s North Side neigborhood. For tickets and more information, visit primestage.com/productions/twelve_angry_men.

Q: By their nature, plays take place in a limited space. But many times that space is expanded via scene changes. What are the particular challenges with a play that is contained to a single room?

A: It is a tight space, and at times we have to yield to one another. Everyone can see the open space beyond the playing area, so it is up to the production team, the director, and the actors to make everyone believe it is a confined space.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about this play?

A: What I enjoy most about doing the play is working with 11 other incredibly talented actors. As for the play itself, it’s that, after these 12 men of different backgrounds and professions get together to determine the fate of a teenage boy’s life, their lives become changed forever.

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge in developing your character?

A: Maintaining the nuances of the character and balancing them with my own tendencies. I’m constantly considering how the foreman would do or say something in comparison with how I would. I’m working on the consistency of his nature until it becomes natural to me.

Q: Does today’s super-charged political atmosphere lend even more weight to a production of this play?

A: I guess it does. Particularly when it comes to social issues, human rights and racism. It is interesting to see how these issues are dealt with in the 1950s compared to the 2020s.

Q: With so many entertainment options that don’t require people to leave their homes, what is it about theater that makes it a unique experience from other modes of storytelling?

A: There’s nothing like live theater — the sounds, the silences, the sights, the smells. There’s a lot going on in a theatrical production that you would not have in some of those other entertainment options. An audience is actually the last character to join the cast. They don’t have to rehearse, but they know their role, and they energize the actors. Theater is a unique experience!

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