When Alan Ceppos, an actor and businessman who lives in Water Mill, sat down for an interview on Saturday morning at Ripley-Grier Studios in Manhattan, the prospect of covering the various, varied ventures of his life in just over 40 minutes seemed unlikely.
For the past month, he has been in the city rehearsing for his starring role in “Art of Leaving,” a new Off Broadway comedy by Anne Marilyn Lucas set to begin previews on Friday, Oct. 10, and open on Oct. 22 for a 10-week run at the Pershing Square Signature Center. The cast had been called to rehearse at 10 a.m., and he had just received newly rewritten pages of the script, which he was snapping into his binder.
“I’m really enjoying it,” he said of being back in the city. “I rented an apartment here, and I’m thinking, maybe I would want to live here again. And then last weekend I went back to Water Mill, and no question about it, I’m out there. I think as we get older, to be with nature, watching the seasons, the trees — that’s what’s really important. The more time I’m out there, the happier I am.”
Mr. Ceppos grew up in Bayside, Queens, and discovered his love of the stage when he was 8 years old, while on a school trip to see a magic show, after being selected out of a group of about 200 children to participate in one of the tricks. “I loved the attention,” he said. “I loved the response that I got from the audience.”
His mother enrolled him in the Children’s Professional Acting Guild through the Fresh Meadows Community Theater, and he got his first professional role the following year. “They were doing ‘Three Musketeers’ on Broadway, and they asked me to be in it,” he said. “I was just a little kid, I just kind of had to walk on, and that was the first thing I did — I went on Broadway.”
He continued to act in local productions while in school, and made his television debut in a live production of “The Lottery,” based on the short story by Shirley Jackson, at the age of 13. He went on to double major in theater and French at the State University at Albany, and after graduation put his acting career on hold to follow another dream, of moving to France. “That,” he said, “put me on another branch of my life.”
While working as an English teacher in Paris, Mr. Ceppos met his future husband, Frederic Rambaud, who was a student in his class. The pair — who have now been together for 52 years and hold the distinction of being the first same-sex couple to marry in the Town of Southampton after New York passed the Marriage Equality Act in 2011 — would go on to develop a successful partnership in business as well.
After spending their first 10 years together in Paris, they moved to New York. “We started in the garment business, and what we did, which I’m very proud of, is for five years we traveled across the country twice a year, selling our wares from the trunk of our car,” Mr. Ceppos said. “Frederic and I know every single American city in the 48 [contiguous] states with more than 30,000 people, because that was the cutoff where we knew they would have stores.”
They transitioned into the gift industry, entering a partnership with the French brand Pylones, known for selling everyday objects and gadgets in brightly colored, eye-catching patterns, and opened a string of the stores in America. They eventually dissociated from the brand and remade their stores into Piq, which now has locations in Grand Central Station, Hudson Yards, Rockefeller Center, and the American Dream Mall in New Jersey.
“We have two fabulous people working for us, so the only thing I do now, other than speak to them every day to get updates, is product selection,” he said, describing the wares as products “nobody needs, except for the fact that it makes people happy. And that won’t change with A.I. and all that, because there is still the gift of giving.”
Around the year 2000, he and Mr. Rambaud were invited to visit friends out in Water Mill, and they quickly took to the area. The following year they bought a 12-acre farm in the hamlet, and Mr. Rambaud started to take lessons in beekeeping. The interest blossomed into yet another business venture when they purchased Don Sausser Apiaries, and in 2002 they started their own label, the Hamptons Honey Company.
“At the beginning we would do all the extracting on our farm, all the bottling, but now we don’t really do that anymore.” The honey business has changed a lot in recent years, he explained, with more beekeepers in the area “not treating the bees the way you should” to keep their immune systems healthy. They still own the business, and some extracting is still done on their farm, but “it’s not our full-time life.”
While running the businesses, Mr. Ceppos continued to act. He was a regular on Conan O’Brien’s former TBS talk show “Conan” for about six years, and was on set in New York almost every night. “I’d show up and they’d say, ‘Today you’re going to be a waiter,’ ‘Today you’re going to be a basketball player.’ It was great training.” The exposure also got him a lot of work on commercials.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, Mr. Ceppos shifted his focus back to acting full time. “I said, you only have one life, and I have two great people that can run the business.” Cast in “That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes,” a 2021 film, he won several international best actor awards, encouraging him further.
He landed his current role of Felix in “Art of Leaving” a year and a half ago. The play (then called “Party?”) originally ran for three weeks Off Off Broadway at the Theater for the New City and was very well received. “We really enjoyed each other’s company, we really enjoyed doing the play,” he said of the cast and crew. “And I said, ‘I think we can take this further.’ ”
In July, the cast did two nights of staged readings at LTV Studios in Wainscott, with talkbacks from the audience. The readings doubled as a benefit for the Ellen Hermanson Foundation’s breast cancer work.
“The talkbacks were very productive — they helped the playwright to make things better,” Mr. Ceppos said. “It’s about how three different generations deal with polyamory, divorce, and the moving of the culture, so it’s very timely. And what’s really nice about it is there’s something for every age. If you were to watch it, you would be able to relate to it from your generation, because it poses questions and thoughts that your generation is dealing with.”
At the Signature Theater, which Mr. Ceppos called “one of the five best theaters in New York,” they are entering the final stretch of rehearsals before opening for previews. “I’m really devoted to this in my head,” he said. The show will run through Dec. 14, and afterward he hopes it makes it to London, and then perhaps to the La Jolla Playhouse in California and other theaters across the country.
“I’m 75, living a dream, and it is incredible,” Mr. Ceppos said just minutes before rehearsal was set to start. “I won’t cry now, but I often do, to think that I have the opportunity at my age to live what I’ve always dreamed about. It’s not too late — everything that I planned and wanted is happening at my age, and I think that’s really phenomenal. I think I’m so lucky for that.”
