LOUIS — ST.A former boss of Joel Snider described the 33-year-old accused of killing a Valley yoga master as a complicated man, well liked by the St. Louis theater company he once worked with, but volatile when it came to Snider's relationship with her.
Joan Lipkin, founder and artistic director at That Uppity Theatre Co., said she knew Snider to be a talented young man, one who possessed a youthful energy, but she described him as being temperamental and difficult to work with.
"We didn't get along," Lipkin said Thursday morning after having just learned of Snider's arrest. "He was enormously rigid and had a very difficult time adapting when circumstances did not go the way they're supposed to go, which can happen in a performance all the time. He had a real hard time rolling with change."
Snider has a history in theater, having graduated from New York's American Musical and Dramatic Academy in 1999 and then gaining performance credits that include playhouses in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Missouri.
Within the past year, Snider founded Yoga For Everybody, a St. Louis yoga center meant to make yoga accessible to all people regardless of ability or body type.
Lipkin said the center wasn't open for long before it closed.
Lipkin said she has no memory of Snider ever mentioning Sudharman, the man he is accused of shooting early this week, or his New Berlin yoga center, but she did recognize Swami Karunananda's name, though she couldn't remember if she heard it mentioned by Snider or someone else.
"I do know he was really devoted to some swami," Lipkin said.
She knew nothing of Snider's alleged appearance on the "Today" show when, in the early 2000s he launched a petition campaign in New York City to win back the heart of a girlfriend. A video of the endeavor was posted on Snider's Facebook page, on which he is photographed striking a yoga pose.
The petition attempt failed, Snider posted on Facebook; the girl never took him back.
Snider's affinity for yoga, Lipkin said, stood in stark contrast to the young man she tried to work with at her theater company.
"It was always fascinating to me that this guy who was so committed to yoga, which is essentially a very peaceful thing, had a hair-trigger temper, disrespected me, wasn't organic or flexible in his thinking," Lipkin said. "It just seemed the opposite of what the yoga practice might have cultivated in someone."
Despite this, Lipkin said she worked hard to keep Snider at the theater company, saying he was well-liked by the rest of the group and just seemed to have a particular problem with her.
It was nearly a year ago when she said she was trying to find a way for Snider to continue working at the theater company when she said Snider became furious with her and repeatedly hung up the phone when she tried to have a conversation with him.
"I called him back and I said, 'I don't care how much you study yoga, you have a long way to go when it comes to understanding about dialogue and respect and trying to work with someone,'" Lipkin remembered. "I was trying to come to a peaceful letting go because it's a small community here, we're both in the theater community, both in the disability community."
Lipkin tried one more time to reach out to Snider, just a couple of months ago, and invited him to a party.
Snider didn't come.
Despite her difficulties with Snider, Lipkin stressed that he was "fun and friendly" and liked by the majority of her theater company. She said she never would have imagined him capable of murder.
"I don't even have words for this," Lipkin said. "If this is true, a) obviously he must have snapped, and b) any of us could have been at risk."
Snider also was employed by the St. Louis ARC, where he helped to create and organize an annual variety show featuring multi-genre presentations by people with disabilities, and has offered both yoga and drumming classes for people with disabilities in St. Louis
Mark Keeley, vice president of support services at the ARC, said he did not recognize Snider's name. Sharon Spurlock, believed to be Snider's manager, was out of the country on vacation and did not immediately respond to an e-mail regarding Snider's employment.
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Ex-boss: Snider had hair-trigger temper
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