Better Know an Actor: Greg Phelps

Gregory Jon Phelps in The Tempest, 2011. Photo by Tommy Thompson.

Welcome to the second installment of “Better Know an Actor,” a series of interviews with cast members of the American Shakespeare Center. This time, we talk to Greg Phelps, currently a member of the 2012 Actors’ Renaissance Season.

What’s your name, how long have you been with the ASC, and who are you playing this season?
Greg Phelps: My name is Greg Phelps. I’ve been with the company on and off since 2003. I’ve done a total of six Actors’ Renaissance Seasons (ARS) and four Summer and Fall seasons. I don’t know how many shows that is - it’s upwards of 50, I think. In Much Ado about Nothing, I play Don Pedro. In Richard III, I play Rivers, the dead body of Henry VI –

Your finest work, by the way.
GP: This isn’t a joke: it’s difficult to do that. For me, anyway. I’m sure other people would be like, “Yeah, I’m just laying there dead.” But it’s one of the hardest things for me to do to lay there dead and be present at the same time. Anyway, I’m also the Earl of Richmond and the Lord Mayor. In Philaster, I play Philaster; in A Mad World, my Masters, I play Captain Dick Follywit; and in Dido, Queen of Carthage, I play Ganymede and Cupid.

What was the first show you did here?
GP: 1 Henry IV.

Who were you?
GP: Prince Hal.

Wow, that must have been awesome.
GP: It was awesome. Can I swear? It was f-ing awesome. The first time that I worked here, I was terrified. We did three shows: 1 Henry IV, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Importance of Being Earnest. I was cast as Prince Hal, Valentine, and John Worthing: three pretty big parts in three plays. I was relatively familiar with the company before that, and I knew that they would generally spread it out, so that you would have maybe one big part and two smaller parts in the two other shows; but I was coming in with that - and I had to be paraphrased and off-book and all that [by the first rehearsal]. So I was highly terrified. As soon as I got here, I started meeting people, and everyone was really excited, we started working, and we did our first run-through for 1 Henry IV. The guy playing Hostpur [J.C. Long] and I put together an awesome fight that I don’t think we used at all except for that run-through. I just felt right at home; I felt like I was playing; I felt like I was focused. People were listening to one another.

If you can choose – I’m sure you find it difficult – what’s your favorite part you’ve played here?
GP: Ever?

Ever.
GP: You know, someone asked us that in a Talk Back recently. I don’t have an answer… Allison Glenzer actually made an excellent point during that Talk Back. She said, “It’s our job to fall in love with all of these characters. To give them a reason, to give them something to do. If you have one word to say, that’s your favorite part in the whole show, because you get to just hang back and listen and enjoy watching all these other people, these people that you are not only friends with but you’re also sort of fans of: you’re watching them work the same as everyone else around you is watching them work.” So sometimes the smaller parts are the best.... In terms of a favorite, I don’t know that I have one. I could probably list a top ten. Prince Hal. Henry V was awesome, just because I got to revisit Hal again after that first tour, and my Falstaff was Pistol. [In I Henry IV, Ben Curns played Falstaff to Greg Phelps’ Prince Hal; in Henry V Ben Curns played Pistol to Greg Phelps’ Henry.] The only time that Henry and Pistol meet is on the battlefield, and Pistol starts talking about how much he loves the king, and it reminds me so much of when Ben played my Falstaff and it was heart breaking ev-e-ry time. And you can spell it just like that.

I’ve noticed a bit of typecasting with some members of the current ARS. You tend to play the hero, Rene Thornton, Jr. plays the king, Sarah Fallon plays the damsel, and Allison Glenzer plays the liberated woman. Does this ever carry over to real life? Have you ever rescued Sarah from a burning building?
GP: Hmm… no. I think once or twice I’ve relit the pilot on their stove. I may have rushed and helped her out with a curtain page once or twice when I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Do you ever get frustrated always playing the hero? Do you ever think, “This is boring, I want to play the villain”?
GP: I’ve played a couple villains here, and it’s a lot of fun. I think the first real villain that I played here was Angelo in Measure for Measure. Not here, but elsewhere I’ve played Edmund [from King Lear], who was tons of fun. I have just as much fun playing the villains as I do with the heroes. [After] my first season here playing Prince Hal and Valentine, and then going on to play Claudio and Richmond and people like that, I was told, “Yes, we cast you as this type. We like you because you’re not this two-dimensional person, you’re not just a Dudley Do-Right who comes in with the cleft chin and the Superman symbol on his chest and just rescues everything.” As much as it sometimes looks like that on paper, the great thing about not only Shakespeare but also generally Early Modern writing is you get to fall in love with these characters. You get to make them three-dimensional. You get to make them flawed a little bit. You can give them some sort of emotion, you know, round them out. I’ve had a lot of fun with that and I think that’s something that they like to see, and it’s something I like to see. I’ve seen people here and other places get the hero role and put on the smile and go, “I will save the day!” and run around the stage like that and I think, “Yeah… I’m bored already. I don’t care about this person. I want the bad guy to win all of a sudden because he’s way more charismatic.” Which is generally the case, I suppose. That’s been a challenge I’ve accepted since I first started working here: to make the good guys as well rounded as possible.

You played Laertes twice in the past few years. In the 2007 ARS, Ben Curns was Hamlet in a wonderful and unique performance of the First Quarto (Q1). In the 2011 Summer/Fall season, John Harrell took on the role of the Prince of Denmark. Tell me about the experience of playing the same part in two very different productions, only a few years apart, with some of the same cast.
GP: I found it quite helpful to come back to it with a lot of the same cast. In fact, James Keegan played Claudius in Q1 and in [the 2011 production], so we actually found that in putting some of those scenes together we just ended up doing the same thing. The language is a little bit different between the two versions; it’s mostly Claudius who puts all the bad stuff together in Q1: he comes up with the plan and the evil poison and whatnot. So that was a little bit different. But for the most part it was just remembering what you did five years ago, as in, “Right, weren’t we down here, and we had this same thing… I guess it just works. It works with the two of us, it works with the scene, it works with the storytelling. Let’s just keep it.”

For the 2007 production, you worked without a director, whereas Jim Warren directed the 2011 production. Hamlet is a big play, and the differences between the Q1 text and the Folio text certainly don’t account for all the various differences between the two productions. What were the major differences for you during rehearsals with having a director vs. no director for this particular play?
GP: It wasn’t like it was a huge change, because it was Jim Warren [...]* I think he really understands the spirit of collaboration. So he’s not going to sit down and go, “Okay, you cross here on this line and you cross here on this line.” He’s not going to orchestrate it. He trusts us as not only human beings but also as competent actors, who have also done multiple Actors' Renaissance Seasons together, to be able to come up with something we can do on stage. I think he more guides and shapes than constructs from the ground up. So having a “director” for one and none for the other was not really all that much different. I would ask him a couple of questions now and then, but I would also ask James [Keegan] the same questions: “What would you like to do in this scene?” “Oh, well I’d like to do this.” “Okay, great.” So we would talk, and if we had any stumped questions we couldn’t figure out by ourselves, that’s when we would turn to Jim and ask him. That was really the only difference, for me anyway.

How about for other plays, generally: having a director vs. not having one – does it change your process drastically?
GP: Well, I don’t know if it’s just that we have a director but that we have more time, generally. And by more time, I mean like one more week. So, you’re not necessarily required to be there all the time. We still are, oftentimes, but a director will come in and… there will be a schedule set up for us. So I can say, “Well, I don’t have to be back until 3:00, so I can take an extra hour for my lunch. Or I can maybe work on this song.” Also, we don’t have to pull our costumes ourselves. We have costumers, so it takes away that responsibility for us. We can just sort of come in and do what we do and then leave[...]*
You’ve lived in Staunton for a while now. Have you thought of a zombie contingency plan?
GP: You know, I was dreading this question since I saw it in your other interview.

Well, it’s an important question.
GP: No, I haven’t. I think once upon a time I thought about it, because I was reading World War Z (I never actually made it to the end of that book, it gave me nightmares) and I watched the latest Dawn of the Dead movie –

The one in the mall?
GP: Yeah.

That’s a good one.
GP: Yeah, it was not bad.

They all die in the end.
GP: Of course they do. Spoiler!

I mean, we’re all going to die in the zombie apocalypse.
GP: Exactly! That’s the one thing that I keep coming up with. I don’t picture myself as the hero.

But you’re the hero! [Points to stage]
GP: But no, that’s not me! That’s a part written for me, for the stage. Me, myself? I feel like I would be that random guy that nobody knew. “Oh, guy #4 died, now we’ll move on with the main story!” That was me, random guy #4. I feel like I’m a relatively okay, fit guy. I think I have a moderate amount of survival skills, but I’ve never really been hunting, I’ve never actually sunk a machete into flesh before, I’ve never shot a gun at anyone or anything, really, except maybe a target, I’ve never really used a bow and arrow except for when I was in 7th grade. So in terms of weaponry… eh, I could probably figure it out, but it’s not like I’m an expert. I don’t hunt, as a person. I’m more of a gatherer type, I suppose... you know, the first and most important thing is to find water and shelter. Water and shelter are the two biggest things. From there you can sort of figure things out. I guess this is something I’ve given some thought to.

Well, one should.
GP: You don’t have to reload a machete, and they’re quiet, but you have to get close to your opponent, which means they’re close to you. Also, it depends on the kind of zombie. Are they fast or slow? Do you need to get bitten or can it be passed through blood?

I like to leave that up to you. I err towards slower, bite-contingent zombies, because if they’re fast, blood-born pathogen zombies, we’re all just going to die immediately.
GP: In terms of surviving, I think I would make it a couple of days depending on the kind of zombie and what my starting point was.

Your starting point is here.
GP: Here, as in the Blackfriars Upper Lobby?

Yes.
GP: Yeah, I could definitely make it a couple of days with the weapons that I have. I could maybe break some tables, that headpiece over there I could use to bash their faces in, I could make use of some broken glass. There are weapons all around, there are places to hide, it’s pretty well secured, and you’re up a few stories – though if they’re climbing zombies then you’re out of luck. The source of food is three levels down, though. How long can you live on packets of tea and maintain physical and mental fitness, before you get dehydrated and start seeing things? There are a lot of things you have to think about in that way. My point is this: that’s all the thought I’ve given to it.

That’s a lot of thought.
GP: …yeah.

Moving on. When did you first discover Shakespeare?
GP: High school, I’m pretty sure. I mean, maybe somebody spouted out some lines of Shakespeare before that and I was like, “I don’t know what that means, blah blah blah videogames!” It was an assignment in 10th grade with Mrs. Churchill. She was an amazing teacher, but it was an assignment, and I hated it. It was a book I had to read.

Which one?
GP: I know we did Romeo and Juliet. That was the one that really stuck out. I think we did Julius Caesar. Her class was just so very cool, though; she set up social experiments and things like that. There would be days when she would come in and say, “My voice is tired, I’m not going to talk. You don’t get to talk either. How do we communicate?” We’d write on the board, use hand signals, etc… it was a really great experiment, a really great way to learn. And she got us up on our feet when we were talking about Shakespeare. It being an assignment, I of course did not do it. I was a terrible, terrible student. I didn’t really understand Shakespeare because it was an assignment; it was something I was forced to have to understand. The language didn’t really trip me up too much. I was raised reading the King James Bible, and it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s the same King James Shakespeare was writing for. So the “thees” and the “thous” and the “begots” were fine. But I just didn’t like it until she got us up on our feet. She explained the whole, “I was hurt under your arm,” thing [from the duel in 3.1 of Romeo and Juliet]. She said, “Okay, you’re Mercutio, you’re Romeo, you’re Tybalt. The line says, ‘I was hurt under your arm.’ What does that mean?” And she left it up to us to figure it out. Somebody said, “What if Romeo’s in between them, trying to split them up, and [Tybalt] stabs [Mercutio] during that?” Well, that makes it look like he hurt him under his arm, doesn’t it? A light bulb went off. I thought, oh, that makes sense, I can get that answer right on the test. I probably failed that test except for that one answer. But it wasn’t until a few years later, the summer before my senior year of high school, that I had the very great fortune of going to a theater camp at Boston University. It changed my life. We saw a production of Much Ado about Nothing. That was the biggest light bulb for me: actually seeing a live production. I realized: I understand what’s going on! I’m laughing, and it turns out everyone else is laughing at the same things, so maybe I’m laughing at the right things! That was really the first light bulb of getting it, of understanding it, after years of thinking I could not understand.

Being in Much Ado now, is it close to your heart, since it was your light bulb moment?
GP: Kind of, yeah. This is the second production of Much Ado I’ve been in. The first time I played Claudio, on tour here. Yeah, [that first production I saw] is always in the back of my mind.

Hypothetically, if Steven Spielberg came and said, “I want to put you in a terrible movie, and I’ll pay you a million dollars, but you have to give up the stage forever,” would you do it?
GP: Only a million?

Yes.
GP: [Uncomfortably long pause] You can do a lot with a million dollars. But I don’t really know what else to do. I’ve been down this road before, where I think, “I could make money doing other things, but I could also pull my teeth out with pliers and that would be just as fun.”

Okay, how about 10 million?
GP: Oh, Jesus… [shakes head].

Okay, how about all the money?
GP: There’s no such thing.

$100 billion.
GP: $100 billion? Hell yes. I would relocate.

Okay, then what if you were really famous and well-respected. Like you were Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart and Barack Obama all rolled together.
GP: Can they do that? That would be awesome. I want that guy to be president.

Okay, so you’re really well-respected and everybody takes your word for everything. And “they” (whomever “they” are) come to you and offer you all the money in exchange for you to say, decisively, that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays attributed to him. Would you do it?
GP: And people believed me?

Yes. It would settle the question. No matter what the evidence is or what you believe, your word would be definitive.
GP: I don’t think I could. I mean, I could, but I don’t think I could live with the guilt of destroying history. That’s a very tentative time in history already, where things can just disappear. History is tentative anyway because it’s always written by the winners, so the truth gets obscured, and if there’s a huge fire that destroys the whole city [like the London fire of 1666] and all these paper documents disappear, you get to kind of make up what happened. You can fill in the blanks, and say, “Maybe Shakespeare meant this word instead,” and here we are hundreds of years later with that word thinking it’s what Shakespeare wrote. Things get twisted. Things get skewed. While all the money would be great, to go down in history as the guy who changed history to something that it wasn’t, to bend the truth… no, I couldn’t do it.

What’s a play that you don’t think gets performed enough?
GP: 1 Henry IV. It’s fantastic. It has comedy, tragedy, drama, family, love, music… something that everyone can recognize.

What play are you bored of?
GP: Julius Caesar. I’ve never been in a production of it. We’re doing it next ARS (it’s the first show) and hopefully, if they want me to stick around, I’ll be a part of that cast and it will be the first Caesar that I do. It’s like golf: it’s not a spectator sport, it’s a player sport. There are great speeches, there are amazing roles, there’s that tent scene, there’s a lot of politics involved, but any time I watch it I’m just bored. Like, “Yeah, this is fascinating, or it was in Act 2 things were going on, and then Caesar died and now you’re all, ‘Oh I shouldn’t have killed Caesar!’ Well then, you shouldn’t have killed Caesar!” It just drags on a little bit, for my taste. There are other plays that are much worse-written and worse-constructed, but in terms of plays that I don’t need to see anymore, Caesar is one of them.

Do you think that if you’re in the play, your perspective might change?
GP: Yes, I’m fairly certain. Depending on who I’m cast as. If I’m a spear carrier that stands in the back of the tent scene for the whole scene, I will not like that play.

There’s some really great music being performed this ARS – during pre-shows, intermission, and in the plays. Could you walk me through the process of choosing songs and deciding who sings what, who plays what, and how you go about a music rehearsal.
GP: For me, it starts with the text – I’m noticing we should have put together “Sweet Child of Mine” for Dido, because of how many times the phrase “sweet child” gets used, but that’s in hindsight. We already have eight songs. I also look at theme: is it a love story, is it a war story, or is it a little of both? If I only have my [cues] to look at, I take my clues from them. There’s a whiteboard downstairs in the Tyson Center, where we keep lists of songs. The title [of the play] is at the top, and if you have a suggestion you just write down the name of the song. All of them are usually really good suggestions, but it’s not until somebody puts together at least a small amount of the song – does a little bit of research, like figuring out the chords or coming up with ideas for who could play what – that the song gets put together. If you lead just a little bit, people will follow. Much like with casting, if you put the right people in the right place, it comes together. Like, Chris Johnston is really good at the banjo, and he also plays the trumpet – that’s good to know. Ben Curns is really good at the guitar and singing and also plays the drums very well – that’s good to know. John Harrell happens to play the trombone a little bit – that’s very interesting to know. He also sings and plays the guitar. You know, there are different things different people can do, and we all work to expand our repertoire. Miriam plays the clarinet!

Really?
Yeah, she has been for a couple of seasons. She sort of hides behind the curtain.

That’s awesome!
It is! So I can sort of piece things together from there. We mix and match and put people in the places where they’re the strongest. And if, say, John Harrell says, “Can I just play the drums because this drum part seems pretty easy?” Sure. Try something new. That’s why we do this. Maybe the person who knows three chords on the guitar shouldn’t be playing the prominent part on the guitar, but if they want to hang back with other people, if they want to support: absolutely, by all means, please do. We want to encourage people to try new things and experiment, but we also want to sound good, too.

I know three chords on the guitar. Can I play in your band?
Yes! Most likely a lot of the songs that we do are three, maybe four chords.

Have you seen Cass Morris’ March Madness-esque Battle of the Shakespeareans on the education blog?
Ah, yes, that comes up every once in a while.

Okay, so the bear is winning.
WHAT? THE BEAR WON OVER MARGARET?

Yup. And then the Bear beat Antony.
No.

Yes.
What?

I just wanted to make sure you thought that was ridiculous as I did.
Yeah. Bear vs. Juliet? Bear wins. Juliet would probably put up a fight, but I’ll give it to the bear. But Margaret?

You’ve called this current company an “all star cast.” What is it about you guys that make you work so well together?
It’s a combination of everything, I think. Every single one of us has worked for this company before. Several of us have toured. Some of us have toured together, and you learn a lot on the road. A lot of the people who work in the ARS haven’t toured. Like Sarah Fallon: never toured for this company, but perhaps has for others. James Keegan: not for this company, perhaps for others. Rene: not for this company, perhaps for others. They’ve also done over 50, 60 productions here. They know the space. They know what goes on backstage. They know what it takes to put a show together. I think that’s something that we all know. We all have a sense of story.

One of the things that I think didn’t work about the first ARS was that they had individuals working in that season who were thinking only of themselves, and not thinking of the story. I think it’s really about building a team. Not only does it make your job easier to get along with people, it’s just easier to get along with people than to make enemies. There’s no competition. We all know there are five shows: you get a big part in this show; I get a big part in that one. We all pull together. We all pull our own weight. We bring it, because we know the other person in the scene is going to be bringing exactly everything they’ve got, too. All your hate, all your love, all your strength, everything. Blood, sweat, tears, earth, wind, fire, and heart. There are two cast members who I’ve never worked with before, Aidan O’Reilly and Brandi Rhome, and they just fell right in. They started working right from day one. If you know your lines, if you have ideas, if you’re willing to express your ideas and then concede if somebody else has better ones, go with the flow, do what you know how to do, bring it when it’s your turn to bring it, show up, have a positive attitude, work hard – that’s it. Commonsense stuff, but it’s rare, especially in this business.

I’ve worked with people who, depending on where they are and especially in NYC, make [acting] a very individual thing. It’s a very lonely thing. It’s very isolated. You show up to a new company and it’s like, “Look at me! Look at what I can do!” not “Look at what we can do.” It’s not about making the other person look better; it’s about, “How good can I look? Because if an agent sees me then I can succeed and I can do this and this and me me me!” Then you go home and it’s all about you: you work on monologues and you’re talking to yourself, and then you go to auditions and you’re talking to yourself or a spot on the wall. It’s very isolated and closed-off. One of the things that we learn here is that if you make the other person look good, you in turn make yourself look good. If they look good, then the production looks good, and if the production looks good, then you look good, and then things just get on a higher level, than if you’re just out for yourself. Teamwork! That’s what it boils down to; in much the same as teamwork is the best way to survive the zombie apocalypse.

--Lia Razak

*Additional comments redacted

Better Know an Actor: Dan Stevens and Michael Amendola

Welcome to the first installment of “Better Know an Actor,” a series of interviews with various American Shakespeare Center cast members. Today we talk to Michael Amendola and Dan Stevens, currently on a little break from their lives on the road with the ASC Touring Troupe.

What are your names, how long have you been with the company, and what roles are you playing this season?

Michael: My name is Michael Amendola [or Dola]. This is my first year with the company. I play Puck and Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I play Antigonus, the 3rd Lord and a shepherd in The Winter’s Tale, and I play Grimaldi and Banditti in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

Dan: My name is Dan Stevens. This is my first year with the company. I play Theseus and Mustardseed in Midsummer, Florizel and Cleomenes and one of the messengers in The Winter's Tale, and in 'Tis Pity I play Florio and an officer.

How did you end up here at the American Shakespeare Center?

DS: Denice Mahler. She and I have known each other since she was a graduate student and I was an undergrad at West Virginia University. When I found out she was here, this company sounded like, "Oh, well, I'll come and see what she's doing and see if this is a company in which I could be interested" and I came and I saw her residence here wherein she was in a production of I Henry IV [in the 2009 Fall Season]. I got to see her do really lovely work as Lady Percy; I got to see James Keegan's really very excellent John Falstaff; and just the whole production was great. And I was really very taken with the style that I'd never seen, a style I didn't really get to experience while I was at school. So I auditioned a couple of times, and the second time around I got to come play here.

MA: I grew up in Texas and I was there for 24 years. I graduated with a BFA in theater and I was hanging around Austin. I was absolutely in love with the city, but I quickly realized that there's sort of a ceiling as far as how far you can really take your career doing theater in Austin. It was hard because I really loved the town, but my goal was to not wait tables the next year (I'd done it for a number of years). So I basically talked to my friends, who had gone to the United Professional Theatre Auditions in previous years, and one of my friends a few years prior had gotten a callback to the ASC. He didn't get the gig, but he was telling me how excited he was about this company. So I made this big list of companies across the country that weren't in Texas, about 22 of them, and the first one was the American Shakespeare Center. I sent out my stuff to them, and for, like, four or five months, I didn't hear anything from them. Then, they gave me an audition slot a week before the audition, and I was in Texas. So I literally emptied my entire bank account to take planes, trains, and automobiles to get there, and then I drove my car back to Austin. I'd never seen anything by the ASC, I knew virtually nothing about it – but I knew that it was a Shakespeare company. I was really pleasantly surprised when I got to see that this actually is a style that I really love.

DS: And are good at!

MA: It really was a fluke, and I kind of got really lucky. It was my first out of state audition and I sacrificed a lot to get here, but I got here.

Eugene Douglas and Michael Amendola in
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Photo credit: Tommy Thompson.

Shakespeare: great playwright or greatest playwright?

DS: Great.

Not greatest?

DS: Just because I think the superlative is subjective.

But I'm asking for your subjective opinion.

DS: You know frankly, I'm not familiar enough with Shakespeare's body of work. I haven't read all his plays; I can't say definitively if he's the best. I mean obviously he is arguably the greatest playwright, because of how long he's been around and all the work that he's done and how many people he's touched, but no, I can't say that.

MA: Yeah, I don't know if I can say that. Personally, artistically, I can say he is the greatest playwright for me. He may be the most successful playwright ever.

Such PC answers.

DS: We're pussyfooting around it. Short form, he's not my favorite playwright. I love his work, obviously, but he's not my favorite.

Well then, what was your favorite role to play, by any playwright, ever?

MA: Senior year I played Artie Shaughnessey, from House of Blue Leaves by John Guare. It's sort of like a more contemporary version of a Tennessee Williams play because there's sort of surreal side to it - the monologues taken out to the audience, the sixth wall being broken. It's a story of a middle aged man who's trying to become famous in Hollywood by writing these commercial ditties on the piano that were probably popular 40 years before. He's deluded by this sense of grandeur. You see that in really young people, but seeing it in this man who's middle-aged, who has a whole family… and his family is falling apart in him pursuing this dream, and then him coming to a realization in the end. It just gets more and more absurd throughout, but starts with a guy who follows his dream and doesn't get it – at the sacrifice of his family.

DS: The Kentucky Cycle. It's this enormous 7-short-play epic, about this plot of land and the two families who develop a feud on and about this land. It starts with an Irish indentured servant cutting a deal and deliberately cheating the Native people into giving him this land. He's a villain. He starts the play as a plain-dealing villain, and I loved it. I like playing the villain; one of my favorite kind of characters in any kind of fiction is the charming bad guy. Richard III is a great part, Iago… the person who really draws you in. The opportunity to play this sort of rough, frontiersman bad guy… he's very smart, he's got some incredible monologues. I enjoy the challenge of being an evil, evil man. So I'd say Michael Rowan in The Kentucky Cycle to date has been my favorite part.

What's your dream role, your I-aspire-to-this part, your after-I-play-this-I-could-die-happy part?

DS: I don't know. You always try to think about what's the thing I aspire to, what do I want to teach myself to be better at so that I can eventually do this very well? I like the villain; I'd love to play the villain again. I feel like I played the villain more in college and now that I'm actually introduced into the workforce where your actual chronological age makes a difference (as opposed to in school where they'll just cast you as anything because you're all that's available)… I don't know. Everyone says Hamlet, so of course Hamlet is way up there. I would love to be one or the other in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. That might be my favorite play. Tom Stoppard for that play alone might be my favorite playwright. And that's actually coming from the fact that I've only ever seen the movie and I've only ever read the play. I just love the writing. I love the writing and I love the characters and I love the relationships. As much as he does script out the staging of it, he's very simple and he wants you – the actors – to find things to play with. And it's just so much fun to read.

MA: I'd say Iago is definitely one of mine. It's kind of a cool role because a lot of Shakespeare characters you can play at the age of 22 and you can also play at the age of 80. A lot of the really weird characters are flexible like that. So I'd say Iago is definitely one of mine.

What's your favorite part of performing using Shakespeare’s original staging conditions, and what about it do you find most challenging?

Michael Amendola in The Winter's Tale.
Photo credit: Michael Bailey

MA: I definitely like the communal sense of it, and I like how at every school we've gone to, people made comments on how we're bringing the Shakespeare to them. By making them a part of this communal experience, like they did back when it was performed originally, the audience really does feel invested in the world, and they can get into the play in a way that they may not have ever previously. What's challenging for me is the absence of lights. A lot of times when you're in a proscenium setting and there is a real fourth wall and there is a distance from the audience, you can find yourself really feeling like you're in a completely different world. A lot of times you can get more into a character. So the upside is that you feel that you're with the people, and the downside is that you're with the people, you know what I mean? You are conscious of the people in the room all the time. The difference is probably so minuscule to anyone watching but to an actor it's a gigantic thing: I need to get in my zone or whatever. Some people can just show up to the theater and do the same thing, but for me, that's the biggest difference.

DS: I think the same, really. When you go to school you're not only going to school to be an actor – your classmates are lighting designers and set designers, so you've got all these people trying to start their own stuff, who are trying to challenge themselves and are being challenged by their teachers. So you're being put in these really interesting,really provocative environments. We had a three-quarter thrust in a black box, so it was a very intimate space, so the intimacy of the space to the audience doesn't bother me. But because I was always in the intimate space, I wanted to interact with the audience. I wanted them to be a part of my world because they're right there. And now that I get to do that it's great, but in allowing me to do so, there’s the pressure of finding the time to bring them in. When you go to school they're always talking about specificity to the n^th degree. Every moment, everything, you either have practiced or you've got it clarified. Now, I sometimes find it hard to stay clear and specific. The communal element is what I love, but it's staying an actor that becomes a real challenge when there is this random element. It’s trying to find the balance between methodical actor and in-the-moment showman. That's a real challenge for me because I work much better in absolutes.

MA: Maybe somebody that's not a Shakespeare buff might say, "Why would I want to go see this production of Macbeth at this community theater when I could just watch Ian McKellan or somebody do Macbeth on a movie and supposedly that might be the greatest performance of it ever done?" But the major difference is that Ian McKellan can't reach out and touch you. We definitely take advantage of that.

DS: I love this place for the relationship it has with its audience. We were doing A Christmas Carol with Rene [Thornton, Jr.], and sometimes he would just walkout on stage and people would start clapping just 'cause he's Rene.

What's your zombie contingency plan for Staunton? There are a lot of wide-open spaces and not a lot of places to barricade oneself. What would you do in the event of a zombie apocalypse?

DS: That's a good question. Dola, do you have an answer?

MA: Please take this one.

DS: Okay, so a zombie contingency plan is just a fantastical version of any emergency contingency plan. A problem I think a lot of people have is that they try to stockpile. They think "Oh, the zombies are coming; I need to barricade myself somewhere.” Sure, sure you do. But barricade yourself to a point and then you need to get moving. So, in my car I've got the emergency kit you're supposed to have – you keep some basic provisions in your trunk,you make sure you have a hatchet or two (in my case, two), a baseball bat (a joke on the emergency security system everyone talks about having in their car)and always make sure to wear clothes you know you could start your life on the road in. I-81 is just right out there. That's a straight shot. Even if you're walking I-81 – my family lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, which is right off of I-81. I trust that all my peers and contemporaries can handle their own stuff,but my mom and dad… I’ve got to be there for my parents.

That's the sort of sentimentality that will get you killed in the zombie apocalypse.

DS: No, no, no listen. It's the kind of sentimentality that will get me there… just to find out they're already dead.

MA: If that comes, I'm not kidding myself. I mean there's a reason I'm not in the army. 'Cause I'll be the first one to die. I will dance the Thriller to try and convince them I'm already a zombie.

Okay, back to Shakespeare. Either on film or onstage, what was the most superlative production of a Shakespeare play that you've seen?

Dan Stevens in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Photo credit: Tommy Thompson.

MA: Most recently the most astonishing piece of theater I've seen was Sleep No More, in New York City.There's this British theater company called Punchdrunk who came up with this concept that's sort of a mix of dance, theater and art installation. It's like a haunted house mixed with a play. They rented out three warehouses in Chelsea and built this fictional hotel that has this whole history to it, and they do an adaptation of Macbeth without really any dialogue. There are12 actors, and they play characters and you can follow the characters along.They each have their paths and they have things that they're doing. All the audience members wear masks so you can tell who the actors are. The actors may reach out and touch you. Basically you're like ghosts in the hotel who get to witness what's going on. They do the events of the play twice over about three hours. I witnessed a rave orgy with the witches; I witnessed Lady Macbeth going mad in a bathtub. There were dance/sex scenes and lots of dance fighting. You could pullout any aspect of the set. So if you wanted to follow the bellhop around you could go to his desk, open his drawers, go through his papers and every single piece of paper is completely specifically created to live in that world. It was an amazing experience on all forms, because it integrated so many different kinds of art into the experience. It's so much fun and it's interactive. People who don't go to see plays because they don't want to just sit down and listen for so long really got to experience something. It's a big step towards where theater might be going.

It's sort of modernizing the community aspect we have at the ASC while taking it much further.

MA: Much further. But also a lot more expensive. One thing I really respect about the ASC is how they can create that with much less cost.

DS: Recently the production that I saw here of Hamlet [with John Harrell in the titular role, part of the 2011 Summer and Fall Seasons] was probably one of my favorite productions of that. It was just so much fun to watch Hamlet the production and Hamlet the character, both with such a delightful sense of humor and sense of intellect. I feel like everyone in that play… they are just consummate performers, a really incredible ensemble of people putting together the play. I enjoyed that it was a production that was aware that was Hamlet.There were a couple of jokes in there that only really worked because it was Hamlet. It worked because it is a play that has been done and done and done and done and will continue to be done and done and done and done. So a production that can joke on that… I'm the type that likes to see a thing torn apart and deconstructed and made fun of. I like self-referential theater. So that show was a lot of fun. It also changed my perspective on what Hamlet can be, both the production and the character.



Take me through a typical day on the tour.

MA: No.

DS: You think there's a typical day?

Okay, well, a performance day.

DS: Well, the easiest days to sort of think of as typical are the ones when we're in any sort of a residency. There are variations within the venues, but if we're in a residence for more than a couple days, you develop sort of a rhythm there. Murray, KY was a great example for me, because we were living on campus, and we were given a meal plan and access to the gym. Pretty much my day was just get up, enjoy my breakfast, go the gym, chill out, and then do a show or teach a workshop or hang out with the people that we met. We had the opportunity to meet a lot of lovely people on the road, so we try to make friends and socialize that way. But if we're just there for a day, then we usually just get up, chill out at the hotel, try to get up early enough to enjoy the range and quality of the continental breakfast, then find a way to occupy your time. Some people go to the movies; some just hang out and watch TV.

MA: Towards the beginning of the tour, a lot of us made more of an effort to go out and see the town and everything. After about a month of that, a lot of times just sitting in the hotel with Netflix for a day is what you need. In any week, most days break down to either a travel day,a loading day, or a performance day. Like, "today we're spending 8 hours in a van and then we'll all be sick of each other and want to go to sleep." On a loading day, load-in takes half an hour to 45 minutes, load-out takes about an hour. Dan is one of our loading captains, along with Jake Mahler.

DS: Jake's in charge, I just pick things up.

MA: Yeah. Load-in the van, load-out the van, like Tetris. If we didn't have them, I don't know if it would take another hour.

DS: Somebody else would just serve the same function.

MA: I suppose. I mean, it's pretty much the same kind of deal. Sometimes you go to places like Baltimore where there's a lot of stuff you want to see, you have to go eat crab, or you go to Maine and you have to eat lobster.

DS: Or you go to Schenectady and you have to go to New York City on your day off. We had an opportunity to do that when we were in Schenectady and it was great.

MA: You have to choose where you can afford to go do things. There are days when you know you just need to rest.

What's been your favorite stop on the tour so far this year?

MA: Bar Harbor, Maine was definitely a favorite among the troupe, just because it was such a beautiful town and the food was amazing. You can have lobster! As far as performing, Austin, TX was really great. I mean, that is one of my hometowns, so getting to go back there after eight months was pretty amazing. We’ve all gotten to know people on this tour, so getting the opportunity to show people where I came from was kind of special for me. Austin's also interesting, because they have the Shakespeare at Winedale program, so a lot of the people who came to see our plays were already familiar with the ASC and the plays we were doing, so a lot of them caught on to a lot of the things that audiences who aren't as familiar maybe wouldn't. Where was that place we played that really big theater?

DS: Oh, that was Williamsport, PA. REO Speedwagon?

MA: Oh! Yes, yes, yes, yes.

DS: We credited ourselves as being the opening gig for REO Speedwagon, because they played the night after we did.

How long do you think you could survive chained to a bunk-bed with a Velociraptor? No weapons.

DS: Are we chained to the Velociraptor?

Dan Stevens and Denice Mahler in The Winter's Tale.
Photo credit: Michael Bailey.

No, you're chained to the bed. You're chained by one arm, so you have the range of mobility of your arm-length and, say, afoot-long chain.

DS: And it's, like, right next to me?

It's in the room.

DS: Dude, I'm dead.

Immediately?

DS: Well, okay, it also depends on how well constructed the bed is. If I can tear off the headboard and use it as some sort of bludgeoning/deflecting instrument, then maybe… But I don't credit myself with being a survival expert.

Which of you do you think would win in a bare-knuckled fight?

MA: Probably Dan. I'm not a very strong person.

DS: But I'm also a bit of a sissy.

MA: And I have a lot of rage.

Let's say there's something worth fighting for. Like a sandwich. The last sandwich ever.

DS: Dola and I both come from groups of friends where we are the black-hole eaters of the group. So when we're all eating, somebody will say, "I'm done, who wants it?" and what he or she means is, “Who's going to get to it first, Dan or Dola?”

MA: Yeah, we shoot each other this look like, "Where you at in your day?" Dan often wins that. But I'd say it's like 60/40. I'm more of a selfish person than he is.

DS: I'm just hungry, man. I'm really hungry.


--Lia Razak

Doin’ It With The Lights On!

“We do it with the lights on.” If you’ve been anywhere near the Blackfriars Playhouse, you’ve heard that before. Universal lighting is a critically important component of Shakespeare’s original staging conditions in use at the American Shakespeare Center, and though it may not seem like a big deal, sharing the same consistently bright pool of light with the actors can be disorienting to a Blackfriars Playhouse first-timer. Modern audiences are used to being passive observers while in the theater – anonymous, hidden, and inconsequential to the action playing out on the stage. At the Blackfriars Playhouse, however, universal lighting draws the audience into the action in ways that can be unexpected, uncomfortable, delightful, hilarious, awkward, engaging or, most often, many or all of those things at once. 

            In Shakespeare’s day, universal lighting was not a choice but a fact. The primarysource of light was fire, so candles were in place in indoor theatres like the Blackfriars. Outdoor theatres could not be artificially lit at all – the stage was at the mercy of the elements and wind and rain are no friends to candles – and thusly plays were performed exclusively in the afternoon. Playwrights at the time had little notion of a passive audience in the same way we do today, because they were writing for acting companies who could see all of their spectators, and for spectators who could see each other. Authors built this audience-actor relationship directly into the plays in ways both subtle and obvious. Marked “asides,” where an actor speaks directly to the audience, did exist, as well as soliloquies, where a character speaks alone onstage. Since the audience knew the actor could see them, it stands to reason that soliloquies offered a chance for the character to ally with the audience or to make them the object of his speech. Shakespeare chose his moments with particular wisdom and clarity (a personal favorite: Iago’s “how am I then a villain?” from Othello), but he was by no means the only playwright taking advantage of that opportunity – this interaction with the audience is a consistent hallmark of the early modern dramatic period.

            Yet the progress of time marches on and universal lighting went the way of the Lords’ Chairs and the gallant stools. In 1638, Nicola Sabbatini wrote a book in which he suggested the idea of dimming the lights by lowering metal cylinders over the candles before the start of the play. The practice took off, and by the time gas and finally electric lighting had taken over the candlelit days of yore, the audience found themselves sitting behind a fourth wall, cut off from the actors by an invisible line of darkness. Playwrights adapted to this, writing new kinds of plays for the new conditions, and today the most common way to signal the start of any sort of performance is to dim the house lights. The audience expects to remain apart, anonymous, and silent.

            The American Shakespeare Center takes a lot of pride in crossing that invisible line. The actors announce it before every show: “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you may notice the lights are on. They are going to stay on and at this level throughout the entirety of the performance, so the audience and the actors share the same pool of light. That way you can see us, we can see you, and you all can see each other. This is one of Shakespeare’s original staging conditions and it’s how we do every show here at the American Shakespeare Center, which is why we like to say, ‘We do it with the lights on!’” Cue thunderous applause and a reminder to turn off your phones.

            It can seem inconsequential after a while, and seasoned Blackfriars-goers may be immune to it by now, but the efficacy and unusualness of universal lighting is never more apparent than at a student matinee. Currently, Much Ado about Nothing runs Thursday mornings during the Actors' Renaissance Season to a house full of chattering teenagers – who manage to seem simultaneously excited and bored – who have less familiarity with the plot and the language of Shakespeare than some of our more seasoned patrons. Yet without fail they find themselves directly drawn in, usually with raucous laughter, by the actors reaching out to them both physically and linguistically. At one performance, when Miriam Donald Burrows (playing Beatrice) launched into one of her anti-husband tirades (this time focused on how a man with a beard is too much for her but a man without one may as well be a lady) she addressed her speech to a smooth-faced young man on a gallant stool. He laughed and blushed, and his friends up in the balcony hooted and hollered because they knew him, and that made the jokes funnier The girls sitting next to him laughed nervously because they knew they might be next (indeed, Ben Curns’s Benedick sat on a few of them later on). The whole audience tightened and leaned in with the delight of shared experience. They paid closer attention because the actors spoke the words not only to them but about them, and they understood better because of it. Much Ado shows in its own gulling scenes that the best way to make somebody listen to you is to talk about them; theater audiences are no exception.

            Freedom in theatrical interpretation is a wonderful thing, and these days we as a society have the technology and the leisure time to explore all kinds of staging options. There’s been an Othello performed on a bed made entirely out of television screens, and a Timon of Athens that strung up a net over the mouth of the Globe and had actors dressed as vultures vaulting through the air over the heads of the audience. Universal lighting is no longer the only choice, but it remains a strong one because it acknowledges the power of the audience to shape a production.

-Lia Razak