Night of the Auk
nytheatre.com q&a preview by Michael Ross Albert
July 11, 2012
What is your job on this show?
Script Adaptor, Actor, Co-Producer.
Where were you born? Where were you raised? Where did you go to school?
I was born and raised in a land of melancholy and infinite sadness: Toronto. I went to school in New York City, completing my MFA in Playwriting at the Actors Studio Drama School.
Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
...was originally produced on Broadway in 1956 by the impresario Kermit Bloomgarten, was directed by Sidney Lumet, featured a 20-something-year-old Christopher Plummer, and is set in a spheroid rocket spaceship returning to Earth from space.
Why did you want to write/direct/produce/act in/work on this show?
When director Adam Levi and I found the script, we knew we'd come across a project we had to work on. The play has fallen into obscurity and we wanted to rescue it. We almost never associate science fiction with the golden age of American drama, and wanted to celebrate the author's unique vision of the future, which is both imaginative and terrifying. Plus, I particularly wanted to play a Napoleonic playboy billionaire astronaut.
People who like which of the following recent Broadway shows would also probably like your show: THE BOOK OF MORMON, ONCE, DEATH OF A SALESMAN, CLYBOURNE PARK?
Maybe Death of a Salesman; after all, it was produced by Kermit Bloomgarden about seven years before he brought Night of the Auk to Broadway.
Why should people come to FringeNYC this summer, rather than the beach, mountains, or the latest movie blockbuster?
I think, if possible, people should try to do all of those things. (It is the summer, after all). Personally, I don't like sand, I'm too lazy to climb a mountain, and I find independent theatre more engaging, innovative, risk-taking, and life-altering than big noisy explosion-filled popcorn flicks. But I'm biased.
