In the Summer Pavilion
nytheatre.com q&a preview by Ryan Barry
September 25, 2012
What is your job on this show?
Actor.
When did you know you wanted to work in the theater, and why?
It was 7am on a Tuesday in Chicago and I just finished watching All That Jazz with Roy Scheider for the third time in a row. I looked around my apartment and saw wall to wall beer cans and take out food. I hadn't been on stage in a year and a half, I was tying a different carreer path. I was miserable and missed the lifestyle, people and the telling stories. I rented a car at 9 am and drove back east that day. Half a year later I was in drama school and haven't looked back. That morning is when I really "knew".
What was the last show you saw that really excited you, and why?
The Realistic Joneses Will Eno at Yale Rep. It was its own world with its own rules and cadence of speech that all the actors understood and lived in together. I was working on American Buffalo at the time and it helped unlock Mamet's world for me. That excites me, when a group of artists makes a world that is slightly different from the one we live in, and you get it but you don't really know how to explain it. Its an energy thing.
What was the most memorable/funny/unusual thing that has happened during the development and rehearsal process for this show?
This show has been unique for me in that this will be the third time I am playing this character. First in the Fringe Festival, Then in the Film version, now Off Broadway at 59E59.
Which “S” word best describes your show: SMOOTH, SEXY, SMART, SURPRISING?
Smart. I still don't get it.
If you had ten million dollars that you had to spend on theatrical endeavors, how would you use the money?
I would divide it up and pay for theatre artists to travel and see the world beyond America. Just to live, and refuel their humanity, so they can come back and give it back to us here.
