What is your role in this production? Actor, playing the role of First Soldier. The soldier duo narratively functions almost as vaudevillian interstitial performers that insert themselves into the action every once in a while. There's also a healthy streak of Joey/Auguste-style clowning to them. (High status/low status.) I am, as I tend to play, the Auguste.What does that entail? In no particular order: rope tricks, acoustic singing of Rufus Wainwright songs, macho posturing, shoulder lifts, and rolling around on the floor with Nate Rehman in the most accidentally homoerotic Greek-inspired battle sequence since 300.
Why did you audition for this production? What drew you to it? I’d read the script a few years ago and enjoyed it fine enough, but that was about it: I tracked down a copy this past fall, and that's when the script grabbed me. Which probably should've happened the first time, to be honest; I've always been a bit of a sucker for mythology tales, and this one is about three or four layers of mythos wrapped up in an Inception-style package that’s very appealing to me, as a storyteller. I also hoped I would get to wear a toga, or possibly some kicky sandals.
What is your background in theatre? This will be my fourth production with the Playhouse, having previously played inept henchman Filch (The Threepenny Opera), psychotic televangelist Melvin P. Thorpe (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) and southern-drawl-deficient Shawn (Kiss Within a Kiss). I graduated with a BA Drama from the University of Alberta in 2010 and have been stretching my limbs into as many Edmonton theatre pies as possible since then. I’m also Artistic Director of my own indie theatre company, Allspice Theatre, which is coming to Fringe 2012 with a comedy about Jesus’ college years. Yup.
What is the biggest challenge with this production? Unwrapping the aforementioned multilevel story-within-a-story-within-a-story nature of the text. Figuring out what’s occurring, both on a metaphoric and a purely literal frame, at any time, is an enjoyable but engrossing little puzzle. And communicating this to the audience in a straightforward format is the fun part. The most enjoyable thing? Being able to do some of the physical theatre work that I’ve become increasingly enamoured with over the last few years. Visual storytelling and body spectacle are wonderfully applicable in such an open, bare-bones production, and the near-clownish nature of the soldiers permits them to explore this dimension of the script in a lovely way.
What do you think our audiences will get from this production? If they’re at all inclined to mentally engage the text, then it’s an engaging treatise on storytelling and the nature of the myths we as a society choose to record and preserve. If they prefer to sit back and enjoy things purely on a surface level, then it’s a well-acted gripping, jagged little fable without the traditional rough edges sanded off. And if they don’t care about any of that, then there’s still all the homo eroticism I mentioned earlier that Nate and I are endeavoring to pull off. Everyone wins, basically.
No comments:
Post a Comment