So Many Precipices
Posted by Larry Yando on 9/02/2009
(Larry plays Charles Dawson and Henry Billings in Fake)
Every five or six years, Eric Simonson’s path and my own manage to cross. Just out of The Theatre School, Eric cast me in a project he was doing with Harry Lennix, The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Time passed. Roy Cohn in his Angels in America. Time. Mother Courage and Her Children at this theater… now, here again, Fake. And he wrote this one, too. Eric times x2. Exciting.
But any sense of the “familiar” or of a “history” on this project ends there.
I cannot remember the last time I’ve not known, and worked previously with, my fellow actors in a play. Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to work pretty consistently at many different theaters, but I think the real reason for this is simply that I’m old. The fact that I’ve never worked with Fran, Al, Kate or Coby is not only surprising to me, but wonderfully energizing. And delightful.
I think actors need to feel a sense of safety when we’re doing what we do. And we do many things, but I’m referring to the exposing of (for all to see and judge and embrace, mind you) their souls, their viscera, their personal and fragile connections to humanity. I also think that “safe” can move to “way too comfortable” if you’re not careful. Safe is good. Way too comfortable, not. I know my best work will always happen when I push myself outside of my comfort zone. And I know that is also true for most actors (certainly my students. Absolutely). The unexpected, and how we deal with it, is always more exciting, and definitely more dramatic, than that which we can predict. If I had a quest in my work, it would be the desire to find myself constantly at a new precipice (of the heart, the mind, the spirit, all three) with the bravery to step off.
Okay, that rather long, fairly pretentious paragraph was supposed to be about one sentence that would get me to this thought: in one fell swoop, Fake has provided me with so many precipices. Two entirely new, previously uninhabited characters, four wonderful actors to look at, listen to and learn from, and a theater in which I will have to ask “where are the bathrooms?” And I’m so thankful.
Then there’s Eric, who is not really a new precipice. But, there is something about that safe thing, when all is said and done.