Drama: An Actor's Education

Armed with all of this, we wrote a five-minute script that raced from scene to lurid scene of Hoover’s shady life, mercilessly lambasting him while maintaining a gleefully ironic tone of public canonization. And the title for our venomous little screed? “J. Edgar: A Desecration of the Memory of J. Edgar Hoover.”

The WBAI staff was so thrilled with the sketch that they chose to air it at 6:25 p.m., immediately preceding their evening newscast. Seconds after it ended, the actual news came on. The lead story, of course, was Hoover’s death. It was announced in sober tones not unlike my stentorian narration of the “News on the March” parody that had gone before. The effect was like an underground nuclear blast. Until that moment I had never had a sense that anyone out in the world was actually listening to anything I produced. When you perform on the radio, you hear neither cheers nor jeers. But that night I found out just how far my voice reached. For several hours after the Hoover piece hit the airwaves, the switchboard at the station was lit up like Chinese New Year’s. We had managed to scandalize hundreds of thousands of people. A huge segment of WBAI’s listenership, the most left-wing audience in the entire nation, was appalled. To our merry band of newsroom anarchists, this was an undiluted triumph. They celebrated as if their soccer team had just won the World Cup.

The episode was the high point of my WBAI days and typified the whole crazy enterprise — raucous, reckless, politically charged, a little dangerous, and deliriously fun.

But $115 a week?!

Despite all the high times at the station, I knew that they weren’t meant to last. In terms of the hard realities of life, my low-paid radio job was barely better than unemployment. It was leading me nowhere professionally, it was never going to sustain my family, and in spite of its part-time status, it was affording me precious little time at home with my wife and baby son. At WBAI, I was just marking time until something better came along. And late that spring, just as I was reaching the end of my tether, something better did come along. John Stix called again.

Apparently The Beaux’ Stratagem had left its mark. On the strength of its success, Baltimore Center Stage had created the post of associate artistic director and was offering it to me. Although I didn’t betray the fact to Stix, I was less than ecstatic about the offer. It meant a long-term commitment to life in Baltimore and a partnership with an enigmatic man with whom I’d had an oddly strained professional relationship. Worst of all, I was being asked to give up on acting. Stix intended for me to co-manage the company with him and direct at least two productions a year. It was clear to me that he regarded my lingering acting ambitions as whimsical at best and a distraction from my intended job definition. Over the years I had taken a lot of pleasure and pride in directing. I’d had a lot of success and felt convinced of my own abilities. Associate artistic director was a title that virtually guaranteed a quick ascendancy and a blooming career. But was I ready to throw in the towel as an actor? Could I embrace a future in the theater devoid of the joy of performing? I wasn’t sure.

I had a child. My wife had supported me long enough. I was broke. I took the job.

Everyone at Center Stage was delighted. Jean was game. A press release was sent to the Baltimore Sun and a glowing article appeared. Packets arrived describing the pleasures of Baltimore life. Real estate agents sent apartment listings and condo brochures. Stix ran titles by me for the following season’s productions. I did my best to put an enthusiastic face on all my dealings with him and the rest of the Center Stage staff. Inside I struggled to persuade myself that, in time, the enthusiasm would be genuine.

I gave my notice at WBAI. On my last day at the station, a couple of wags from the news department asked me to record a radio sketch they’d written. It was based on a trifling news item from the night before. The sketch was a parody of the old Mission: Impossible TV show. It used that show’s familiar musical theme and its famous catchphrase: “Your mission, should you accept it…” The script featured a single voice, heard over the telephone. It was the voice of Attorney General John Mitchell. In the role of Mitchell, I instructed a silent operative to break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. The offices were in a building called the Watergate. I didn’t know it at the time, but that morning was the dawn of the best year for satire in the history of American politics. But the sketch was the last piece of political satire I ever did. I was on my way to Baltimore.

I never got there. A few weeks later I received yet another phone call. I recognized the cheerful voice. It belonged to a man named Arvin Brown. I sensed immediately that one of the seeds I had planted months before on one of my meandering theater junkets had finally sprouted. Arvin Brown was offering me an acting job. This time it was a job that I unequivocally wanted. Arvin was the director of New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre. Of all the theaters I’d sought out in my travels that year, Long Wharf was the one where I most wanted to work. Under Arvin’s leadership, the theater had routinely produced shows that were lavishly praised in the New York press. When I’d auditioned for him, I’d found him to be funny, sweet-natured, smart, and self-possessed. On that visit, I’d seen his brilliant production of The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill’s monumental portrait of New York dead-enders and alcoholics. In Arvin’s hands the play had shimmered with humor and passion, and its four hours had sped by. I sat in the audience that night and ached to climb up on the stage and join that company of marvelous actors.

And now Arvin Brown was inviting me to do just that. He was offering me a season of six roles in six terrific plays. I told him I would get right back to him. Within twenty minutes I abruptly changed the entire course of my life. I called Center Stage and, withstanding a blast of vindictive fury on the other end of the line, I withdrew from its associate artistic directorship. I called back Arvin and told him he had hired a grateful actor. In the weeks to come, Jean and I gave up our New York apartment. We relocated to Branford, Connecticut. I became a member of the Long Wharf Theatre’s resident company. I was perfectly prepared to work there for the rest of my life. But this was not to be. Long Wharf was to be my springboard to other, even more wonderful things. I began rehearsing my first Long Wharf production that September, some forty years ago, and I have barely stopped working since. I’ve often wondered about the other fork in the road, what life might have been like if I had been directing plays all this time. But I’ve never thought about it with any regrets.

What I really wanted to do was act.

[24] Naked

Why do all of us want to hear stories? Why do some of us want to tell them? As long as I’ve been an actor, I’ve puzzled over those two questions. The questions are so basic, so stupidly simple, that it rarely occurs to us to even ask them. We hear about a show, we buy tickets, we file into a theater, and we sit in the darkness with a bunch of total strangers. The lights go down, the curtain goes up, and we stare at the stage, full of eagerness and hope. Why are we there? What are we looking for? What do we want? It’s a little easier to answer such questions when it comes to comedy. Everybody loves a good laugh. But what about drama? If some event in your everyday life were to make you sob uncontrollably, it would be the worst thing you ever lived through. But if something onstage made you cry that hard you would remember it as the best time you ever had in a theater. Why on earth do we subject ourselves to that? Even long for it?

Simply put, we want a good story. We want emotional exercise. We want theater to make us laugh, but we want it to make us cry too. We want to feel pity, fear, anger, hilarity, and joy, but we want these emotions delivered to us in the protective cocoon of a playhouse, and we want to experience them in a more heightened way than we ever do in our humdrum day-to-day existence. We want to be persuaded that we are intensely feeling beings. Why we want, need, and love such emotional exercise is a mystery. But one thing is clear: none of us can do without it.

The whole business is equally mysterious up there onstage. Hundreds of times, in mid-performance, I’ve been struck by the absurdity of my situation. All those strangers out there in the darkness are staring at me. They are all bound by some strange, unwritten contract. They must focus their eyes in reverential silence on me and my fellow actors. They must only laugh or applaud when they sense that it’s appropriate. If anyone should break this contract — if he should speak out loud, answer a cell phone, crinkle a candy wrapper, or, God forbid, fall asleep—he earns the stern reproof of everyone around him, while those of us onstage are peevishly indignant. And why have we agreed to this ironclad contract? It allows for a two-hour performance that the spectators all know is a completely false version of reality, but which might, just might provide them with a few spasmodic rushes of feeling. It is as if the actors have