John Guare and Lisa Dwan Talk Theater with Alec Baldwin

Published Jun 23, 2015, 4:00 AM

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers, to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Today I'll be talking to two theater artists. One writes plays and the other brings them to life. My first guest is the great American playwright John Guare, best known for his plays Landscape of the Body, House of Blue Leaves, and Six Degrees of Separation. Guare's absurdest style and use of songs, asides and monologus keeps his audiences on edge. Guare's good friend, the late Louis Mall wrote about Gware that his quote, brilliant at tearing apart the logical and the expected, make him stand pretty much alone unquote. A lifelong New Yorker where lives in Greenwich Village with his wife Adele. He writes every day anywhere he can, he says, to keep from getting sick. He's taught playwriting at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, n y U, and Juilliard. John Ware says teaching others ultimately helps his own work. I selfishly use the class to teach what I'm going through, to teach problems that I'm having that they don't know it. But if I'm having this last time having problems, well, no, like once many years ago I taught it Yale Black one to eighty five or something. I um, I was having trouble starting a play. I was having great trouble with exposition. I thought of all those nineteenth century plays, you know, where the butler comes to the two servants come in and they say, oh, you know, five o'clock, the master not home yet, and they just say yes ever since, you know, I mean whether or else the phone or the heroine, you know, the wife the fan picks up the telephone and says, no, no, no, we're not here because we're involved in this terrible divorce case and my but everything is fine with us and we'll be better, you know. And I could not figure out how to begin a play in a neat way. So I thought about Moss Heart said it's something rather true and fantastic. He said, the audience will give you fifteen minutes, will give any play fifteen minutes that they'll listen to it. But at the sixteen minute there is some connected whether to the base of your spine or whatever legs. You'll say, I either want to go on this trip or I don't want to go on this trip. So I said, I'm just going to take the first fifteen minutes of my favorite place and go through them. And I just taught the first fifteen minutes of The Homecoming, the first fifteen minutes of Waiting for Godot, the first fifteen minutes of the Cherry Ords, of the first fifteen minutes of Yours sty Every week we just say what do we learn in the first fifteen minutes of these plays? And with spectacular it was spectacular and something I'm still learning. It's something where I'm still funny. I still go back to that class. Do you find that it's that it's difficult to teach the went how to write? No, you only can help them to find. You can't teach them. All you can do is help them to say, to help them find their own voice, because young playwrights are clever, and they're fantastic, ventriloquous, and they can write a play that sounds like Sam Shepard or David Mammaged or Harold and Mimic mimic mimic, but to help them find their own voice. That is the key. And they might write a fifty page play and there might be four lines where you say, that's I've never heard that voice before. That's original. That's where you've got to find that where that's the task. Yeah, it's about finding your own voice. Why did you stop? Uh? It just got no fun. And it was the last time I talked was last year. I was writer in residence at Hunter, and Hunter to me was spectacular. Hunter was great because these were kids that of course that I mean, you know, to pay eight thousand dollars. The money was real. The money was real, and they would make take them seven or eight years to get a degree because they're working. And uh, you know. And there was one young woman who wrote a play about being trapped in the projects uptown, you know, And I said it, So this play was so interesting, I said, but you know, the problems that are in your play, I can't I can't sell them. But you know who has so dealt with your problems you're dealing with Samuel Beckett read Waiting for Good Reading, you know, endgame, trying to get out, And she said the most wonderful words. Who's Samuel Beckett? And that to me was because you get kids at unnamed schools of higher learning and you'll say so anybody, and they'll say, I know Samuel back and I know all about them. I know all about him. I took a class. They were going to graduate, you know, uh, but in ten days or so, and we had she was the last class. We were talking and it turned out that none of them in the class had read Madame Bovary, seen The Marks Blow this movie. And I said, you have no right to get this degree. You should say where. I'm sorry, I can't. I should until you go back and read and see at least you know, to see animal crackers, animal crackers or duck suit, no duck soup. They'd have to see because all modern heroines come out of Madame Bobery. Blanche Boy had a caple. They're all the daughters of Madame Bobery. And uh, it's um yeah, so, and but you'll say that each of them said, well, I know about Madame Bovary. I mean it's by Flowbert, I know all about the Marks Brothers. They're anarchic, right, yeah, And one doesn't speak and one is wise. Yeah, I know all about them, but have you ever seen No, I don't have to know about them, So I just got bored teaching. You grew up in Queen's You've got your a lifelong New Yorker. I'm born in Manhattan. I'll tell you so funny. We my parents lived in the four hundred block on eighties six Street, and they want to be closer to Columbia Presbyterian, where I was born. So they learned that the people who had built our apartment house on Stree had built the identical apartment house up on Fort Washington Avenue. So we moved when I was going to the same apartment, and then it was too far away from the beach, because I really called my home with the Atlantic, the East Atlantic Beach, or a place where I still go a house my father built with his buddies in nineteen and still I still have it. I still go there. It's great and that I called and I call home. That's where my friends are. And uh, and it was too far. It was too hard to get him. Fort Washington underworked Penn Station. So they learned that those builders that built the exact same apartment uh in Jackson Heights so they moved to the same apartment again with the furniture fit and so I grew up there because it was also in the same block at Saint Johanavar Grammar School, I didn't have to cross the street. Do you have any siblings, son? You were an only child? Absolutely? It was great. And then and then when you were parents year agoers were the estate in that way. They like musicals, only like musicals. What about you? What was the theater in your life when you were a child? Well, I mean it was magnificent. I mean, well sure an You get your Gun was the first show I saw and a ethel Merman and it was I can still remember. It was absolutely devastating. It was still was shocking that that could happen. And it was mainly the now racist I'm an Indian two with this great ballet by I found it years later by Eugene Loring. It was spectacular, I must say. It was terrifying. And because they were gonna put ethel Merman the tire up at the stake and they're going to burn her and eat her and everything, it was, oh my god. There was no business taking a little bit of time to burn. No, she would have gone up anything. Yeah, and uh no, we saw it, just saw musicals. I could see. I remember, like from my twelve thirteenth birthday, I could see one show. I could pick either King and I or wish you here? And which one did I pick? Well? I wish you were here because King and I had some old lady named Gertrude Lawrence who would always be around it. But I wish we had a swimming pool on stage, and I was died diving and swimming water ballets. It was great. And Eddie Fishers sang the hit song They're not making the Skies is blue this year, and I saw that and it was And then I started going to see plays and uh well, the TV hadn't taken off in the in the fifties, it was about to Were you a filmgoer as well? Did you enjoy films or was the theater always? I'll I didn't I tell the movie saved me because in nine my father had a heart attack. This was so great and he had to had to take a year off from work. And at the same time, his aunt who had raised him up in Allenville, New York, so we moved up there because my father loved his auntie, and so I missed a lot of school because my father checked the school up in allen Bool, New York, and they did not say the pledge allegiance to the flag or the our father. And my father said it was a commed den and it was better than I didn't go to school. Then went to a communist den and the nuns at Saint John Novar and Jackson. I just agreed with that. So we lived in Allenville good part of the time. But those last two years of grammar school and I went and I had nothing to do. I was given a homeware. I go down of the city every every a few weeks and take a test or something. But what was great there were two movie theaters in Allenville, the shadow Land and the Danbury, and I went every day to the movie's first short to in twelve o'clock, and it was Spectacle. Father went with you because he was convalescing from his art attack. Don't know. I went by myself. They didn't I just the little kid. They didn't ask the little kid up in ellen Though what he was doing going to the movies in the middle of the day. They knew everybody was a small. Everybody knew was my uncle Frank, my and Teen's husband had been the president of the bank, and everybody knew who we were, so I didn't have to pay. I mean, I was treated and Uncle Frank's bank on everybody's mortgage. So during the week I'd come back. We live in Jackson Heights. But then if we have an element would be like the King with the giant popcorn and a soda and your feet up. Oh it was pretty and I'd watched him twice. It was just great. And so the movie is literally saved my life. And I read and read and read, and I went to Georgetown in Washington college I had to. You weren't allowed to. Johnny was not a communist. Stand no, you owned the St. John's, Prepp and Williamsburg and uh. And then you know, talking about that, maybe going to Harvard, and they priests there said, Johnny, what's which. You go to Hall, but you get a great education and you lose your soul, or you go to Catholic college, so maybe it's not a grain win. It's okay, but you come out with your soul intact, which is more Diplomat the commencement, Jesus gives you the diploma. Wow, that's a great idea. Well, it was lucky when we're there. We had a smart class and that we had there was the first thing called an honors program. For the last three years you didn't major in anything specifically. Everybody had one specialty that they then would teach the other nineteen guys in the class. And we were spending a number of weeks on you know, on Henry James, and then we would go to uh Lobachevsky to remain in geometry, and then we'd go to history. You know. It was all so it was all it was a very grab bag education that was terrific. But not there. No, but because the national the well no, because I was writing, I started they had a second I can still remember the drama club there was was called what mask the Mask and Babble. How do you know that it's widely known Mask and Babble that you were affiliated with that? Really? I consider remember Kathy Eno, she was the only champion. He's there were many girls around George now, but there's this one girl, Kathy, and I started putting a sign up on a tree that said player and the first annual play running contest that Georgetown the masking Ball will presents. And I said, that's a sign. I took this. I took down and I wrote the play and and I yes, and I came in second because I wrote a comedy and the first play had to be serious, and the second play was a comedy. Second prize play was a comedy. And I wrote a play every year there and then I went to Yale, and but also the same ye for what play? Right? So he went to the graduate program A game? Yeah yeah, But I also, what did your father think about that? What did your favor where we were? Did your mother have an opinion? My parents were absolutely thrilled. My father said to me one thing. He said, I don't care what you do, Johnny, never get a job. Don't end up like me. He hated Wall Street. He shauld never be a wage slave. Just even keep it fairly legal if you can. But Mate, when I have one happy moment all day long, I wake up, he long goes off. I pushed this news button, roll over, sleep, have a deep sleep for another couple of minutes, and it goes and I'm so happy, and then it goes off again, and then my feet hit the ground. And it's downhill the rest of the day. That the Yale program is two years, three years, three years. It still is good God And and I all. I went there also because the draft was on in those days, and if I was if he weren't in grad school, you would have been drafted immediately. So I went to Yale. And Yale was just after George Holt was sort of like a little high school, you know. It was like, you know, very small. And I got to Yale and who spoke to us there about six weeks who came and spoke? Did everybody we want to hear? T? S Elliott? And I said, this is Yale is really different And it was great. I had a great It was very hard, but I had a great time there. And when you left there, what did you start? How did you start? Well? I was incredibly lucky. Tennessee. Williams was having something done at the play out of town. I don't know what it was, and Audrey what his agent was coming up to New Haven to work something out, and there was a store or something had rained or something, and the meeting was canceled and she came to the drama school and see what was on. And I had a play on and she signed me. So I graduated from Yere with Audrey Wood, who was the greatest agent in the universe, the one who discovered Tennessee Williams and built his career as my as my agent, and that really, uh, that was fantastic. Why do you why do you think she signed here? I hope because she liked my work? When when when she you had written? How many plays? When someone signs you out of Yale, you're just finished three years? And this is right out of Yale. You know I was in Yale. I was, I was under Then you make my point, you're still in Yale. She thought, she she has to show you. Do she read some work you've done. She didn't even read it. She just thought it had possibilities. And then when when you left Yale? What was the first play you had produced? And how long after you left Yale? Well, I got out of Yale? What year? In sixty three? She got me a job. She said, you don't have any money, and she said, I'm going to get you a job. I got your job at Universal Pictures, and I went out to California to work at Universal Pictures to make money. Yes, we're writing screens. I didn't know what it was. I would go out there to find out. And I got there, and what was waiting for me when I arrived was my draft notice. And because I still was under and so I literally, at the last minute got into the reserves. And then I got out of the service, and I realized I never wanted to be in California again. Why I hated it? What about it? It wasn't East Long Beach, East Atlantic Beach, East Atlantic Beach. My soul would have died in California. I just knew. I said, that's not very We had nothing to do with screen writing. I mean, I mean there was a movie life and uh back east As my friend said to me once where he was an agent. He said, I said, do you think so and so I didn't want to hire me and this one didn't want to hire me. This is, you know, back in the early two thousands. And I said, do you think this one doesn't want to hire me because they don't like me or they think I'm going to be difficult to work with? He says, no, I don't think that's that they think badly of you. He said, I think it's that they don't think of you at all. Yeah, and that's to me with l a like like everything burns bright. You get your three years of the tail of the comet streaming behind you, and then you're gone. I mean, nobody really really thinks of you. I mean, it's still one of the great moments in my life. It was so shocking and hilarious and I mean it was is that I was nominated for an oscar in Atlantic City and Adela and I went in, you know, to where it was held that year and there were five hundred photograph say two camera lights, lights, light lighte fantastic. I didn't win. We came out and there were the two D and fifty camera and waiting there and they saw a DELI came out and as if on stig all two cameras dropped. They just dropped to silence and waited for us to pass. It was jaw dropping. It was great. Right to the airport and going home. I did right. What was that experience like making that film? One of the greatest mom you enjoyed working with Mom? Louie became one of my best friends. We became great, great, great great friends. And what was the origin of that? They came to you had written the screenplay they hired. You know. I got a call one day and this man with an accent said, is this junkua I'm looking for? John said, yes, is he? And he said, did you write that play I would have seen last year at the Public Theater coll Landscape of the Body. I said yes. He said, I've been looking for you. I would like to talk to you about a project. If I said where he's where, I said, come over, I'm out here. So he came over to my apartment and he said, I have got money to do a thrillout with Susan Surrandon and an unnamed mail star. That is, there's a big tax thing in Canada right now where you get right off every every dollar invested in UH movie made part of it has to be shot in Canada, with the Canadians and with the Canadian Yes, And he said, the screen we just we have no screenplay. What I hope, It's just it's impossible. We have Susan Surrandon and a building full of Canadians and no, it was not even. And it was also what I loved about it was that it was the money was it was a rabbi from Winnipeg was in charge of the of the fun that was putting this together. Had come to Louie to direct thriller, and so he said, did I have any ideas from moving? And I knew that Louie I'd loved it because he was always made great documentaries. You know, he'd started out of life as Jacques Cousto's cameraman and you know, dope under this travel around the world diving under the sea to day the Calypso is Erica, that's right, the silent world. And they wanted to ask, you know, and our Jackson Heights neighbor when I was a kid, it was still my mother's my father's not since long dead, but our neighbor was a man named Tony Ray who was head of Resorts Internationally Chalfon Hadden Hotel, which was going to become the first the first hotel to go to turn into a casino called Resorts International. And my mother would listen to Dorothy all the time, saying how exciting it was a game that was coming to Atlantic City. Going to rescue this time was Tony and I had moved from the world off down to the Atlantic City and I was throwing it aways, and my mother bought stock in It's International and so and I kept reading about in the paper. It's how this whole city was going to change thanks to this, And I said, it seems to be really interesting what's going on down in the Atlantic City right now? So he said, let's go down, and we went down and Tony took us around and the first thing we saw was in we went into Resorts International and there was a clam bar, a wet bar, and there was all these good looking girls opening clams, shocking clams. So what's that, he said, Well, to prove that they are serious about they wanted to be card dealers, they have to work at a job like this for three months before they're able to take lessons, you know, learn how to become card dealers. I said that Susan Surandon, Susan Surrandon will shuck will chuck clam. That was the first image. Well that, yes, and her breasts and her her shoulders and anyway, so in that time we met Skinny Tomato, who was the number one mobster in town. It was a great, great day. We stayed up all night talking because there was so many rules in Atlantic City. What you had to do in order to qualify for banking, to make yourself legit. And I saw a book Atlantic City biker named Vicki gold Leby was sailed down there. I forgot her name. Yes, that's what it was. And there was a picture of a gangster's convention in al Capol. Was up at the top, like the far left corner. There was a young boy smiling in the gangster's convention. And I said, that's our male star. That's him as a young man. He's he went for that picture and he's been here ever since, and so the picture just he But he said, the only problem is he said that today is named male Star. Where did his character come from? Well that that guy was that it was a kid. The kid would yeah, yeah, Lancaster. Well but it was like the seventh choice, Luis, there's only one problemises today is July. And he said, we have to have the picture in order qualify with the tax dollars, and we have to finished shooting by December thirty one nine this year. Get typing. Get typing, and I did, and two weeks later I went over to Dynn. I wag to Frands and I gave him a first draft and we started working and we started filming on into October. It was absolutely wonderful. Now we we talked because I just finished doing a film with Will Smith. I did this song about the NFL concussion policy that Peter Landisman wrote and directed. And I told you that I worked with Will who I had always loved me right movie stars in this generation. And we talked about six Degrees in the film and how you had said you didn't see him in the part when you first no, because they were were told that the guy who was bringing a lot of money to the picture said he had one His money came with one price that it had to be uh, Will Smith had to play the league. And I said, well, I don't take TV sitcom rap singer and a TV in my important yes, and so I said no, And so all we have. But so both Fred Skepsy who was the director, and I we agreed that we would meet Will separately and not and you know when flipp a Coin and Fred would go first, and then I would go the next night and meet Will and then we would meet and to decide, you know, if we wanted him or not, because we were ready to you know, to tank the picture would just say, well, well, you know, if he isn't right, we'll walk from it and I'll tear him. I went, and we'll open the door. And within thirty seconds, I said, I let this guy into my house. I mean, he was just great. He was great. Will was absolutely first rate, was absolutely wonderful. When you when you produce plays, when you premiere plays, I mean, like any playwright, not all of your plays have been as successful as the others, and and and the ones that have been successful, do they have something in common the ones that worked best? I have no idea, but of course six degrees people. If I knew, I would just push I would push that. But I would just push that button open keep scooping. There's no play. I know, I'll taste something. It's not like the play was more success. That's I'm not trying to, you know, to cover my tracks. But I know the reason why I wrote every play. I wrote. What that that play is, not whether it's a failure or success. I mean it might be whatever the reviews are, which I consume a report. You know what your life will be should I get that job teaching? You know, what what should I do? You know, to get the money next year or else, Hey, we're gonna take you know, wow, we might have you know, things might be good. We can you know. But I know the reason why I wrote that play, and I can look back in the past and said, oh damn, I see how I screwed that up. I see what I see what I did wrong in that. But I must I can't fix that place, but I must be aware of that in the next play. Uh No, So I mean there's no button that you push to say. I mean, how many people have destroyed their careers because they say how and they keep trying to write the same, replace, recreate, recreate the same. So you have no idea. And if you're new, if you said, okay, well, I'm just gonna I don't know what I mean, I'm gonna lie. But now now I don't gonna have too long, and then I'm gonna have pushed the hit button and I'm going to write that Yeah, it's as I plan. No, and then I put that hit combination, that hit recipe, and that's it's no. There's no such thing as a hit recipe. It's all in the left. Is there one that was less commercially successful than the others that you have a tremendous fondness for. Is there one that you sit there that you're child that you love the most. I wouldn't dare to pick one of them. I wouldn't mean they're all you know, Yeah, I mean my bother Yeah, I don't have any favorites. Is there something that your characters in many, if not all, of your plays have in common? Is there something that they're striving for? There's something that they're seeking. Is there something you're working out yourself that's manifested all of the players or most of the players. You're right, it has to be. I mean what would that be? I don't know. You just want the best. You want the best. The truth seekers they want the truth because my ultimate question is are you? Are you as honest as the characters are on your play? Oh? No, oh, of course I am. I am, I an. I have no idea. I mean, I would think that would be Uh, I can't. You'll have to ask other people. In my own mind, I'm perfectly life and ask Adele Yes, let me get to her first. Yes and no. But it's uh no, I mean I think they so. I think they all want something. I think they all want something ineffable. I think it's maybe some sort of divine in the largest sense of the word, to my dissatisfaction. Is this all it is? Is this? I want? I want more, I want more, I one, What do you want more of it? What did you want more of? Well? I don't know what I wanted. I just wanted immortality. You know, it's just as simple as that. Do you have that? Of course? Not? Of course what do I do? All I know is I'm but Kitty Hart, remember Kitty Carlisle. I love Kitty, And she said, John, I'm not a religious person, but I have one prayer that I said every day. Oh dear God, I don't want anything more, Just let me keep what I have, and that, to me is the best. That's I'll settle for that. Now you go to the theater, You go see theater, absolutely right now, What was it changed in your lifetimes? Is it basically the same way you feel it has changed? The Broadway theater. There are things like you know, Curious Center of the Dog in the Night, which is still thrilling. You know, you just say theater is dead, and then you go see that and you just say it's from a book. I didn't like especially and you go see in your eye jaw drops it how wonderful it is. And I'm going to see Hamilton's this weekend, and I'm seeing it tomorrow night. I'm seeing Nathan tomorrow night and have a double espresso and always going to be great. And Hallie FIfF for this young playwright has a remarkable play down at Atlantic Theater. Cool. I'm gonna pray for you so hard. Uh, I mean, there's always stuff to see. I love an economics, doesn't You don't find that daunting or difference it was ever? Thus, I don't know. I mean, luckily, I'm a Tony voter, so I get a pair of tickets every show, which means a lot. But I mean I was shocked at the price of the tickets for for Iceman Cometh. You know. So the theater has always been dying, It's always been horrible. It's always been terrible. It's always no, I mean, it's just there, it is, It's just it's just there. Do you think that New York is still the most democratic? Say? Uh, as New York changed in your lifetime or that still the same? Well? No, I mean, I mean my New York is so many landmarks, my personal and marks and missing you know from Uh, I mean I when I first came to New York fifty years ago, when I first go when I get out of the Air Force, like, I had an apartment corner of four Street and tenth Street in the village, fourth floor, walkup, twenty ft ceiling with the skylight, wood burning fireplace, eating kitchen in the bathroom, looking out on the fourth looking out in the gardens below. What was the rent? What was the rent? Two thirty two dollars a month. Uh, you could really live in New York and I just but kids now live in find new places to live that the rules are always the rules are always changing, and we're always looking for Paris in the nineteen twenties, and it was a really rare time in the early sixties in New York with Cafe Cino and La Mama and the off off Broadway scene which had never there never been anything like it in New York before. And uh, yeah, so what do I miss New York? No, I'm so New York still. I was born here, conceived here, drug up here, and it still makes my jaw drop with something you say, wow, wow, I know it's throwing. The theater, John Guare says, is a place of dreams where you lay out the unconscious and make it visible. After the break, I'll talk with Lisa dun a London based actress who's now tackling the works of another influential playwright who exposes the unconscious, samuelil Beckett. Take a listen to our archive where director Stephen Daldry told me about the difference between working in theater and film. One is it in the theater. Everybody's in the same room, so everybody can see what the beast is. Everyone can see what it's made. And you start at the beginning, and you finished with people. You start with, the people you finish with, and the movie the people you prep with, the people you shoot with them, the people you shoot with, all the people you finish with the people. It's more like a relay base making a movie. Take a listen and here's the thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. No matter, parents are known, unheard of. Saving Valage not I is a one woman play by Samuel Beckett, performed here by my next guest, Lisa Duan on Speechless infant in the home. No no, indeed, for that matter, any of any kind, no love of any kind at any subsequent stage. It's a typical affair, nothing of any note till coming up to six D. The physical demands of not I are extreme, and who better to rise to them? But it classically trained a dancer like Dwan. For the past year, Duan has performed three Beckett plays together, not I, Footfalls and Rockabye last year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last month at London's Barbican. Lisa Dwan had done not I on its own before, but wasn't convinced she could do the trilogy. But Martin Sheen, her co star in a movie about the bull Pall disaster, suggested a one woman show. At the time, Duane, an attractive, petite blonde, was tired of the roles she was being offered. She was desperate for a challenge. I was feeling very frustrated, you know, being a woman of a particular look. You're given these kind of cardboard cutouts, these pithy little lines, these one dimensional, little flimsy rolls, and it's demoralizing, it's depressing. I mean, I sprung on the scene, thinking, I was like the guys when I wanted to become I was a ballet dancer first, and when I became an actress. And you mean that transition because you were injured. Yeah, ballet ended because of an injury. Would you have kept on if you could have? Probably that was your passion? Yeah, yeah, you know. I found I could express myself so much more as a dancer. And yeah, it seems you've gone from one extreme to the other because dancing, which is purely physical and Beckett, which, in my mind of the least the pieces you're doing are strictly about language. I disagree. In fact, I feel I dance more now and express myself more through kind of the principles of dance then I ever did. In which of the three pieces or all of them? All of them? All of them and not I, which is you know, such a contradiction. The most, I feel like an element in not I, I don't even feel like a woman, are a human being. I feel like an element. And the fact that my head is trapped in and my arms are strapped in and into this head harness, so I don't move, so my mouth is eight ft above the stage and doesn't move out of this pinprick of light. So for people to understand, because we're getting to this, we've gotten right into try to get a tiptoe up on the Beckett and the Nati tab low. But now that we've gotten right to the to the steak and potatoes, here were skipping the salad course. Ladies and gentlemen, For those who don't know, briefly describe for us what you're talking about. The contraption and everything when you look at it, if isolation of the physical mouth, the tableau is of a mouth speaking and everything else is blacked out. And you will explain how that's achieved. But it couldn't have been achieved in some more simple way. You couldn't have been sitting in a chair and they put they draped something over you, or I'm sure it could. That could demands sacrifice snow in fact that he's not some sort of fetishist or something. As a matter of fact, could you hold this cactus between your knees while you're performing? I wouldn't put it past him, but I don't think that was his intention. And I think if technology had caught up with him, such an innovator in theater, I would love him to be around today because you could just imagine what he could do with we're going to talk, We're going to twitter, be it on Twitter. Well, I don't think it'd be interested in that, but I just think technology could offer expression. You know, I want to talk about the Beckett ethos if you will, or pathos. But describe to me because with this kind of thing, I find this fascinating. Described to me how the day begins doing the not I process. You wake up and what's the day like to the moment that they're you know, they're greasing you up with the black face and strapping you w into the contraption. Sure, well, just for the listeners at home who don't know what this is like, not I is a disembodied mouth eight foot above the stage. It was a play that was written in one and Beckett wrote it in a stream of consciousness. Although I don't hear just one stream of consciousness. I hear layers of them, a kind of cacophony of voices. But it was first performed in one in the Lincoln Center. Jessica Tandy performed it. That was the first one. Yeah, she did in about twenty three minutes and Beckett went backstage and said, you've destroyed my play. I mean, it didn't harm her career clearly. But he then wrote to Alan Schneider and said, I'd like to direct Billy White Lawn this myself and find out if its theater or not. And and he had had an ongoing relationship with White law was his just a year before she had performed play, which is these three people and Earns and these kind of fragmented monologues. So Beckett was really working towards not I It was always part of a trajectory of pairing away, stripping away the unnecessary. This is when we get into laid Beckett, which is distilled language. I mean, art is reduction, and early Beckett is when he really had the albatross of Joyce around his neck. You know, the verbosity and in my view, slightly pretentious inaccessibility. You know Beckett later, Okay, you're the Beckett interpreter who can label Joyce and I don't know what I mean. I'm just shameless, I guess. But your entitled to your opinion. Yeah, you've earned it after what I've seen, But go ahead and continue. Never be allowed to perform choice. But anyway, I first heard about this play when I was about eighteen, just around when I started to kind of start acting after my my knee injury. Yeah, when I first heard about it, and meanwhile I was doing this awful TV series where I was the leading lady, and I just felt embarrassed. Why I just feel very underused. Oh that's what you think woman is? You know, maybe not very complex roles. You're probably sick of hearing this, but don't know what's what's the job? The job was what like a soap? Yeah, it was a TV series and American TV series. I did fifty six episodes of leading actress and this was what my first professional gig. My first professional gig was a soap opportunity. Okay, and you know you have all of these romantic notions. I was reading the Greeks. I wanted to play antigny. You know, back when women were multifaceted and multi dimension you made that mistake of bringing your appetite for fuagra to the hotdog stamp. Many people do that a mistake. But whereas I when I did a television series like that, I said thought to myself, Okay, what is this. You've been acting, but you did fifty six episodes, and it wasn't It was less about the material than you being cast and how they saw women. So did you start to develop your roles and and build the depth and what you were given as opposed to I think that for me, I remember, the best way to define it was I felt like I was a guest in people's house. And then a few years went by, and by the time I probably made my eighth film, I'm sitting on a set and I'm going you know, I've made as many films now as you have the director, I have enough experience how to say, I don't think I do that. You can't do good work in film or television without good directors. Otherwise they're just obstacles. But whereas in theater, in that moment, you have ultimate control. And with Beckett he removes really the necessity for directors. It really is a direct communication between the writing and the actor. Do you have some knowledge or in Psychi this would be fascinating as to what Beckett's relationships were with the directors of his material. You see Beckett's work as so multifaceted. You know, he he took care of absolutely everything. He still takes care of absolutely everything from Beyond the Grave. It's all the stage directions. I mean, they are like art installations. He writes his score. I wish I had it actually to show you, but like you look at the early drafts of Footfalls, the middle play that I do, which is highly complex and probably one of Beckett's least understood plays, but it's written like a score of music, so you have these ours were on the third bar may and the length of time spoken. He works out every step, so he's also choreographer, so you know, it's high poeticism, both visually orally and emotionally. And I feel Beckett's communicating directly with that instrument, which is me or whoever the actor is, and the director has to just kind of service that and get out of the way and not try to place their own stamp or ego on it. And I mean I've I've seen productions where it's such and such does Crabs last Tape, and they want to make it, you know, put their own stamp on it. And really I feel Becky can hang you out to dry. You start to watch this kind of tug of war between the language and the music and what this person is trying to do, and quite frankly, I've always felt that beck It always wins. Now that's not to say that's well said, that's not try. If you try to interpret Beckett, you're going to get some kind of metaphysical electric shock from Beckett. That's not to say that there isn't room for interpretation. There's plenty scope. I don't move away that much from the stage directions. Although I did take a big kind of leap with Footfalls, which is normally played by two actresses. I played both roles, this ninety year old woman off stage and May his own stage in her forties. That I played both roles and put together a kind of quite academic argument for the Beckett the stage, and thankfully they gave me the thumbs up. And it kind of worked because I wasn't kind of stepping away too much from what I felt was Beckett's intention within that realm, there's just so much scope. Before we talk about the trip tick of the three pieces together, well you did not I first and thought you didn't have the capacity to do all three. At one point you said, oh, I don't think I can do that. When someone began to suggest that, talk about the night you do all three or even not I. What's the day like for you? Describe what it's like. Yeah, So I get up in the morning and I meditate because not I as a beast, no matter how long I've been doing it, it's daunting and frightening and demands the most extreme form of concentration. And you know, in a crass sense, not I as a representation of thought, and when you're in it, you really realize he's a genius because it's exactly how my mind works. And when I read it first, did I be scared to be at this booth with you? I think in different places, the different plays resonate more or less, and not I resonated very strongly here in New York because of the loudness of people's it's manic. The pace here is just manic, and we're all feeling highly caffeinated, stressed out individuals trying to keep pace. People are awake here, yeah, or we're struggling to stay awake, very awake or there country, but they're in the ring and leading with they're left. Yeah. And you know, probably one of the biggest piece or obstacles when doing not I is your own internal not I. So here, I am trying to say this impossible piece at the speed of thought, which is what Beckett wanted, with my head tied into harness, so I don't move out of light. So I usually rehearse in the banisters at home. I time my head with a scarf into the banisters to train my diet from and I've got very understanding neighbors. Come over here, honey, let's put the groceries down on the table. I'm my face is lashed to the banister. It's meditation. And then I read somewhere where you do the piece a few times in the morning, because no matter how many times you do it, you have to kind of take a bite out of it during the day and just to get a little bit of a run into it. And then I use three different forms of memory. One is the oral, so you know, like a song or anything like that. The next is the narrative, which isn't that difficult. It's just very fragmented, and there's all these interruptions and insurrections and things like that. And then there's how the piece looks on the page, which is kind of my my visual peg. So memorization just bizarre, isn't it how you remember and the new monarchs you create. Like if I have a list of adjectives or a list of institutions or a list of names, I'll sit there and I'll say to someone, I'll go, well, you realize that he's just preposterously wealthy and sophisticated. And also then I'll go p w S, p w S. I'll say that to myself in the games we play, I know, and you need a few maddening Yeah, you need a few different tricks. Yeah. So you do the piece a few times. You get to the theater eight o'clock, Curt, Let's say you're there, what time? Typically I come in early and do a run in the head harness with my stay manager, because the head harness is a whole different. I mean, I could perform the piece here for you now, and all the energy leaks away, and it's a lot easier, and it's sayings and you see all the kind of dexterity, and you see the traffic coming and going around my face, and I could say the traffic because these are the little waves of stream of consciousness. You know the roads of Ireland, the sounds of Ireland. And then you lock tight and something else happens, and you just go deep, deep, deep into my consciousness. You know, I can't see. I've got black makeup from my cheap bones to my collar bone. And then I just release the lips. I just I don't wear lipstick aroundthing. I just take off the black where the lips should be. And then I put on a blindfold and a shawl and then I slip into the head harness so I can't see or hear, and then my arms are put into brackets and I can't move, and all of that energy, all the kind of the pace and the role and the judgment of Ireland and the hilarity my vision of it's just so the audience can get this sense. I don't want to lose this idea. Is when I saw the visual the pictures, it's almost like you're on a massage table and your face is through that cradle, you know what I mean, And then there's a bar that goes across your back that kind of smashes you into the massage table, you know. Then they tilt the table straight up. It's a weird position you're put in. Well, it's not something dissimilar from something you'd see in a bog Arab with the water boarding and just turned the other way. You know, it does feel like a torture device, but then something bizarre happens. So just from the audience point of view, I'm going back to when I first heard about this play. I remember this greatback at actor Stephen Brennan, when I was in the middle of this TV series is my father, and I'm just pent up with all of this kind of I suppose what I recognized now it was artistic frustration, but I didn't know what it was then. I was just frustrated. And he told me about not I and he said, there's this play, which is the toughest play. Many actors have gone mad trying to learn it. But this disembodied mouth hovers across the stage. And even though the mouth is locked into place because of the sensory deprivation in an entirely blackened out auditorium, the mouth appears to osculate or travel across the audience. And that's different for everybody in the audience. They all experience an optical illusion. Yeah, fires around the place for people, and it's different for every member of the audience. No, I don't really, but the audience thinks I'm moving, and I think Becat takes that to the extreme here. And this is why you feel so safe. This is why I can splain myself onto this torture chamber, because he's taken care of everything. I don't know if you've ever felt like that with another writer, but you know one of his rehearsal periods with Billy White and he said, Billy, Billy, bring your pencil over here, three lines down, four words in. Can you make those e dots to dots? And he took up a dot. And if a writer can be that pedantic about that, you can pretty much feel safe about the whole. And I just feel his genius makes me feel so held that all I have to do is give him everything. Do you find it difficult not to channel White Law? I was lucky the sequence of events and how I ended up doing Beckett. I've just been incredibly lucky. I hadn't seen White Laws performance and it's on YouTube, and I didn't watch it when I first got cast, so I had the image of my mind. I still never seen nott I in the theater, only my performance, so I only know what it's like to be in it. And when I read the script. I heard Ireland, I heard my father. I heard the streets of Athlone, and the scorn and the bitterness, and the nuns and the humor, and my family, and there's my aunt. It became my personal landscape. And I didn't have this kind of reverential holy Grail feelings of intimidation in regards to Beckett. I suppose I was slightly sacrilegious or or you know, I might as well have been wrapped to you. No, but it was home and it was mine, and I think that's why I got the part, you know. And then my director said, I don't want you to see Billy's performance. This has to be yours. And that was hard to do because Billy and Beckett, it's like a natural call off response. Yeah, and I avoided it. And then Edward Beckett came to the opening night into thousand and five and said, you know, I think you could meet Billy now that you found your own way and we met each other. Did she come see you know? She was quite reclusive at that point, but she agreed to meet me because she'd never met anyone who had played not I, and she was a beautiful woman him when she was young. She was I've seen shots of people forget that about Whitelaw because she played you know, the wacky nun and the almend nanny and the almend very severe and very kind of scary, the older, middle aged Billy Whitelaw. But young Billy Whitelaw. I looked online and there was She's like ravish, She's like the smugging musty and you know, and she played that when she did Happy Days as well. You know, she was no kind of character church. She was a leading lady when she was when she was younger. But but so you finally met her. So I met her, and we greeted each other like a long lost war veterans, and it was just this immediate access, comrade. Yeah, and you know, we were straight into the most intimate details. And where did you go on? What did you think of this? And you know, when did you swallow? Did you feel like a Pelican? Yes? Or did I you know? And and also I asked her a lot about Beckett and stuff. And I'm so lucky. And if there's anything I can ever pass on to any other actor in the future, if they ever want anything for me, is to remove all the am I all that swear? No, I'll think of something to remove all the kind of rubbish. If you don't swear, I'm going to be upset now all the bullshit surrounding Beckett. I can do better. But well, but but if we can remove all of that and really get down to the crux of the matter, to the truth, like I'm only beginning to find out, actually, And I think Beckett is what has taught me this Beckett and maybe a few other things, but I don't know if I really knew what truth sounded like. And being Irish, we can pretend to be all hard in your sleeve and sure we're so open and you know, and that's an act, but when you hear real truth, you can't argue with that. And Beckett is the type of artists that if you try and bring him anything less than that, he hangs you out today. But how do you feel, because I want to get back to the night of and then the three and then the three pieces together, But how do you feel when you say that? I want to read you a quote you talk about how Beckett looked down the barrel of life was a quote I got from here and you said, I met David Hair recently, and he said he wasn't convinced that Beckett believed his own worldview, that if he had, he wouldn't have gotten out of bed in the morning. The truth is he didn't often get out of bed. He was depressive, he was considered maladjusted. He suffered a great deal. And people have said to me, meaning you you know, Beckett's a very cruel writer. It might be okay for him to describe the world in that way, but the rest of us need our delusions unquote. Well, there's a certain amount of truth in that, but once you've looked down the barrel of life that way, it's very hard to forget what you've seen. Now, how do you think this is going to affect your work? Meaning when you do something that's as raw or whatever adjective you want to use, that's as truthful. That was the word you I think you use when you do a piece that reaches into you the way this has reached into you. What do you do when you go to work? And it's not that I don't know, you know? And I remember after meeting Billy, she wanted to direct me. She wanted to pass on Beckett's notes and I had been trying to do Beckett as I thought beck it should be done. You know, I had heard no color and don't act, and I was trying to kind of put this kind of monotone and not be too indulgent. And you know, I come from a strict classical ballet world, so I was adopting that kind of control and technique and not trying to be flashy in all of that kind of stuff. And Billy said, what are you doing? Bring that all in? Because I was resisting these urges my own landscape, you know, my own sense of home and what that provokes in me. To bring that all in, And then the piece just started to sing and it was unlike anything that had been done before and not I and it worked. So Billy Billy into thousand and nine directed the version I did solo then without any director, and the night or the week I was opening, she went into hospital and that was it. And she's so desperate to pass on the notes. But I read a review that night and it said, this is going to spoil her for anything else. I don't be daff for Christ's sake, you know, beck And it's highly disciplined work, but you know, you can't have a symphony all the time. You can have occasional pop song. He does. Once you've tasted truth to that level, once you've had the most multifaceted, expansive landscape to work in, you're completely spoiled. So they strap you in when you do the three pieces, not I as the first, and then you take off the makeup and the you do the other two pieces two minutes. You d rig from that I in two minute, then go and do the other piece. So you're strapped in and you're in the on the launch pad there and it's five four three two go? Do you get it? Letter perfect? Every night more or less there's the out on my skip a section, you know, a little two words or something like that, and give my stage manager a heart attack because you can find it. She can't keep up at that kind of speed. But it's terrifying because you know it is a tightrope act. If I trip up or make mistake, have killed the piece. But what happens, and this is where I feel like I'm an element. So there I am unable to move our ce or here, and I take flight. So while the audience are experiencing this hallucinations, all the exit signs are taken out, every led, everything is just blacked out. And they're experiencing this optical illusion of these lips hovering about the stage and moving rapidly, are coming really close to them, are going further away, and just moving like a spaceship. I feel like I'm taking flight. And that's a bizarre experience where I feel I'm circling around the old storium. It's a bizarre experience. Then two minutes to decompress, if you will, to go to the next piece. And the next piece is What Footfalls, And that's a piece about what, among other things. It's like a chamber piece of music, but it's an exploration of trauma and conflict. Well, it's a jew log with myself, with my mother in my head, the critic, and it's it's this call and response, you know, Beckett described as kind of thogy. She's trying to kill the voice in her head, the oppressor, the critics. And what's the third piece, rock a Bye, which is like um being rocked to death, summoning death. Well, I think death is summoning her. Are you afraid to die? Well? The thing about Beckett's characters, they kind of laugh, of death. They've been well, they've been dead already. You know, these works are a kind of haunting. I don't know, I kind of feel the death or among us, you know, either in our minds or in the ether. You do these pieces, and you do especially not I, which is this very difficult piece in your personal life? Without getting two personal do you like things to be when Lisa Dwan goes home? Does she like everything to be nice and easy? What do you like? A complex and challenging in all things? I tend to gravitate towards those. You know. My mother said that would you stopped doing that now, you'd be like Joan Crawford comedy next, you know. But I guess one of the things I find hard, And I don't want to sound like one of those kind of winging women, but I do find it hard when people present I I went to see Angels in America. Amazing play. What a poet, What a poet, what amazing nuanced roles? Faceted? Yeah is the Eva who but all these amazing complex roles for men. The women get the two stereotypes, the hysterical wife and the mother. Rosenberg is in there. Well, it's frustration. Well, we're gonna get to that lastly. But what has Beckett? What has the truth or truths that Beckett compels us to look at or stare down if you will. What's it told you about being Irish? Oh? I don't know much about what it means to be Irish. To be honest, I have a complex relationship with Ireland, does becketted? You know, kind of loving and loathing of the place. You love about it? The poetry, the poetry in the everyday language at humor um, the beauty of the music, you know, the inherent music and poetry. Oh, the small mindedness, the tall poppy syndrome, the misogyny. I sound like such an angry feminist. And maybe it's a phase I'm going through. Open When you say face, is it something you felt this way throughout You've been acting for a while now, have you have you felt this? I don't think I had the balls to put my finger on it. And I'm nowhere near your level or anybody's. But you know where you can actually just allow yourself, give yourself permission to have a viewpoint. And I suppose Beckett's kind of pushed me in that direction where I start to notice things. No, you're trying to squeeze me into this little box. You can't come at truth from that direction. You know, it comes from another place. And that's what Beckett has taught me more than anything. I had to use my personal landscape, my own story, the wounds of I don't know, rejection, whatever I grew up with. I use those, you know, really ordinary things, these these wounds, these weapons. And when the bell goes and footfalls, I picked those gaps and they bleed up. Well, let me just mention this because we're going to run out of time, and I want to say, you have a lot of energy. You have a lot of creative energy. I mean, you're like a real you know flame, you know, and in your work you're doing this remarkably difficult work, and it's remarkably precise work, and this remarkably disciplined work that you're nailing. I mean, people are, you know, lauding you and saying, well, these wonderful things. But you are someone who, as I said to you before, there are princesses of the theater, which they have a seat here in New York for you. They got a seat here for you. They're ready for you. You come here, you're gonna work. You're gonna work and work and play great roles and whether you do head of Gabbler or whatever. You they had a lot of parts here for you to play. So what are you moving here? That's really kind of what do you need the name of a broker? I have? I need everything? You should come here. I'd love to come here, But there's no. But no, that doesn't that that doesn't mean there's there's going to be opportunity here, not necessarily happiness. Oh I've given up. See that that's the Irish landscape. What's that? I wouldn't recognize it a bit in the urs. Well, i'll tell you what. That's another thing about Beckett. You know, he's hilarious and he laughs at our situation. But you know what, he doesn't sell us anything. He doesn't he doesn't sell us anything. And well, he's at war with sentimentality and he has taught me what you know, emotional gangsters are. He's been great at helping me not pick the duds that I used to draw in the past, you know, And he's been greater kind of helping me to thine own self be true. It's a big eye opener, and I think I could move to a place like New York with that kind of strong sense of myself and maybe not fall apart if things don't work out as planned. I have a hunch things will work out very well for Lisa Dwan if she makes the move. She'll have another chance to try out New York living when she performs two more Beckett pieces at Lincoln Center this fall. Billy Whitelaw will not be there to guide Dwan. The actress passed away in December last year. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 421 clip(s)