DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
Denzel Washington will return to Broadway this spring in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh.”
Mr. Washington will play the lead role of Theodore Hickman, a.k.a. Hickey, a charming traveling salesman, in this dark and poetic drama that unfolds in a Manhattan saloon. The play will be directed by George C. Wolfe and produced by Scott Rudin. Further casting has yet to be announced.
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“I read the script by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch and I was just blown away by the writing, I responded immediately to the character. I became very singularly obsessed with getting a job on the show – and of course they didn’t think I was right for it, they didn’t want to see me at all: I had to audition many times.”
“I’ve never felt more like Ruth, the character, than while I was auditioning for this show. I think that is what inevitably won them over – it was my desperation just kept coming through, and my passion for the part. I feel like they purposely made me jump through a lot of hoops just to see if I was willing to and I would just be like: ‘Yeah whatever you want! I’ll come in again, I’ll do a weird rap, I’ll fly to Toronto to to audition with Betty Gilpin, I’ll read again with Betty Gilpin in Los Angeles, we’ll do a full fight scene for you guys!’”
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Dear Evan Hansen star Rachel Bay Jones — who recently won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for her role — portrays a struggling single mother who finds it difficult to connect with her troubled son. In an interview with The Interval, Jones speaks about finding the character of Heidi Hansen and what influences her portrayal of her.
Jones reveals that since she is also a mother who is faced with challenges, she feels very close to her character and thus more fulfilled by portraying her. She explains, “We always try to find the recognizable thread. The thing that we relate to is always the strongest point to start from. Playing a character that is flawed and who faces a lot of the same challenges as a mother that I do brings all of my questions close to home every day, which makes the exploration of this role that much more rich and fulfilling, and my challenges as a mother are in my face all the time. That’s pretty big.”
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Whittaker herself says that playing the Doctor offers a chance to be “the ultimate character:”
“To be asked to play the ultimate character, to get to play pretend in the truest form: This is why I wanted to be an actor in the first place. To be able to play someone who is literally reinvented onscreen, with all the freedoms that brings: What an unbelievable opportunity. And added to that, to be the first woman in that role.”
“We had a strange chat earlier this year where [Chibnall] tricked me into thinking we were talking about Broadchurch. And I started to quiz him about his new job in Wales, and asked him if I could be a baddie! And he quickly diverted the conversation to suggest I should consider auditioning to be the 13th [Doctor],” Whittaker said. “It was the most incredible chat because I asked every question under the sun, and I said I’d take a few weeks to decide whether I was going to audition. He got a phone call within 24 hours. He would’ve got a phone call sooner, but my husband was away and there was a time difference!”
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Hawkins explains how having a background as a trained classical actor helps when performing roles that are very different from the material commonly found in classical stage acting:
Doing action on television, you have to learn to take language that isn’t as complex sometimes and doesn’t have these long, flowery speeches that ebb and flow…you have to learn how to lift that language and take it and create full characters from these little blurbs, these little bits. It moves so fast that you have to be as full as possible. I think the training helps you do that and, for me, that’s kind of what I’ve been relying on. I think having a classical background in theatre definitely compliments that because you have those tools ready to go. At Juilliard we didn’t put names to techniques. We knew what it was, but we didn’t say,”We’re going to use this technique and that technique.” They were tools and we looked at them as a roadmap. If you know where you’re going, then you don’t need a map, but for the 90 percent of the time that you’re not feeling inspired as an actor and not having that magic moment where it all comes together, then that’s when you have to pull the techniques.
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