Veteran actor, director, and playwright Austin Pendleton chatted about starring in the Off-Broadway production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which was directed by Bradford Clover.
This new version of the Shakespearean comedy is being performed at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York City. At 85, Mr. Pendleton is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
How does it feel to be a part of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’?
Shakespeare had a very expansive view of human behavior. He wrote when England was severing their ties with the Catholic Church, and all kinds of possibilities of looking at human behavior suddenly opened up.
For example: Prince Hamlet would rather have stayed in Whittenberg than come to England. This does a great deal to explain the ambiguities in his behavior.
Also, he clearly had conflicting feelings about his father, who appears to have been something of a Fascist. The way this relates to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that civilization must be opened to chaos.
What did this show teach you about yourself?
This show has reminded me of how much I love the community that comes together to make theatre. I’ve loved working with this brilliant company.
When I was young, my mother, who had been a professional actress, stopped being a professional actress because of an act of bigotry.
While the play was rehearsing, all the producers across the country who were doing The Children’s Hour finally got around to reading the script, and realized it contained a compassionate portrait of a lesbian.
Today, that would have had no bad effect at all, and so my mother would not have married my father.
What was it like working with director Bradford Cover?
Bradford Cover shares with all the great directors I have worked with, like Jerry Robbins, with a desire to arouse the actors to many layers of questioning.
This was a system much prized by Elia Kazan, who I once had the pleasure of knowing. When I met Kazan, I was working with the great actress Jo Van Fleet.
The first thing Kazan ever asked me was, “Why do you think Jo Van Fleet is so difficult?” I talked for 10 minutes, uninterrupted, and realized at once how he got these performances out of people.
He would take actors into corners, and just talk to them personally, and he made me realize why Jo Van Fleet was so important to me, and to my development. Bradford does the same thing.
What do your plans for the future include?
I’m going to be working on a reading of my play Booth at Steppenwolf in December. Booth was first written in 1960/61 as the Spring musical for the Dramat.
It was so long, that we had never once seen it through. The structure of the show was very unusual. To my delight, the show seemed to be going very well.
Then, Peter Bergman, the lyricist, came up to me and whispered, “I have terrible news.” I said, “What?” Peter said, “It’s a quarter to twelve.” Shortly after that, in the play, the father says to the son, “let’s go to California.”
At which point, a man in the audience cried out, “It’s 11:45 and they’re going to California?!” There was a professor of philosophy at Yale at that time who was very impressed.
As we were waiting for the reviews, he told me he would take me to New York to meet the actress Kim Stanley. Among her friends were Ben Gazarra and Janice Ruehl.
Kim said that she wanted to play Desdemona. We were surprised. We asked why. Kim said, “What that woman does to those two men.” Ever since then, I have seen the miraculous play Othello in a whole different way.
I loved your work in Tennessee Williams’ Off-Broadway production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Matt de Rogatis… how was that for you?
Tennessee Williams, in my opinion, is one of the leading playwrights in all of theatre history. He is a poet, he writes tragically, and his tragedy is leavened by an outrageous sense of humor.
About a year and a half after I first met Tennessee, Nikos Psacharopolous put on a six-hour show in celebration of Tennessee.
I played all the parts that represented Tennessee, so I was onstage literally all the time, and at the dress rehearsal, the great actress Carrie Nye, was playing the most painful scene that Blanche has in “Streetcar.”
Tennessee kept laughing. Finally, Carrie Nye broke character and said to the few people watching, “Tennessee, shut up!” To which Tennessee replied, “Blanche is the funniest character I ever wrote!” Which led me to a perception…
The reason that Blanche works is that Tennessee allows her to be ridiculous. This keeps us from sentimentalizing her. It was at that moment that I understood how Tennessee uses humor to alleviate his tragedies.
What is your advice for young and emerging actors, artists, and playwrights?
Don’t worry about the business, just go for the work! In this profession, actors are encouraged to get as much work as possible.
One time, I received a particularly bad review. The afternoon of the day the review came out, it happened that I had an appointment with Lynn Redgrave.
Lynn told me that in London, people such as her father, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson would get reviews like that all the time.
Then she added, caustically, “But never Larry.” She then told me that in America, a review like I received meant that I would not have a “professionally significant” credit for the next seven years. And she was right, down to the years.
Lynn urged me, whatever I did, to not stop acting during that time, or else I would be too frightened when the seven years were up to get back onstage.
So for those seven years, I went everywhere to act. I went into attics, I went into basements, I went to Williamstown and my friend Nikos employed me constantly, and in those seven years I had broadened my range considerably.
So that’s what I tell my students. I tell them that the only important thing is the work. If you make your career more important than the work, the profession has prevented you from really growing as an actor.
What would you like to tell our readers about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? (What’s the one thing you want them to get out of it)
That life can be joyous. Also, that life can be complicated. But the important thing is not to try to figure out these complications. The important thing is just to let the work take you there.
To learn more about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” click here.
