John Douglas Thompson Three
How Characters Evolve from the Text
By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 08, 2010
Charles Giuliano What kind of roles do you play? We have seen you now in Othello, Richard and as Antony. Those are all historical plays. They are historical characters as opposed to the romantic comedies. Then there are the more conceptual plays. Would you like to play Hamlet or Lear? We will come to see you this year in Macbeth.
John Douglas Thompson Some day I would love to play Lear.
CG We see you as a man of action in historical roles.
JDT I’m not following you here.
CG So far your characters have been men of action driven by their emotions.
JDT I never think of them in those terms. Everything I do I get from the language. Which gives me license, in a way, if you dig deep enough. I would never look it as action packed.
CG But it’s an aspect of the canon. As compared to the comedies or more conceptual plays.
JDT When I look back at Othello or Richard, whatever motivated me, whatever I did, the process of being on stage is all dictated by text. That’s exactly where I start. People may associate it with a kind of action. I guess that’d their prerogative. But I never go into it thinking this is an action packed super hero. I study the language and the language tells me what the parameters are.
CG You did Shylock which we never saw you in.
JDT Yes.
CG That would have changed the conversation as he is a very different kind of character.
JDT But you may have seen that and said, oh this is a kind of action packed Shylock. (Laughter) Shylock as a super hero.
CG The caped crusader of Venice. Let’s talk about Shylock. Just what are the challenges of these individual roles? At this point you are building quite a portfolio of Shakespeare’s roles. What is the repertory which you are looking for?
JDT Let’s go to Antony first. It was one of his later plays. One of the last seven plays that he wrote and they were becoming more complex. The natural rhythm of the lines, the ten beats, he started to move that around. He changed what his writing was about with ever more complex individuals. People are thinking and saying really complex ideas, really fast. They are processing things and trying to figure them out. In Antony there is so much done to him as opposed to him doing things to other people. Often he is reeling in response to behavior and activity. What that has helped me to learn is dealing with complex text. Hopefully, it will help me when I go into Macbeth. It will help me with the Scottish play as that is also a complex and imaginative text. The plays that I have accepted and am doing are giving me a way to approach the other thing I am dealing with.
CG I have always thought of Macbeth as the most medieval of the plays. He’s not as evolved as some of the other characters. He’s spooked by the witches. He’s manipulated by his wife. He doesn’t seem to know how to dig his way out of problems.
JDT I don’t buy any of that. It is an opinion of someone who has done only a first read or viewed productions that have gone only so far. The lowest common denominator. That’s what’s so exciting about Shakespeare. You are talking about Macbeth as a medieval character. Some of his thoughts and the way he expresses them are fascinating. They come from a mind with a deep level of intelligence.
CG As compared to Hamlet who is proto existential. A renaissance/ modernist. If you compare Hamlet and Macbeth then Hamlet is the far more complicated character.
JDT Until I do Hamlet I’m going to say no. On the page it may be more complicated. The journey that Othello takes is quite a complicated one too, To be in love and then kill his wife. Whether you think the motivations are simplified or not. There’s lot of complexity there. I’m not doing these roles to regurgitate what’s already been out there, As far as how they are played. So I don’t want to have someone tell me what they think the themes of a particular play are. I want to discover them myself.
CG Did you see Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood?
JDT Yeah, I did. It’s a wonderful representation, one of many, of that play. I’m coming to understand that what you don’t understand about me is that I’m not building the table to build another table. I’m building a table to learn how to build a table. That will come from my exploration of building the table. I’m building the wheel to teach myself. Myself, the wheel. For myself. That’s the gift. You give that. You learn these things. You give them to an audience. So they never have to be what other people did. They don’t have to be what other people think they have to be. These plays are so fascinating that they can continually be discovered and rediscovered. For over 400 years. So any particular theme that you can think of for a play doesn’t mean that it is the one prevailing theme. Another artist with another director will look at it and take it in a way that differs. I’m all into the excavation process to see what can happen. I’m sure my Antony is different from other Antonys. In some ways good and in some ways bad. But it’s what we found on our search. That’s what I’m about. The process. Finding something in the process, I don’t like people telling me what this character is all about. Because then I’m stilted. Then they close the parameters for me. This guy’s about jealousy. So that’s this. I’m thinking he could be about anything. Jealousy happens to be one of the things that’s out there. Sometimes Charles, when you’re speaking to me, you’re confining the possibilities. I’m constantly trying to expand the possibilities.
CG So why are you talking to me?
JDT Because we have different opinions on things. It’s worthwhile to hear them. But you’re much more of a traditionalist. When I read Macbeth I see all sorts of things. Here’s a guy who is discovering what chaos is. At one moment you’re perfectly fine in your life. You run into these three witches who give you a prophesy which then comes true. You pursue that and then destroy yourself. Ambition. There’s all these different things in it. I try not to define my character. I don’t say that they’re this or that. I try to find my character. So that’s the whole process of the art not to have people define to you what they are. But to find them yourself. If you are painting and someone says you should paint this or that. It’s bullshit. I’m going to paint what’s in my heart. I’m going to do what I find. What the rehearsal process reveals. If someone goes into the rehearsal process saying I think I know what this character is; then don’t even show up. Go home. Let someone else who doesn’t know who this guy is find who he is. That will be ten times more interesting. In my opinion. So I’m not doing these things to say Hey Look at Me I’m Doing Shakespeare. This is a life learning process as a part of a life learning journey. So what people might have to say that’s preliminary means absolutely nothing to me. It has nothing to do with my journey. Because I haven’t taken it yet. At the end I might say months ago you had some ideas and that’s what I found. But I never want to say “Yeah, I think Macbeth is.” You never start out with that statement in a rehearsal. For the story I’m trying to tell that’s all bullshit. It’s just an artist putting their intelligence before their heart.
Astrid Hiemer How does the director help you in the process?
JDT By being nurturing and supportive. You guys should come to a rehearsal and see what happens in the rehearsal process. You have a director who nurtures trial and error. Let’s try things and see what happens. A director who is not going to make you feel as if you are not making mistakes. That kind of a director can keep you moving on a journey of self discovery. What hinders the process is a director who does the opposite. He says this is what I think it should be and I need you to do this. I need you to perform this now. So there is no discovery.
AH My question is have you worked with a director like that?
JDT Not solely like that but had some characteristics, yeah. There have been a couple of directors who have had those characteristics. It’s quite nullifying to one’s imagination. I like to try different things and if a director says no I think it’s this or that.
CG Talk about this experience (A&T).
JDT It was great because Tina Landau is a director who really likes actors. There are actors’s directors and they are ones who really love actors. They get out of the actor’s way so they can create. Then you have directors who are not actor’s director they come in and say, “Ok you move here, you move there, You say this you say that.” They are more dictatorial and that’s a shut down of the creative process. So you don’t want to work with people like that. They are out there. They are both out there. With Tina (Landau) she uses this other process she discovered from Ann Bogart called Viewpoints. It’s a way of actors communicating with each other and themselves. Ann Bogart is a major director of SITI Company just outside of Albany in Schenectady. She teaches at NYU.
CG What’s her approach?
JDT It’s a kinetic approach to one another as actors on stage. Through these exercises you can develop a real conscious state where people are in a relation to space and how your movement effects their movement.
CG Can you give some examples in this play?
JDT A lot of the movement of the Egytians. Their hand movements and kinetic behavior all came out of Viewpoints. It builds relationships with actors real fast. You start to get to know one another. You are working with each other in kind of an intimate way. If you were in an office and said, we are going to explore some kinetic responses, nobody would know what the hell that is. As an artist you can explore these kinds of body mechanics. The modalities of learning how to be in space with another human being. So a lot of the movement of the Egyptians is a lot of kinetic stuff which came out of Viewpoints. Tina is a very smart and intelligent director. She loves actors. I can’t say that enough and she really believes in the ensemble process. Some directors say that but they don’t really do that. She says it and does it. She’s an extremely consistent person as a director.