Anyone familiar with the work of Josh Hamilton knows that there's a magical unself-conciousness about him, as though he happened upon the stage on his way to the bank. He was an effortless blowhard in This Is Our Youth, the perfect dupe in As Bees In Honey Drown; now he's orphan Homer Wells in The Cider House Rules, Part 1: Here in St. Cloud's, and never once does he rely on props, costumes, or laboratory-tested mannerisms to convey his little-boyishness. Such grace serves him well in Peter Parnell's 200-minute adaptation of John Irving's novel the first half of his novel, about Well's relationship with the orphanage director and part-time abortionist who cares for him opening this Thursday at the Atlantic Theater Company. The show could otherwise come across as precious and peculiar, as Story Theater sometimes does. The Chicago-born style requires that actors narrate the story while acting in it, and therefore speak as much in the third person as they do in the first. (Remember Nicolas Nickleby?) It also requires a fair deal of pantomime. "It's incredibly liberating, actually, says Hamilton. "They'd say, 'Be a truck!' and I'd have to be a truck. It was all that stuff people did in drama school and hated but I never did it." Indeed he didn't. Hamilton grew up in a New York theater family (Mom was an actor; Dad acts and directs) and started his stage career in high school. His first paying role, in fact, was in another Parnell play, Romance Language, in which he got to shout one line after being stabbed (or vowel, really: "Aaaaaagh!"). After two years at Brown University, he came back to New York in order to fully realize the acting career he'd already begun. A wise choice, as it turns out: He did three lead roles Off Broadway, a film (The House Of Yes), and a mini-series (The 60s), all by age twentysomething. (Hey, he's open onstage what more do you want?) We ask whether he's as boyish in real life as he is in Cider House, "Oh, no," he says. "I'm terribly jaded and cynical." Honest? He reconsiders. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe just on bad days.
New York Magazine, copyright 1999. No copyright infringement is intended.
ACTORS' DIALOGUE :
Michael Winters & Josh Hamilton (BACKSTAGE WEST- June 25, 1998)
By Jamie Painter
Back Stage West/Drama-Logue recently met with Michael Winters and Josh Hamilton, who currently star
in "The Cider House Rules," Peter Parnell's adaptation of John Irving's celebrated novel. The production,
which is conceived and directed by Tom Hulce and Jane Jones, is currently in previews at the Mark Taper
Forum in Los Angeles and officially opens July 11. Winter and Hamilton, who respectively play the lead
roles of Dr. Wilbur Larch and Homer Wells, met each other four years ago when they were cast in Seattle
Rep's workshop production of "Cider House."
The New York-based Hamilton previously worked with Parnell on "An Imaginary Life" and "Romance
Language," in which he made his Off-Broadway debut. His recent New York theatre credits include "This
Is Our Youth" for the New Group, "As Bees in Honey Drown" at the Drama Dept., where he is a member,
"Wonderful Time" at the WPA, "Sons and Fathers" with Malaparte, a company which he co-founded, and
"subUrbia" at Lincoln Center. On television, he has been seen in "Women and Wallace" on American
Playhouse, the Hallmark movie "O Pioneers," and the Emmy Award-winning "Abby My Love." His films
include "Alive," "Kicking and Screaming," "The Proprietor," "With Honors," "The House of Yes," and the
forthcoming "Freak Talks About Sex," "Drive, She Said," and "Landfall."
Winters has worked with A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle Rep, and Intiman Theatre in Seattle, ACT in
San Francisco, the Denver Theatre Company, the Arizona Theatre Company, San Jose Rep, Berkeley Rep, Matrix in L.A., PCPA Theatrefest in Santa Maria, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has
previously been seen at the Taper in "The Kentucky Cycle." Recently, Winters has appeared on "Ally
McBeal," "Home Improvement," "Arli$$," and "Hiller and Diller." He is a company member of A Noise
Within in Glendale, where he has directed three productions.
Michael Winters: When I was in second or third grade I played Joseph at Christmas because I was the
tallest kid. That's what started it, and then I acted all the way through high school. I [studied acting] at
Northwestern in the '60s, and when I got out, I didn't do anything for about four years. I just wandered
around. I ended up, through friends that I knew from Northwestern, at the Shakespeare Festival in
Ashland. That's when I started to meet people and started to make other connections. I worked almost
entirely on the West Coast after that.
Josh Hamilton: I grew up in New York City and started working as a teenager, doing theatre and TV.
When I was in high school it was a part-time thing. It was more like a hobby. Instead of sports or
something, I auditioned and worked here and there. I didn't really focus on it fully until I left college and
came back to the city.
Winters: Did you ever have a teacher?
Hamilton: I used to think that the best way to learn was really just to do it as much as possible, so I would
do anything and everything. I just worked jobs to keep busy and tried to learn as much as I could. There
are things that I wished I had trained in more, classical-wise.
I did study with Bill Esper for a year in New York. It was supposed to be a two-year program, but after
the first year, we sat down, had a long talk, and he basically said that my money would be better spent in
therapy.
Winters: [Laughs] It strikes me as odd just listening to us talk about our backgrounds, which are totally
different. I went through school. I did all of that stuff. You didn't; you just started working. But we still
ended up in the same place. Right now, we're in the same situation.
Business and Pleasure
Hamilton: I think maybe because I started working professionally at a relatively young age, one of the
things that I had to rediscover in my 20s is that acting is supposed to be fun. A lot of times you can get so
caught up in the business of it and you forget that the reason you got it in the first place was to make
believe and to play.
Winters: See, now that's funny, because that's also sort of the opposite of my experience. My experience
has been in regional theatre for years and years, where it was really fun. I was very lucky, because I
worked at a time when there were more repertory companies, where literally you would have a job from
September to June. I worked at two, three theatres that were like that.
Hamilton: And that really is the best training.
Winters: Yeah, it was fabulous. It was always fun and it was always challenging. It was not until I started
to come to Los Angeles that the thing that most people start seeing at 25--what you were just talking
about--I didn't see until I was 50.
Suddenly, I didn't have the next job all the time and nobody knew who I was and nobody had seen me do
anything. Now I'm sort of hitting that other side of it that you were aware of from the beginning working
in New York and working in the commercial theatre.
That's all been a shock to me--even ways of going about working that I'm sure are second nature to you
now--about having so little time, about not having rehearsal. You come on the set for something, and you
have to know what you're going to do. I'm used to spending a lot of the time figuring out what's going to
happen, trying things.
For the Love of It
Hamilton: I don't know that much about the theatre scene out here in Los Angeles because I haven't spent
that much time out here, but there seems to be a fair amount of companies going on.
Winters: You could not begin to see everything there is.
Hamilton: The only advice I would have for actors is to find a group of people that excites you and try to
work with them.
Winters: In Seattle, where I've spent a lot of time, a lot of those companies are simply people who've
studied together or who have like interests about what they like to see, and they'll start a company. When I
was coming up that didn't really happen because there were regional theatres and most people went to
them to work. As those started to fall away, then people had to start their own theatres.
Hamilton: That's one of the good things--that out of impoverishment comes the necessity for people to do
it themselves.
Winters: Absolutely, and you realize you don't need a lot of money to do really good work.
Hamilton: But, especially in L.A., there seems to be a feeling that theatre is something you do if you can't
do TV or movies. Or it's a showcase. That's the thing that's the most different from New York, where you
just do plays and it's very unlikely that anyone that can make you famous is going to come see them. So
you just do it for the love of it and to learn and grow. And out here I get that feeling people are hoping
there's going to be a casting director from Fox in the audience.
Winters: This is one of the things I like about A Noise Within. These are people who were classically
trained and who were sitting around drumming their fingers and they had to do it. So they just got a
production together and it happened to click with the city of Glendale and they got some money from the
city and built on that. A lot of those people do [on-camera jobs], but most of them, I think, don't feel that
they're onstage to be seen. They're there to do the work.
Hamilton: You do TV and movies to make the money and then you do theatre for the love of it. I think at
this point in my life, I would pay to do theatre if that was how it worked. BS
Backstage West, copyright 1998. No copyright infringement is intended.
More interviews and feature articles coming soon...
Talent:
Family Man
Edited by Ada Calhoun
New York Magazine, December 16, 2002
"That's so Sam Shepard!" Josh Hamilton expclaims during a conversation about gothic families. Only acting junkies use playwrights as adjectives, and true to form, the 33-year old West Village native is a workhorse. He currently stars in John Corwin's Gone Home, which opens at the Manhattan Theatre Club December 17, but he recently spent ten months on Broadway in Proof and, in his spare time, taped a spot on Absolutely Fabulous as Edina's long-lost son, Serge. In Gone Home, Hamilton plays a writer who returns to his family to find "a seemingly normal midwestern living room. To say much more would give it away. Part of the fun for the audience is figuring out what's really going on. But my character does worry a lot about the future, which is a stretch," he admits, with a smile, "because I have this amazing ability to not really think about the future at all."
Ada Calhoun, New York Magazine, c. 2002. No copyright infringement is intended.
A Theatre Company With All The Comforts Of Family
(NEW YORK TIMES-July 15, 2001)
By Robert Simonson
Almost exactly four years ago, the Drama Dept. staged Douglas Carter Beane's "As Bees in Honey Drown" at its usual haunt, the Greenwich House Theater in Greenwich Village. Only the third production by the company a collective of actors, writers, directors, designers, musical directors and stage managers conceived in 1994 it beguiled audiences and critics, transferring to a long run at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The first hit play for Mr. Beane, the company's artistic director, it solidified Mark Brokaw's status as a rising director, gave J. Smith-Cameron perhaps her most memorable role in the scheming social butterfly Alexa Vere de Vere and remains the Drama Dept.'s biggest commercial success to date.
Now, Mr. Beane, Mr. Brokaw, Ms. Smith-Cameron and two other "As Bees in Honey Drown" veterans the actors Josh Hamilton and T. Scott Cunningham have teamed again for Mr. Beane's latest play, "Music From a Sparkling Planet," which opens at the Greenwich House Theater on Thursday. The bittersweet comedy tracks three emotionally arrested and acutely unhappy men who try to foist some order on their miserable lives by seeking out Tamara Tomorrow (Ms. Smith-Cameron), an adored local television personality from their youth. (Ross Gibby plays the third male friend and Michael Gaston portrays the station manager.)
Can lightning strike twice for this quintet? After a recent performance, the group repaired to Chumley's, the former speakeasy and Village landmark not far from Greenwich House, to talk about the old play, the new play and why they go on meeting like this. Here are excerpts from the taped conversation.
ROBERT SIMONSON: I assume it isn't an accident that you're together again for "Music From a Sparkling Planet."
DOUGLAS CARTER BEANE: Actually, it is an accident. That's the thing that's so strange. The way casting works at the Drama Dept., we go through a list of members and try to get people from the company in the show. We did a reading that Josh, Scott and Ross Gibby were in. We made offers to them. And I didn't think J. would be available, but then she said yes. We were so busy casting, we didn't realize we had a reunion on our hands.
SIMONSON: The part of Tamara Tomorrow sounds as if it were written for J.
BEANE: I did write it for her. Years ago, I wrote a chunk of the first act and we did a reading in my living room.
JOSH HAMILTON: Who read my part at that reading?
BEANE: Albert Macklin.
T. SCOTT CUNNINGHAM: Who read my part? And how was he?
BEANE: Leonardo DiCaprio. (Laughter)
SIMONSON: What's it like being back together?
J. SMITH-CAMERON: (Deadpan) Oh, it's all right. (Laughter) No, it's great. In the sense of a group dynamic, it's very familiar. But the plays are so different.
BEANE: I've worked with Scott a lot I pretty much wrote this part for him. Scott is now a part of my brain. And there was a part of Scott that I hadn't seen on stage that I saw in life that I wanted to write about: the kind of silly, crazy, neurotic goofball. When Josh signed on, I did a big bunch of rewrites, which I talked to Josh about beforehand. The idea of coming back with the same people the comfort is so great.
SIMONSON: "As Bees in Honey Drown" was your first major success as a playwright.
BEANE: The company was very young then and it was our first original play. We threw "Bees" up for a lot less money than we have this one. And it was originally only for a three-week run, too.
SIMONSON: Mark, "Bees" gave you your third directing success in a row, after the plays "This Is Our Youth" [written by Kenneth Lonergan, Ms. Smith-Cameron's husband] and "How I Learned to Drive" [by Paula Vogel].
MARK BROKAW: I'd worked with Josh before in "This Is Our Youth," but it was the first time I was working with the Drama Dept., a group of people I had long admired.
SIMONSON: And J., in many ways Alexa Vere de Vere is the best role you've ever had. Did you know that at the time?
SMITH-CAMERON: I never know how things are going to be received. I knew it was a fantastic role. It certainly changed things, because the play was a hit. But when you look back at your career, each puzzle piece fits in inevitably behind the next.
CUNNINGHAM: Remember, I read through it with you in your apartment.
SMITH-CAMERON: Oh, my God! Yeah, because when they asked me to do it, I could not picture myself doing that part. I didn't think I was remotely like the role. So, since Scott and I are old friends, I made him come up to my apartment and read it with me, just to see if I could do it.
SIMONSON: J. and Josh, you've done two of Douglas's plays. Scott, you've done three. What do you think his plays are all about?
BEANE: Misspellings and bad punctuation.
HAMILTON: You get to know his rhythms and the way he writes becomes more familiar.
CUNNINGHAM: I don't think you ever see where his plays are going. They have totally unique plots.
BEANE: This is like finding out what I'm like in bed. (Laughter) "Too much with the hands." I should be taking notes.
CUNNINGHAM: "Don't talk so much during it." (Laughter)
SIMONSON: There seems to be a lot of wistfulness in your work, a yearning for what's lost. You look back to your Philadelphia upbringing a lot.
BEANE: Well, that's what I got. I always say I wish I was Southern or Jewish, because then I could really write. All I have is Philadelphia and gentile. But it's mine and I'll keep it.
SIMONSON: What is it like having a part written for you?
CUNNINGHAM: It's great. I've been really lucky. I've done that with Nicky Silver.
BEANE: We secretly want to be you.
CUNNINGHAM: And friends should hire friends.
SIMONSON: How is it to direct with people you've worked with before?
BROKAW: You start by walking into a room not having to prove anything. You've been in the trenches with these people in other difficult circumstances. You have a vocabulary already. And you're able to push people in different ways, because you've been there before with them. At times, they push me to places I usually wouldn't go.
SMITH-CAMERON: Like the bar. (Laughter)
CUNNINGHAM: We have a lot of booze jokes for some reason.
BEANE: I don't know if I would have had the gumption to write this play if I didn't have the feeling of safety I have with this group. "Music From a Sparkling Planet" is about a lot of things that have happened in my life that I have rearranged to make a play.
SIMONSON: Is Tamara Tomorrow based on a real person?
BEANE: There's a lot of my mom in the character. There's a lot of people I've worked with professionally people I've loved.
SIMONSON: At this point, you could probably open your plays with bigger theater companies, but you continue to do them with the Drama Dept. Why?
BEANE: Complete control! No. I want to do it this way. I've had enough horrible experiences in the film world that I've come to cherish this so much. I don't want to ruin it. This works. I think I balked at Mark asking to cut a page recently. When he asked a second time, I said, "All right." And when J. says, "I can't make sense of this," that means the line is wrong, because she has such a great ear for dialogue.
SIMONSON: This play is about people who are in their late 30's an age that most of us here are. Was it easy getting to the emotional center of these characters? Actually, Josh, you're a little younger.
HAMILTON: How do you know?
SIMONSON: I'm guessing.
HAMILTON: I thought I looked older in my beard. Well, I'm old enough that I have nostalgia for my youth. I have nostalgia for last week.
CUNNINGHAM: The way people talk about television characters they love, they get so passionate about it. We all have a little bit of that. I thought of a television character I watched that I hadn't thought of in years simply because of this play. It touches something that escaped, that you had as a kid.
BROKAW: It's a sense of loss. That's the core of the play for me. There's some road you went down, and you could have gone on another road. Everyone in this play is hanging onto something, unable to take the next step. Everybody has somebody they're looking for, somebody who affected them deeply in some way, and they've been searching for them ever since, or for someone to take their place. There's something very uncynical and unsentimental about that. I think it's an inherent part of getting older. And I do think it touches men of a certain age.
It's also what everybody yearns for being part of a community. When I go to Greenwich House, that little tiny space, I feel a sense of pride. I have a sense of ownership in terms of the tickets that are torn and what the lobby looks like and the air- conditioning and how noisy it is.
HAMILTON: We have nice new air- conditioning.
BROKAW: I don't mean to sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think anybody who's part of a company, that's why you do it. You want to be able to have a sense of ownership and trust.
CUNNINGHAM: That's got to be the reason you hear about people starting companies all the time. It's about having a place to go. I sometimes just like having a place to go.
HAMILTON: I go for the air-conditioning.
Robert Simonson is an editor at Playbill On-Line.
His play ``Kicker'' was recently presented at
the Williamstown Theater Festival's Fridays@3 reading series.
NY Times, copyright 2001, No copyright infringement is intended.
