I remember the audition as one of the most grueling I'd ever been through (and it still ranks up there, after over 100 other shows). After the initial monologues, we did cold readings, in my case mostly for Cassio, with an Iago tossed in here and there, but it was evident the director saw me more as a Cassio type. When he called a few days later to invite me to call-backs, he said " You'll be reading for Cassio, maybe Roderigo..."and here he broke off, and I heard some muffled voices off the phone, and he came back and said, "Oh, and maybe some Iago too." Turns out his stage manager--and girlfriend at the time--was advocating for me as Iago.
I hung up the phone determined to get Iago. I read and reread the play in the days leading up to callback, and I doubt I was ever as focused on getting a particular role at auditions as I was for that. I don't recall actively deciding to downplay my readings as Cassio, but it is true I didn't bother preparing anything for it, either. I started off reading for Cassio, which is a good role, but one I knew I could do in my sleep--earnest, romantic young officer..zzzzzz...I wanted the bad guy, badly.
Gradually, the Cassio scenes dropped off, and the Iago scenes started coming more frequently. This audition process was nothing like the current regime's routine, which is 2 monologues, and maybe a speech or scene from one of the plays, and you are out of there in a hour. No, this audition, which was conducted by a Ph.d student from OSU, lasted well over 5 hours. It just kept going. Now and again, the director would call out "the following 5 names are excused" and the herd would thin out. At the end of it all, it came down to me and another guy for Iago, and it became dueling Iagos. First him, then me. Alternating scene after scene. We did the whole play, every Iago scene. Other actors came up to read the other roles with us. It was a nightmarish audition. Now, many years later and long experience as a director, I recognize the classic signs of directorial impotence. He just couldn't make a decision. So he put it off.
I was new to the company, fairly new to town. Othello was the 2nd play I'd auditioned for in Columbus, the first being All My Sons at Gallery Players, in which I was cast as one of the neighbors. The other prospective Iago was a founding member of the company. And on we went, hammering it out, scene after scene. I felt sorry for Wesley Coleman, who was playing Othello to both of us, and was getting quite a workout. It finally ended after we each did the epilepsy scene, where Othello goes into a seizure and Iago gloats while the Moor is unconscious.
I later learned that scene is what got me the role. When Othello passes out, instead of laughing and gloating, as is usually done, I froze, then walked slowly up to his body, pushed it with my toe to see if he would come out of it, and when he didn't, I began to dance a little Irish jig around his body.
Through the process of exploration in rehearsals, I had gradually stopped doing it, until one day the artistic director dropped by to watch a runthrough, and asked the director why I wasn't "jigging" anymore. She asked him to ask me to put it back in. He laughed, " She said to tell you that's why you were cast in the first place."
The 1989 Othello in Schiller Park was an especially important show for me. It rather put me on the map in the Columbus theatre scene, though that map may be a little one, and leads to nowhere in particular. I went right from Othello to back-to-back shows at CATCO, and back to Actor's Summer Theatre the following summer, as Claudius in Hamlet. By then, the Dispatch, in a feature story on the season's offerings, listed me as one of the company's "stalwarts", as if I'd always been there.
Othello was also important, because I made several important friendships from it. Most notably, Wesley Coleman, who played Othello. I plan to write more about him in future posts. He died in April 1999, ten years ago, and for the ten years between our meeting and his death, he was a fine and warm a friend as ever I had.
Our friendship became cemented during a rehearsal when I challenged his reading of a line. We had pretty much started teasing each other from the start, insulting and baiting each other. We were both pretty vain about our voices, and our line deliveries, and one night as I listened to him speak " I pray you, in your letters/ when you shall these unlucky deeds relate...", I noticed he emphasized the word "shall", which is off the iambic beat. The accented word is "these", so I went up to him during a pause and said, " You know, you're saying that line wrong." He turned to me, puffed up his 6'2" 275 lb. frame, and his deep, James Earl Jones voice, said, " What...did...you...just...say...to...me?" I said, " You're hitting "shall", and it's off the beat. You should be hitting "these"--'you shall THESE unlucky deeds relate." To quote Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, he gave me the "frowning of a lifetime--and he meant it to sting." But I started laughing, and he did too--though he never changed his reading. Throughout the rest of the rehearsals, whenever he came to that line, he would turn toward me as he hammered the word "shall" into my face, reminding me he was his own man.
Iago 1989
But more on his own man in later posts.
Othello also introduced me to Mary Ann Best, who played Desdemona, and who would be my long-suffering companion for seven years. And to Vicky Bragg, who has been a dear friend for lo these 20 years. And to quite a number of other people who have been constants in my life ever since, and for whom I am grateful to know.
I wasn't intending to do this, but perhaps I'll start a little bit of reminiscing of my 20 years of Shakespeare in the Park. Unless I get a wave of comments begging me to stop. But perhaps I will look at you all and say "Shall!"
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