An Interview With
Nat Cassidy

Any Day Now

 

I first got to know you as an actor, so let's start by talking briefly about your acting career. What led you to become an actor in the first place? You've played Hamlet already; what are some of the roles you are still yearning to play?

I started acting when I was five—I can’t quite say what it was in particular that drew me to it other the requisite narcissism any five year-old has in spades. But it was all pretty much clinched for me the following year when I got turned on to the works of Shakespeare (true story: I was an absolute pain-in-the-ass as a kid, and my first grade teacher, my nemesis at the time, actually dared me to read Macbeth, since she knew how much I loved the supernatural, and she thought it might just be difficult enough to shut me up for the rest of the year. Joke was on her—I haven’t shut up since.).  From then on, I was hooked and wanted nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of Olivier or Welles or, when he rolled around, Branagh. This was all tempered when, around 9 or so, I also discovered sketch comedy, and then wanted to be John Cleese, Jim Carrey, or Phil Hartman. Thankfully, the disciplines of classical acting and sketch comedy turned out to not be as different as one might think.

As for roles I’m craving to play, I think the biggest one right now is Prince Hal—that’s the one that I’m actually starting to sweat over, since I feel like I might be starting to get too old for the part soon. Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 are, at the moment, my favorite Shakespeare pieces, so I’m kinda dying to tackle them while I’m still in my 20s. Other than that, there’s probably at least a role per Shakespeare show I’d adore to do—even ones I’ve done before, I’d love to do again (as long as it’s not Midsummer. I’ve done Midsummer five times. I’m done with Midsummer.). I’m also a huge Chekhov fan, and a huge O’Neill fan, and a huge Stoppard fan, and would jump at the chance to do any of their stuff (though I played Tuzenbach in Three Sisters a few years back and still suffer from some residual depression).

I must say, though: I’ve experienced a rather significant sea change over the past few years. I went from being a pretty die-hard classicist, who would’ve been more than happy just to revel in repertoire forever, to now being much, much more interested in creating and cultivating new works instead. As much as I’ll always love the classics, my priorities have definitely shifted, and I would rather devote my time exploring, say, a new Mac Rogers script than, you know, another production of Taming of the Shrew. The way I look at it now, the Elizabethans already have their canon—I want to have a hand in establishing our own.

But, of course, if anyone reading this is currently considering me for any juicy classical role, I’m totally kidding.  Gimme Petruchio any day.

Was there a conscious decision to branch out into directing and playwriting, or did these things just happen? How does being a longtime actor factor into your work as a director and playwright? And you've been reviewing for nytheatre.com for a couple of years now; how does your work in all 3 disciplines influence your reviewing?

Oh, boy, strap yourself in for an epic answer.

Playwriting and directing really happened pretty organically, and both around the same time. I’ve always considered myself a writer, and had been popping out short stories, and comedy sketches, and the occasional abortive novel since I was an early adolescent. For some reason, though, despite my always having been involved in the theatre, I had never felt the urge to give playwriting a try, and I honestly have no idea why.

But then, like four years ago, I was in the process of reeling from a really bad breakup and, after a couple of years living in New York, I was also totally sick of having to rely on other people for the good roles that come all too infrequently, and so I just started adapting a novel I was in the middle of reading because it was speaking to the emotional place I was stuck in and it would also have a killer role for me: John Fowles’ The Collector (which is all about a guy who kidnaps a girl and keeps her in his basement—what does that tell you about the kind of ex-boyfriend I was?).

Incidentally, I was about 60 pages into writing this adaptation when my laptop (which was a shitty old thing with no internet and no disk drive, so there was no was to save anything) got stolen right out of my apartment window and I had to start from scratch all over again. But by that point, I was so wrapped up in the process that, pissed off though I was, it didn’t deter me, and I jumped back into writing it again almost right away (and the finished script is dedicated to the asshole who took my computer, since it ended up being a much better adaptation).

After I finished that script, I became fascinated by the idea of why I was drawn to such disturbing material, and thinking about the relationship between author and subject was what lead me to write The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots. And that show was a really flexible, set-less, British-styled piece, so I thought I’d give a set-bound, “classic” American piece a shot, which lead me to Any Day Now. And so on; each new script just kinda came out of the experience of writing the previous one, which has continued to this day. And while my first few scripts were definitely written with roles for myself in mind, after Any Day Now that stopped being any kind of priority. Which is growth, right?

I do think that, as an actor, I come to the craft of writing with some invaluable tools already at my disposal. A considerate actor is always concerned with how his performance is affecting the play as a whole, how his individual melody is contributing to the larger symphony, and that is terribly important perspective to have when trying to arrange a story you’re writing. Also when I write, I am usually literally just playing improv games in my head, thinking as the actor in each role on the page, which is another tactic I have my fancy BFA to thank.

As for directing, around the same time as I was adapting The Collector, an old college buddy of mine, David Ian Lee, who I hadn’t seen in years, asked me if I wanted to direct his one-man show he had just impulsively written, and I, similarly impulsive, said, “Why not?” That led to an intense couple of years, when I directed three of his world premieres, one after another, and then two of my own pieces.

I think, frankly, that I have less tools to work with as a director—I really just approach directing as someone who has worked with scores of wildly different directors on wildly different productions, trying to copy what worked for me as an actor and avoid what didn’t, and bring the truth of the piece as written to life. Because my background is in classical work, too, I think I’m less inclined to try and alter the text of what I’m directing—rather I try to take it as is and make it work (which, in the case of David’s scripts, was very easy to do). But I do think that, given my personal style as an actor, I'm pretty adept at bringing out the humor and gentle absurdity in things, which is never a bad thing to do as a director.

I do worry sometimes that being a director and actor can be kind of a liability for a writer, though. It’s kind of impossible for me to write a script without the fully staged product already in my head. And particularly as my own aesthetic becomes clearer to me, which it does with every script I write, I find it hard to not imagine myself as the director, which occasionally leads to me having to say things like, “I know it doesn’t look like that line works, but, trust me, it will when I tell the actor to [x].” I think it’s great to have an auteur sensibility, but it does run the risk of making scripts less likely to be dispersible, which is the whole point of this medium, isn’t it? But, I guess I’ll worry about that when all those regional offers start flooding in . . .

As for how that all affects my reviewing for nytheatre.com (boy, I do go on, don’t I?), I hope it means that I have enough experience to be objective and constructive, but also enough empathy for the process of production that I have realistic and fair expectations. I haven’t been fired yet, so I assume that means I’m striking a decent balance. Though, why you hired the guy who writes three-hour plays to try his hand at concise theatrical reviews, I’ll never know.

The 2008-09 theatre season was very productive for you. I'm particularly interested in how you felt about the recognition your first two plays received—Any Day Now is being published by NYTE, while The Reckoning of Kit and Little Boots won the NYIT Award—what was your reaction to this, and do you think the right plays got the right recognition?

Yeah, it was a pretty great season, I must say. I was actually legitimately stunned, since I thought Kit & Little Boots would’ve been considered as a 2007-2008 show, but I guess it fell right on the other side of the IT Awards’ season demarcation (it went up in June of 2008). Particularly since these were my first two full-lengths to be produced, I was just absolutely honored that they were received well in the first place, let alone up for a handful of awards. Also considering what plays Kit & Little Boots was up against in the Full-Length Script category, I was doubly honored (and still a little flummoxed) that it won what it won. And Any Day Now’s publication is just thrilling—I’m so grateful to be included in the P&P pantheon, which has published so many fantastic, exciting works so far.

However, as anyone who knows me can attest (my girlfriend in particular, God bless her), I’m inclined to be pathologically unsatisfied. I’m quite proud of those two plays, and I do think, deep down below all modesty, that they did deserve the attention they got, but none of that will mean much if I can’t make the next plays even better, dammit.

It seems fair to say that you're obsessed with zombies and history. Where did these enthusiasms come from?

Well, not to wax too analytical, but you could certainly say that stories about either zombies or historical events both deal with the idea that the past is never truly behind us, and that anything, no matter how far removed, has the potential to unearth itself and impact our present lives. And if that ain’t good drama, I don’t know what is. 

But, to be totally honest, I actually wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with zombies, per se—rather, it’s the horror genre as a whole.  I’m a gigantic horror buff, and, as the scripts I’ve written thus far show (serial killers, depraved Roman emperors, zombies, mutants, cannibalism, ghosts, Lovecraftian gods, suicide, and necrophilia, just to name a few plot elements), I’m kinda driven by a desire to put ostensibly horrifying things on stage. I would love to make the theatre a scary place again—a place where you don’t know what to expect, and where things you see linger with you emotionally and intellectually . . . and when you turn the lights out at night. And the methods with which you can scare people onstage is so different than on film or in writing, so it’s an invigorating challenge as a writer and director.

As for my more biographical plays, I’ve also always just been fascinated by relatively obscure historical figures. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been an actor, and that’s a career path that’s just redolent on all sides with the stench of a desire for fame, so working on the stories of people who have been lost in the shuffle of history is my way of telling myself that fame is an ultimately pointless goal. Or maybe it’s just because I’m inherently lazy and it’s nice to have the general plot already mapped out for me.

Any Day Now is very traditional in its formal three act structure; it's also wildly contemporary in its attitudes and gonzo/Lynchian style. What would you say were the key influences on you as you crafted the play? Do you regard the play as sci-fi, family drama, social commentary, or none or all of the above?

Oh, man, God friggin’ bless you for the Lynch comment. I am a huuuuuge Lynch fan, and his aesthetic has always been a big influence on me. And you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with this question in regards to what I want to do with my writing: I am hugely excited by taking traditional format and structure and matching it with stories and elements that, upon first glance, seem wholly inappropriate. I think I called it “mash-up” playwriting when we first spoke about Any Day Now: the idea of taking wildly disparate ingredients and throwing them together, not in a campy way, but in a truthful way, to see what we can learn through the places where the elements clash and also where they actually gel.

For instance, right now, I’m halfway through writing a script that is, essentially, an homage to William Inge, but is about a family of nuclear freaks living in the middle of the desert. The end result may not resemble Bus Stop as much as I would love it to (much the same as Any Day Now was initially inspired deeply by Long Day's Journey into Night), but by having that in mind as a key ingredient, it's helped bring out an inherent sweetness and innocence to what could have been, on the surface, just a theatrical rehash of The Hills Have Eyes.

I would say, to my mind, Any Day Now is a family drama first, and a horror story second. The social commentary/satire in the piece is definitely important and intended, but the story of the family is obviously the microcosm through which everything operates, so if that doesn't work first, there's no play. And, I mean, if you want to be crassly obvious about it (and there was a line of dialogue in the script for the longest time that said this flat out), the whole conceit of a kitchen-sink zombie-drama is that, sometimes, our families can eat us alive. (Photos from Any Day Now)

I'm very excited about your upcoming play about Franklin Pierce. Please tell us about it: how did you come upon this subject, and what's the play going to be like?

I’m excited, too! I really hope I can dupe someone into producing it soon. I’ve written two scripts since completing Pierce, and I recently went back to it and read it again—I definitely think it’s one of the strongest pieces I’ve written yet.

Dramaturgically, what I tried to do with it is create a “new” History Play in the Shakespearean mode. It’s a long piece (that drives intensely), with a huge cast of characters, and a panoramic view of a particular point in history with one man and his flaws at the hub.

For those that don’t know anything about Pierce’s presidency (everyone), the short version is that he took office in 1853 after a landslide, opposing-party-destroying election, and on the train ride from his home in New Hampshire to prepare for the inauguration, there was a derailment and his only living son was decapitated right in front of him and his wife. So (understandably, some would say), he spent his entire presidency in a fog, allowing his cabinet and Congress to run roughshod over him (a cabinet which included Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy), and the country inched its way toward civil war as a result of his negligence. In fact, it's quite arguable that it was Pierce's presidency that made the Civil War inevitable—had those four years gone a different way, perhaps it could have all been avoided, or at least mitigated.

The play functions as a series of concentric ghost stories: the immediate ghost story of Pierce, literally haunted by what might be the ghost of his son; the White House, haunted by the ghost of its leader; our present, haunted by the ghost of the Civil War; and so on. I think it’s a gripping story of political machinations and broken hearts and looming catastrophe, as well as being, in many parts, hopefully scary as hell.

To sum up what I've got in mind for the actual production, I’ve been thinking of it as a collision of Macbeth, The West Wing, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining. Like Macbeth, it's a dark examination of guilt, leadership, and the supernatural. Like The West Wing, it's definitely immersive into the world of the White House and its inner workings. The Barry Lyndon part is because I have a very specific vision in mind that further complicates the ability to produce this puppy: if I had my druthers, almost the entire thing would be lit by candles, giving the whole thing an eerie, shadowy, authentically-period vibe. And that leads us to the Shining element, which is the encroachment of, I hope, a terrifyingly claustrophobic and insane atmosphere as the events of the play unfold. Is Pierce really being haunted by the ghost of his son, or is his mind simply cracking under the pressures of his job and position and alcoholism?

Sounds pretty good, right? Who wants to front me some cash to get it on its feet?

Interview with Nat Cassidy was conducted by Martin Denton April 2010

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