Mark Rylance, Actor

Rylance's performance is titanic—he's widely considered a lock for another Tony award for this one—and the play has just been extended another four weeks, through August 21st. Taking place in a single day, Jerusalem (which is set in England and named after a William Blake poem) concerns Byron's spellbinding hold over the local wayward youth, and his defiant fight against eviction from the land he considers his ancestral home. Last week, on the eve of the Rapture, Rylance spoke with us about his performance, what he does to prepare for the three-plus hour play, and the end of days.

Well, I saw Jerusalem and it was really unforgettable. And such a great ensemble, too. I know you were nominated for a Tony award, but I feel like the whole piece was really a collaborative effort. Even though your performance stands out, everyone was part of a cohesive whole. Yeah, I'm glad you feel that way, I feel that way, too. Most of the company are the actors who were part of the original rehearsal period. Many of them signed up without any parts. There wasn't even the part of the professor written when he was asked to join the exercise. There was just the promise that there was a part that was going to be written. It has been a very collaborative group work, an ensemble work...To wait off-stage for an hour and then you come on and confront me as my wife or as the step-father from the town, those are really difficult jobs.

When you say that everyone helped create the play... I wasn't aware that it wasn't written to begin with. Can you talk about the process of how the play developed? Well, Jez [Butterworth] wrote every word. But Ian [Rickson, director] and Jez have worked together for ten years on plays, and Ian is very adept at layering the imaginative reality of the actors. If you are doing a scene and it says you know, "I remember you last year in the pub toasting your daughter's name," he will stop and say, "Right, you, you, you, you, are all visiting the pub, here you are a year ago, let's go."

And so it changes very rapidly into imaginative exercises, improvisations, that come off of the text, so that we have a collective experience of what took place. And Jez attends all the rehearsals, and therefore once he gives you a spark of what to do, he then observes what you as actors are doing with it, and goes away, and writes things. He rarely writes what you as actors have improvised, but he... The process not only involves him remembering and imagining real people that he's encountered. It also then involves him observing and responding to our imagination of the people.

For instance, I think you know with Rooster, there's a person that both Jez and I, who Jez introduced me to, is part of my characterization of Rooster. But there are also some people from my life that I bring into rehearsal and that he doesn't know. So it's very much like being in the kitchen with lots of ingredients and Jess and Ian editing and responding, trying things, cutting things. We must have cut 45 minutes off the play and we certainly added a whole act if not an act and a half during rehearsals.

For those who aren't familiar, how would you describe the character you play? Who is he? [Long pause] Johnny "Rooster" Byron is a Romany man, more commonly known as a Gypsy man, which is a particular culture of English people who travel, don't like to be settled in one place. But he has settled on the outside of this village in the countryside, and he lives in the woods on the edge of town, and he has become the kind of, I suppose the people say, the Falstaff to the young people of the town. To my mind, he is particularly interested in them being true, true to themselves, and finding their way. And I suppose he is a kind of teacher in a way, but a pretty wild one, and I'm not sure he's... You know, I think underneath you don't see that side of him in the play because it's a very difficult day for him, but I think, as well as having a lot of fun and enjoying their company, I think he is trying to teach them something about boundaries and about the gifts that each of them have.

Then why do you think, at the end—and I'll warn people not to read this if they still haven't seen the play [SPOILER ALERT!]—but why do you think at end when Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) appears and tries to help him, he, Rooster, rejects Ginger's help so derisively? The thing with Ginger is, you know, I feel like Rooster is trying, through the whole play... Ginger is like a little bird that won't leave the nest. He keeps talking about being a DJ and he's not. He's not gone to the larger town and actually...He's not been brave enough to really follow his dream, and in the end, the clinging of Ginger to Rooster's life and Ginger being the kind of spokesperson about Rooster's life, that's got to end. Ginger's got to find his own two feet, got to fly.

So Rooster's been looking for a while, I think, for some way to really repel, to push Ginger out of the nest, in a way. I think that's partly it. Partly Rooster's aware that something violent is going to take place, even more violent in a moment. I think he loves Ginger very much and they've been companions for a long time, but he knows that it's not really right. Any young person doesn't pass through, they need to pass through and go out into the world and take what they've got into the world.

How do you relate to Rooster? In what ways do you think you and Rooster are alike, and in what ways do you differ? I'm much more... Well, I'm a much more careful person. I'm not someone who's good at telling stories or jokes. I'm not witty or quick like he is. I guess I'm strong, but my... And again, I suppose, I am a defiant person in some ways, but I don't know that I am as angry or as defiant as Rooster is. And my hair is not as black as his hair.

You were saying that Jez introduced you to a man who is in part an inspiration for this character. I'm wondering what you took away from that meeting. Who is this guy? Yeah, it's a guy called Micky Lay, who lives in a village in Wiltshire. When Jez was living in this village writing the play Mojo ten or so years ago, he had passing encounters with Micky Lay, who like Rooster is banned from every pub, and like Rooster, is someone that the young people go and hang out [with]. And indeed at that time, he was living in a caravan at the edge of town and throwing wild parties and eventually did some time in prison, I think for drug offenses.

But Micky is an extraordinary character, he's now in his 70s. I've gone and visited him three times. I get my voice from him, I get the rhythm of the Rooster from him. I get some of these things that I've been telling you about in terms of concerns for young people whose families are dysfunctional or who don't have a direction in life. He has two sides, Micky Lay. He has a side that's quite charming and very, very mannered. Good manners, courtesy—when he's sober. And I think when he gets drunk he gets very, very difficult.

Did he come see the play? Yes, he did.

What was his reaction? He fell down some stairs. He hurt himself. With a glass in hand. Then he stood up and came right back up. I think he was really... I think he really enjoyed it. He came up with about fifty people from the village. They were a little surprised when the play got very personal. And I think the play was disturbing to Micky's son, Scotty, his teenage son. I suspect it wasn't far from the mark in terms of, you know, the scenes of him as a boy in Jerusalem. His father beating him up, and bloody, seeing these kinds of things. But yeah, Micky was in very good spirits that night, very good spirits, indeed. When I saw him more recently, he showed me lots of pictures, and he had newspaper articles. We were delighted to find ourselves like a local football team. Very, very welcome in the village. And the whole village kind of, you know, watching and talking about how it was going to go on Broadway, as if it as a big away-match.

I think that people who live around Micky, who clearly has a big alcohol problem, I think they see the downsides of it even more than you do in the play. I think it's complex. I think that there are many sides...

It's very multidimensional, of course. It just seems—how many performances do you do a week? Two performances in a day? Yeah, I have two today and two on Saturday.

Is it just an illusion that's created that it seems like a role that would be very exhausting? Or is it actually something, compared to other roles you've done, any more or less exhausting? What do you do to prepare for it? I guess it probably is more exhausting, because it is so defiant. I'm not sure I was as exhausted as when I played Hamlet, an older man pretending to be a younger man at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Both of those characters are defiant, but with this one there is a rising defiance. Defiance is a very, it's not—you don't have time to be exhausted. What do I do? I really just try to stay in the present, not think about the future or the past.

Do you do anything before each performance? Any rituals? Activities?
Yeah, I have a ritual I do. The activity I do is to play volley ball in the stalls of the company. [Laughs] It's very good to play a ball game before you act! It awakens your body and your mind to the present, you know? That's a good thing. I also have a trainer and chiropractor to keep returning my body to some sense of balance, because three hours of limping on one leg is a little twisty.

And then when the play starts, you do a spectacular headstand, dunking your head in the water. Did that come easily to you? It's a little frightening, that! When you first practice it, you think, it doesn't seem right to be doing that. Hanging upside down does seem a little bit...why? But actually, it's not as difficult as it looks. Because of the shape of the trough, it's not as difficult as it looks.

Do you think your performances have changed since you've been doing it [since 2009]? It changes all the time. The changes are probably imperceptible to the audience but not to me. Every day the audience is different and the other actors are different. The manifestation of it changes. I think probably the basic story and the basic objectives and motivations don't change, but I mean my particular interest is its presentness, that it's not the same, and that we as performers are able to judge and respond to the energy, the imaginative energy that the audience brings into the room.

I don't feel that I have to generate all the imaginative energy. I feel if I am open to what the audience brings, they actually bring a lot of energy, which I then, like a kind of surfer, ride. I have to get up on the board at the right moment and just stay on the board, which takes concentration, and perhaps some imaginative strength at times, to twist and turn, to keep in the wave of the audience's imagination. But really the energy of the day is a big wave of desire from the audience to hear a story. And once we kick it off, to hear what's going to happen next. So, it's a matter of...it's a little bit like surfing.

That is such a beautiful metaphor. I'm wondering if you recall interesting reactions from audience members who have seen the performance? We had an email once, from someone who said that the last time that she or he was covered in blood, listening to the beats of a drum and waiting to meet giants, was the day that they were born. And that was a big surprise to us, as we hadn't...But the giant keeps saying, whatever happens, this is one big morning. And this whole thing of the connection of evening and morning, the end of one way of being and the birth of a new way of being, the inclusion of death and birth within life, that death isn't the opposite of life, it's the twin of birth...That email was really interesting to me. We unconsciously had written—had thought we were writing a death scene, and had unconsciously written a birth scene.

That gives the ending an incredibly new perspective for me. It really does. It's so prevalent in society at the moment, maybe it always has been, but I think it's very prevalent at the moment, because of some very old reckonings of time. 26,000 year cycles that points toward 2012, and even yesterday when we had a company meeting to start the week, someone said you know, raised the point, I keep seeing signs all over New York that the world is going to end on Saturday, so what are we planning for the Saturday matinee? [Laughs] I certainly don't remember when I was growing up there being so many groups and articles and discussions of the unsustainability of our life, or our present capitalist life, the response of nature. I don't recall any discussion of even the larger cycles of time coming to an end, and there being a wide discussion of whether there is an end or a beginning. So the play seems to resonate in that consciousness, as well.