Richard Thomas, Actor

You can currently catch Thomas in Timon of Athens, the inaugural production of the Public LAB SHAKESPEARE (tickets to all performances are $15 and are available through The Public Theater's website). During a recent chat, Thomas told us about his acting philosophy, Jacobean language and why he loves living in NYC.

From David Mamet to William Shakespeare, Mamet has a very specific approach to directing—were you at all influenced by him in your preparation for Timon? Well that’s an interesting question, I’ll have to think about it. First of all, let me just say that Mamet is, as a director, amazing to be with in the room. It was nothing but fun from the beginning. None of us had worked with him before so we were all a little bit like, “What’s this going to be like? Is he going to be tough?” He was the funniest, sweetest, most supportive, actor-friendly director. I’ve never worked with a more actor-friendly director. So he allayed all of our fears and put us at ease. We had a wonderful time.

He has very, very strong theoretical ideas about acting, about theater and what to do, what not to do. He’s very opinionated about all of it, but he’s not really doctrinaire in the room as a director. He’ll tell you, ‘Don’t put so much on yourself, you don’t gotta prepare for a scene, just come on and say the words,’ you know that’s his story. And to a certain degree, he’s actually right-- that if you have done the work of preparing for the play, all you really have to do is get on stage and begin and the play will take you where you need to be. That is true. It takes years of experience, however, to sort of trust that that will happen. But he was very good-humored: he’d say, ‘You know what to do, you just do it.” He’d give good notes.

He was great. I actually told him in rehearsal that I thought he should direct Shakespeare because of the clarity that he has as a director. He’s an invisible director. His theory is always, of course, if there were no director, the actors will still figure out how to director the play, because that’s what actors do. So consequently as a director he doesn’t get in the way of the play, he kind of lets the play come forward and he’s kind of an invisible hand. In Shakespeare he would probably be very clear, he would make things very clear.

Now, would I prepare Timon of Athens using Mamet’s theories of theater? I don’t know. I mean, it’s all in the words, just as in Mamet it’s all in the words. All plays, it’s all in the words. So it’s really about learning the words, understanding a text, unpacking the technique that he’s used as a writer, Shakespeare or Mamet , what their particular voice is, or McNally or Albee or Williams or Chekhov, they have a particular way of writing and a particular voice and particular words they use and particular kinds of characters they like... It’s all on the page really. I’m a text-oriented actor so in that sense it’s very much...I agree with Dave. That’s what it is. Words on the page. And when the actor takes the words on the page and embodies them, you have a character in motion. Is that answering your question at all?

Absolutely. Is there something in particular about Shakespeare’s words that keep drawing you back? You’ve done multiple Shakespeare plays at the Public and elsewhere. Yeah, I have, I love Shakespeare. I did my first Shakespeare when I was thirteen at Stratford, CT, the 400th Anniversary Season since Shakespeare’s birth and I played the young prince who’s slaughtered in a tower in Richard III. And I just fell in love, I fell deeply in love with it, with the language, with the words, with Shakespeare at that time. Ever since I got on stage and spent a summer at Stratford listening to the actors and reading the plays and looking at the other productions, that did it for me, I completely fell for it and I’ve always loved it.

One of the things, to be more specific, obviously we have the quality of the writing. But also, the language is very alive. Jacobean and Elizabethan playwriting, the language is so alive because the language was so elastic at that time, as you know. It was being changed, it was emerging, it was being formed, words were coined like crazy. So that sense of liveliness in the language is still there. Very potent. And the sound, the music of it, how words bump up against... they were so conscious of what they were doing with language. And so there’s relish, there’s delight to be had in it. It’s delightful, even when it’s difficult and painful to play, like "Timon" is, you can delight in it. You don’t want to be the kind of actor, ‘Oh look at him he’s delighting in the language!’

I think that’s fun to watch, personally, I enjoy seeing an actor relishing every element of his performance. I find that to be entertaining. Well it’s a very...it’s delicious. And it’s hard for audiences because, you sit in the rehearsal room for a month with the play, and you’re working together on it, you learn all about it. And when you come into the theater and you sit down and you watch it...it goes by you at speed. It’s always like listening to a foreign language for the first ten minutes, always. Even people who are actors sit down and listen to Shakespeare and they don’t know the play absolutely perfectly at the beginning; it’s like ‘What are they speaking? What language are they speaking?’ And then slowly, since the intentions are so clear and the storytelling is so brilliant, you finally enter into the world of the language—then it becomes clear and it becomes your language as the play moves forward. But this play, it was one of the exciting things about doing "Timon," is this is, to most people, this is a new Shakespeare play. This play has been done three times in New York in 40 years; it’s very rarely done in this country. It’s done with much greater frequency in Europe than it is in America.

Do you think there’s a reason for that? Well, I think there’s absolutely a reason for that. Because it’s a very alienating play. It’s very different from all of his other plays. It has a very stark, sort of unforgiving point of view about people. At least the character’s point of view. The second half of the play is almost like Beckett in some ways. Because it’s a play about alienation in the second half, Europe has embraced more alienation in the theater through Brecht and productions and I think they identify with this text particularly well. And then Americans like things to be more emotional and cozier. Even a tragedy like "Lear," it’s sad, but Lear and his daughter get back together again so the parent-child relationship is healed in the end of "Lear," where as nothing is healed at the end of Timon. And it’s disturbing. It’s a very disturbing play, I think. My son, my 14-year-old son, was very disturbed by it because it made him question all of his relationships with his friends and the kind of friend he was and whether his friends could be trusted or whether he could be trusted by his friends. It’s disturbing in that respect. It’s a great play for now, it’s all about money.

Are you anticipating many audience members having the same reaction that your son did? I think it’s one of the questions that the play invites you to ask. It’s interesting to be doing this play after doing Mamet because this play is all about transactions, and Mamet’s plays are all about transactions. It’s all about economy whether it’s money economy, sexual economy, the economy of dynamics within an office workplace, whatever it is, it’s all transaction. And "Timon" is about transactions, It’s about what passes from one person to another and what that means. The value of those transactions, how far they can be trusted. The idea that society is so materialistic and so much about money that when the money begins to go away, or when the structure that’s been set up—in this case, Timon’s giving to everyone—begins to collapse, that everyone is running in fear that everything will collapse. And the relationships take a back seat to that and the human element of society, of people depending on one another, needing one another, trusting one another, is cracked, from this perspective. It’s an interesting play for now.

There is a fascinating correlation between what’s been happening the past couple of years in this country. Exactly. There was an economic paradigm shifting in Shakespeare’s time, the way money was used in society from an earlier, more feudal system to an interest-based system. So the play is a little bit a critique of that. It’s a very funny play but in a really dark way. It’s really dark humor. It’s like a fable almost, like a fairy tale: generous man loses his money, friends don’t help him out, he goes into the woods, finds money, everybody comes back to see him. It’s very interesting—what does he do? It has elements of fable in it but because it’s Shakespeare, and Milton, who collaborated with Shakespeare in this play and wrote a bit of it, because it’s such good writing it’s never two-dimensional in that respect. Certainly not the Timon character.

On the Public’s website there’s an interview with you and you mention enjoying performing in this intimate space for the LAB. Is there something in particular that makes a small space exciting for you? First of all, it’s the LAB series but we’re doing it in the Anspacher, which was the theater that was envisioned by Joe Papp as being the Shakespeare house. It was conceived of being the best house for Shakespeare at the Public. There have been many wonderful Shakespeare productions and wonderful actors who have worked in the Anspacher and performed Shakespeare over the decades. This is the first Shakespeare in the LAB series and the LAB series was always supposed to have Shakespeare in it, and they always wanted to do Shakespeare for 15 bucks a pop, very stripped down, actor-driven productions, but they never managed to do Shakespeare. This is the first Shakespeare that’s being done in the context of the LAB, but we’re doing it at the Anspacher. Nevertheless, it is the smallest theater in which I’ve done Shakespeare and I’m very excited about it. I love being that close to people speaking this language.

You’ve grown up in Manhattan and lived in New York City your whole life. Have you ever contemplated moving to Los Angeles or somewhere else?
I lived in Los Angeles for 32 years.

Oh, I didn’t realize that! I was born and raised in Manhattan, worked in LA as a teenager a lot, made movies and always stayed in Manhattan. But then I moved out to do The Waltons in 1972 and then I lived there, had families, made a life out there and came back to New York... it will be seven years ago this summer. I always felt the calling to come back here. I always wanted to. But you know, you put down roots and you have families and you make a life. And I always came back and worked in the theater here but my present wife, who loved New York, she’s actually a New Mexican, she’s a south westerner, she was never crazy about LA and our kids were grown and we had one kid left at home, who is now 14. And she said, “You love New York, this is what you love to do, you love the theater, let’s just move to New York.” And I was so happy. So we did! And I’ve been thrilled to be back. Everyday I hit the street, and it’s almost seven years later, and I’m just grateful to be back here. And I had a wonderful run in LA too, I loved LA, it had a lot of great things about it and I had great experiences and great success there. But I’m so happy to be a New Yorker again.

What’s the ideal New York City day for you? [Laughs] There are so many possible ideal New York City days! Yesterday the ideal New York City day was that I didn’t have to do this play, I had a day off, and my wife and I laid in bed with the newspaper and then we walked hand-in-hand through the neighborhood and went to the grocery store, and you don’t have to get in a car, we just had our wonderful day walking in the streets and that fabulous weather—wild, crazy, windy, sunny, beautiful day—and then just walked to dinner for Valentine’s Day. It was perfect. It’s the accessibility of everything in New York. I love walking, I love being on the street with people, I love all that contact that drives some people crazy. I love it. And I’ve never stopped loving it. My 14-year-old, who was born in LA, calls himself a “born again New Yorker,” which I think is very sweet. People say to him, “Were you born in New York?” and he says, “No, I was reborn in New York.’ [Laughs]

I think a lot of people feel that very same way! I know it’s true, I know it’s true. For me it was a homecoming, not just to the city itself but also to the theater community that I love so much. I had so many friends in the theater and I’d come back all the time and do plays and they’d say, “When are you just gonna move back? Come on back, come on back!” Terrence McNally, a dear friend and wonderful playwright, whose work I’ve done a lot, the last play of his [The Stendhal Syndrome] I did in New York City, he gave me, as an opening night gift, a little Limoges suitcase and said “Please move back to New York.” And we did!