INTERVIEW: Legendary actor Austin Pendleton is dreaming of Shakespeare
Photo: Austin Pendleton performs as Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by The Resident Acting Company. Photo courtesy of Al Foote III / Provided by KSA PR with permission.
Austin Pendleton, one of the most prolific performers of his generation, is the embodiment of a professional actor. He has built an unparalleled résumé on both stage and screen, and dedicated his life to the art form by being an acting coach and giving back to so many performers over the years. He has numerous memories of directing and teaching some of the illustrious greats in the business, and he shows no signs of stopping.
Currently he’s making merry as Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare in the inaugural production of The Resident Acting Company. Performances continue at New York City’s Sheen Center for Thought and Culture through Sunday, Nov. 2. This particular production of Midsummer is quite unique in that the “Mechanicals,” or the actors in the play-within-a-play, are the ones telling the entire story.
“Really I love it,” Pendleton said in a recent phone interview. “I love it.”
Pendleton has performed Midsummer before, but only when he was a child. He performed as Francis Flute / Thisbe, and now he’s tackling the role of Bottom. “Bottom is a great part,” he said. “I think Bottom regards himself as a director, so I carry my script around with me. It’s like I’m giving the other actors notes all the time.”
The show, directed by Bradford Cover, has had an exceptional rehearsal process that allowed time for the actors to find their characters and understand the story being told. Still, Pendleton is never 100 percent at ease with any new project.
“I get absolutely terrified,” the actor said with a laugh. “Terrified is very good for actors because in any good play the characters are terrified.”
Pendleton knows a thing or two about what actors can expect when they head into the spotlight on a professional stage. His credits are too numerous to list, everything from My Cousin Vinny to Finding Nemo to A Beautiful Mind and Oz. On stage, he was in the original Fiddler on the Roof, and he has appeared in The Minutes, Choir Boy and The Diary of Anne Frank. Plus, he has directed a great number of shows, including The Little Foxes, The Running Stumbles and Between Riverside and Crazy.
Early on in his career, he learned some vital lessons from some important people in the business. He remembers performing in a 1978 production of Waiting for Godot, directed by an assistant to Samuel Beckett. He remembers being directed on every last detail of his performance, which must have been instructive but frustrating. Later on, he met Lynn Redgrave, whom he directed in a George Bernard Shaw play.
“She invited me to eat at the Russian Tea Room,” Pendleton said. “She said, ‘Austin, over the next seven years’ — she was right down to the number of years — ‘it will be seven years before you get what they stupidly consider a professionally significant job.’ So she said, ‘In those seven years, you must go anywhere to act.'”
He took that advice seriously. In those ensuing seven years, he performed in every Shakespeare play imaginable, bringing these characters to life in attics and lofts, wherever a few chairs were set up and a couple audience members has assembled.
“I learned more about acting than I would have imagined,” he said of the experience. “It was wonderful, and they were in lofts. They were in attics. They were things like that.”
Pendleton added: “Actually Shakespeare shares something with Tennessee Williams in that the language just feels inevitable. … It’s much easier to remember because it makes such total sense.”
It’s perhaps no wonder that Pendleton has created a life of acting, directing and writing. After all, his mother was a professional actor and director, and she passed on her love of theater and the craft of performance to him. Now he can look back and say that he has passed on that gift to many others. He continues to teach other actors at HB Studio, which perhaps the proudest bullet point on his résumé.
Here’s some lasting advice from the maestro: “The job is your own,” he said. “You have to sit at home and go over and over the script and find your identification with it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring Austin Pendleton, continues through Sunday, Nov. 2, at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets to the The Resident Acting Company production.
