http://trueslant.com/pietlevy/2010/03/11/talking-with-the-chicago-based-stars-of-philip-seymour-hoffmans-the-long-red-road/Talking with the Chicago-based stars of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s ‘The Long Red Road’
(there's a video at the link too)
Philip Seymour Hoffman, film star Tom Hardy and playwright Brett C. Leonard have been getting most of the attention for Goodman Theatre’s production of “The Long Red Road,” the must-see Chicago play of the season. And while Hardy’s fearless performance, Leonard’s riveting writing and Hoffman’s exquisite direction deserve their accolades, the play also greatly benefits by two Chicago actresses whose piercing performances form the heart of the story.
Greta Honold, 24, stars as Annie, a teacher in South Dakota involved in a relationship with a self-destructive wreck of an alcoholic, played by Tom Hardy. Fiona Robert, at age 16, is the alcoholic’s lonely daughter Tasha, estranged from a father she longs to know, but trapped in the care of a bitter mother (Katy Sullivan) and an uncle (Chris McGarry) who lusts for her. Both actresses are still in school – Honold is getting her MFA in Arts Leadership from The Theatre School at DePaul University, and Robert is a high school sophomore at the Chicago Academy for the Arts – but based on their extraordinary performances, their acting careers are off to a fantastic start.
Honold and Robert sat down for a conference call with Chicago Beat to talk about preparing for such a challenging play, working with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and lessons from the experience.
Chicago Beat: It must have been incredibly intimidating to audition for this play. As if there wasn’t enough pressure in trying out for your Goodman debuts, your director was Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Greta Honold: I don’t know how Fiona felt. I was pretty nervous.
Fiona Robert: Oh yeah, I was shaking.
GH: I was shaking and sweating. I’m usually a calm auditioner, but [Hoffman] is one actor who I just respect so much and I think he’s one of the best actors out there to be perfectly frank. So it was quite intimidating. As soon as I walked in the room I felt pretty calm I have to say. Part of that is I knew I had a job to do and part of it is he is so unpretentious and normal and calming when you first meet him. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, you’re just a normal guy.’ As the [audition] process went on there were moments where I stepped outside myself, where I thought, ‘What am I doing here? I’m so outside of my league. Who decided this was a good idea?’ But most of the time I realized we were all artists, all in the room, all supporting each other, and all of us have to learn from each other. You had to get the job done.
FR: I was nervous of course. For me it was also like almost any other audition. I focused on my persona, the memorization, getting it down, trying to develop the character, and if its what they want, it’s great. … When I first auditioned for [Hoffman], I thought it went very badly. He was interested in trying to work with me as director, giving feedback. I was already very set in what I had been practicing so when he told me things to do, I was thrown off. I thought, ‘Oh no, he doesn’t like what I was doing.’ I was convinced I didn’t get the role. They didn’t call me for three weeks. I had totally forgotten about it, chopped my hair off, went blond. They called me three weeks later to come in for another callback. By that time, I thought, ‘If they want me it’s great, if they don’t, I don’t care.’ I went in for third audition ready to do that.
CB: But even after you were cast, there must have been times where you lost your confidence, given the pedigree of the theater and who you were working with, where you may have been star struck, not just by Hoffman, but by Tom Hardy.
FR: I thought when I got the role, I was ready to do it. I don’t remember a time except maybe the first day when I felt overwhelmed. [Everyone was] very helpful and very nice. They were also ready to do the work. Everybody was in a good place. It was a great rehearsal process.
GH: I definitely had my moments where I felt less than 100% confident. Rehearsal for the play was very challenging. These are tough characters and tough themes, and we had a wonderful script we had to do justice to. It was just those things, not the celebrity stuff, that hampered my confidence. It was like every rehearsal process, where I have a moment where I go, ‘Oh my god, I have no idea. What am I doing? Who decided to hire me?’ Most actors have those ups and downs where they lose their confidence for a moment and regain it. We’re very vulnerable beings. (Laughs).
FR: Both [Hoffman and Hardy] are hilarious. They tell the funniest stories. When you’re trying to find [your character], they have some story, some experience of their own that makes you really take it out of the context of the play for a second.
GH: They have been through it all. There is so much experience in that room and so much sympathy with everything that you’re going through.
FR: I remember Phil telling me story about how he would wait at the window for his Mom, watching for her to come home. So for my monologue, where I talk about how I’m waiting for somebody, that kind of [story] was helpful I think.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (left) directs Fiona Robert as Greta Honold and other cast and crew look in for Goodman Theatre's new play, "The Long Red Road." Picture by Liz Lauren.
CB: Your characters go to some extremely dark places, and as actors, you’re called to perform some very difficult scenes. [Note for Readers: If you don’t want to find out some pivotal scenes from the play, skip ahead until the next ‘note for readers.’] Greta, the play opens with you in a naked, vulnerable sex scene, where you’re yelling cruel insults at Tom’s character. And Fiona, that scene where your uncle molests you on stage is heartbreaking and painful. How did you both prepare for these roles and summon up the courage to carry out these scenes in particular?
GH: For me it’s always about figuring out how you relate to the character first of all … and recognizing what you don’t understand and being honest about that. My character is the adult child of an alcoholic father and is in this relationship with an alcoholic, so she fit into this archetype of the codependent spouse. So I sort of understand generally, but I did a lot of reading of books into the psychologies of women and codependent relationships, …but just reading stuff isn’t enough. You have to make it personal. Luckily I have very loving supportive parents who are not alcoholics, but there are things I’ve gone through in my life to relate [the character] to. It’s using your imagination to span that gap, that is the best way to describe it. And there’s a lot of going back and forth until that person is inside of you and you’re one, you know? And so that was what I struggled with in the rehearsal process. Doing that night-to-night, I have to say I just tried to really connect to the other actors on the stage. Every one of the actors has done that hard work and invested so much into their characters. I had to remind myself who I am, why I’m there, and what I need to accomplish.
FR: I definitely agree with Greta. … I think there’s a certain amount of work you do for yourself, and the rest comes from other people. … We talked about this a lot – listening, being in the moment – and anything that can help you get to that place comes from the other actors. If you’re too closed off, it wouldn’t work. … In terms of preparing Tasha’s role she is very honestly written and [Leonard] knows what he’s talking about. I see a lot of myself in her my own experiences. … I can have the same feeling of loss or the same feeling of desperation she can about maybe less tragic things, and that’s what I tried to connect to. So in the scene with [Tasha's uncle] Bob in the hotel, I was letting the actions speak.
GH: Phil would say this a lot: Regardless of how theatrical or dramatic the scene is, it is always a scene between two people trying to act on each other get something from the other character. So the first scene is the sex scene, and Phil would say, ‘It’s got to be simpler. It’s best when it’s simpler. It’s best when it’s actually two people having a dialogue. So before we staged it, Tommy and I sat across the room from each other, said words to each other, and realized it was a scene two people are try to get things from each other and it happened to be that they were having sex while doing this. Simplifying it like that helps you achieve big dramatic thing with the audience.
CB: [Note for readers: This is the end of the spoiler alert.] But how do you both try to perform these characters and act out these incredibly bleak and heartbreaking scenarios night after night and not let it get to you?
GH: It’s exhausting.
FR: Something Phil said to me is sometimes we don’t want to do it, and it’s true. On a hard day, you don’t feel like getting out there. And that last week before opening I couldn’t even sleep. But even when I don’t feel like doing this, I realize that I love it. Every night, something magical happens.
GH: It’s true, I had the same experience. At the end of rehearsal and the beginning of previews I was kind of a mess, and I definitely wasn’t a lot of fun to be around. You can’t just get into that. It’s not healthy. What an amazing actor can do is turn it off and on like that. But you have to let yourself hurt a little bit and you have to go through that tough time to be able to let yourself drop it at the end of night and go home and be with friends and loved ones.
FR: The play would be more difficult if we were trying to fight, if you didn’t let yourself go to that place every night. If you do give in, everything comes naturally, and the character is naturally a part of you.
GH: We like the challenges.
CB: So what was the greatest lesson you’re taking away from working with Philip Seymour Hoffman and working on this play?
GH: You know, I don’t think I’ll really able to truly answer that until I’m out of the process. I mean I think that working with Phil has been an amazing experience. Being such an accomplished actor makes him an amazing resource for an actor. He has extremely high standards, as he should. This play requires very specific skills on the part of the actor and an extreme commitment, and all acting should be focused and committed and specific. But this play especially requires an extreme level of specificity. It is very delicate play to be acted. People are saying things but they are not saying the things that they mean, and a lot of the dialogue is very coated, and so it requires a real focus. But Phil really, really believes that the work is never done. I think that’s what I learned the most from him. And there were moments where you got the point where I thought, ‘Oh my God. I’m never going to get this right? Can we just settle?’ But you can’t. You can’t. And we’re never going to get this right. It wasn’t right when you saw it, it wasn’t right when we opened, it’s not going to be right when we close. If we ever feel like it’s right, we’re going to be doing something totally wrong. It’s ever evolving, different every night, and we’re never going to get it right. That was the thing that I think I’ll take away from this experience as an actor is understanding what that means and understanding that it’s frustrating but it’s right and it’s good. And if it’s not hard, you’re not doing it right.
FR: [Hoffman] would sometimes tease me because I’m the young one with my schoolbooks and my chemistry homework. But if anything he taught me to be assertive. And I may be a little younger than [the other actors], but he taught me to trust my instincts and to just do it. He would say, ‘I know it’s there, and you can’t push it. Let it happen. Take the dive.’ I think they both taught me that. Phil taught me to trust my own experiences and also the thought process about who I am playing, because if anything will make your performance honest and real, it’s to actually be with your character when everything is happening and be thinking their thoughts. It was like working with any other good director. He has the type of insight that will help the story happen and help the character happen.
CB: And anything that you learned from each other?
GH: Fiona is an amazing actress. I love working with her.
FR: Awww.
GH: It’s true. It’s funny because I started acting when I was Fiona’s age. I had my first big part exactly when I was Fiona’s age. So it’s been really fun for me to watch her go through this process, because I remember doing the same thing and having to go from school to shows and balance all of that. And you know Fiona has this amazing freedom. We adults get a little weighed down sometimes by things and we become more neurotic in our old age. (Laughs). Fiona has this openness and freshness and she’s bold in a way I remember being when I was a younger actor. I look at her and I’m reminded that’s something you have to really work at to keep is that sense of life and that sense of play and that sense of joy. So I really have valued working with Fiona and seeing her process. It’s a wonderful reminder that as actors we have to be really open human beings, and Fiona is that. I can’t wait to see her grow up and keep working.
FR: Yeah, hopefully. I think it’s so lucky when you get to be with a cast where you love every single one of them. I don’t have a bad thing to say about anyone. It was so great. And if there’s one thing I learned from Greta it’s to work. She works like nobody else. If you look at her script, she has taken down every thought and every idea and every direction and every action that she can think of and she’s compiled some sort of insane resource book for her character. For me, I do a lot of school plays and stuff and you don’t get the chance to do that kind of work at the table, but that is something that I can do at home, and I don’t need an insanely awesome director to tell me to do it. And Greta I think always does the work. She works so hard. She’s a great actress, and her role is challenging, and all our roles are challenging. Greta doesn’t give up.
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Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:19 pm
