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PLAYBILL.COM'S BRIEF ENCOUNTER With Willem Dafoe
By Robert Simonson
07 Oct 2009
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Willem Dafoe
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Never afraid of the avant garde, theatre and film star Willem Dafoe jumps into Richard Foreman's new work at the Public Theater.
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These are days when the chances of seeing a big film star on Broadway are getting better and better.
In recent seasons, Broadway theatregoers have witnessed the live-and-in-person work of Julia Roberts, Julianne Moore, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig, Denzel Washington, James Gandolfini, John Lithgow, Daniel Radcliffe, Patrick Stewart, Terence Howard, Claire Danes and many others. However, until recently, if you wanted to see movie actor Willem Dafoe on stage, you had to travel to the dingy Performance Garage in SoHo, where he frequently performed with his longtime troupe, The Wooster Group. Dafoe quit that avant garde group six years ago. Now he's finally back doing theatre and he's moved uptown — a whole 10 blocks. Still gravitating toward the experimental, he's taken the title role in Richard Foreman's latest, Idiot Savant, beginning Oct. 27 at the Public Theater. He talked to Playbill.com about his latest exercise in non-linear stagecraft.
Playbill.com: I'm guessing, given the sort of theatre work you both do, you and Richard Foreman have crossed paths from time to time.
Willem Dafoe: For many years. And we worked together on Miss Universal Happiness in 1985. I knew him before that, just because he was a real important figure when I first came to the city as far as the kind of work I was gravitating towards.
Playbill.com: You probably have seen quite a few of his shows over the years.
WD: I have. I have. I'm a die-hard fan.
Playbill.com: I don't know that Foreman is much of a theatregoer. Did he ever come and see you at The Wooster Group?
WD: He would, actually. I think there was a time when he used to see stuff all the time, in an interest of seeing what's going on, because he is a self-proclaimed curious intellectual, right? But I think there was a time 15 years ago where he stopped going to things.
Playbill.com: Whose idea was it that you two should work together again?
WD: I must have said something. I really do love his shows. When I'm in his theatre, I'm so happy. I like how I think. There's a challenge. I find my mind working. But it's also very pure theatre, to my mind, because it's full of things that you don't get in any other performance art I know of.
Playbill.com: Obviously, as a veteran of Theatre X and The Wooster Group, you're very schooled in avant garde acting techniques. But do you need a different set of skills when you set into Foreman's world?
WD: I don't know. You become one element. I think you need to be flexible, because he's quite fluid and is always changing things. He disturbs the things that he makes. But at the same time, he really demands precision, so you have to have a certain level of craft. He's used to working with a lot of young performers and non-traditional performers. He started out using people rather than actors. It's hard to say. When you're in that room, to do what he wants you to do, you need a certain amount of control, but the spirit that you're approaching the work is you're flirting with a kind of lack of control. He feels the truth cannot be arrived at through logic, and stories really lull us into a stupor. He needs, in the psyche of the performers, a certain radical personal distraction. I don't think that comes naturally to actors who are used to giving crafted performance. I don't know what kind of actor I am, but I like to think each time I approach something, I refigure my job.
Playbill.com: This particular play, will we recognize it as Foreman's world?
WD: It's very much Foreman's world. I would say it's more verbal. He talks in terms of it being a teaching play in the respect that stuff is less coded and less hidden. There are very straightforward statements. Really at the center of the play it's about the Idiot Savant making fun and mocking our way of looking at the world.
Playbill.com: You're the Idiot Savant. Now, what are you an Idiot Savant at?
WD: (Laughs) I think it's Idiot Savant in the broadest sense of the term. I think it flirts with the idea that clarity will be reached through babble.
Playbill.com: When we see you on the stage here in New York, it usually was with your group, The Wooster Group, and not in commercial theatre. I'm sure, given your status as a film star, that you've had opportunities to appear on Broadway. Do you turn those roles down?
WD: Well, the truth is, until I stopped performing with The Wooster Group, which was six years ago, it was hard enough to do the movie work that I wanted to do and be with my company, so it wasn't really an option until six years ago. These past six years, I have been putting out feelers to do some interesting theatre. The right thing hasn't come along. And with Richard I feel a real connection to, so I'm happy to be trodding the boards again. As far as being open to Broadway, I don't often see shows and think, "Oh, I want to do that." I think my taste is not toward traditional plays. I like musicals a great deal; if I could find a musical that would be great. But, generally, due to economic conservatism, those things have to be a vehicle. And I'm not looking for a vehicle. I'm looking to make theatre. I looking to be a performer in a way that's more vital than the movies are.
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Willem Dafoe, Elina Löwensohn and Alenka Kraigher rehearse for Idiot Savant
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| photo by Nella Vera |
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