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THE LEADING MEN: Swenson and De Shields
By Tom Nondorf
02 Jul 2009
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Will Swenson
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Hair's Will Swenson and Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe's André De Shields join us this month for some highly entertaining Leading Man-chat.
WILL THE THRILL
Will Swenson was born in Logan, UT, where his dad was teaching at the time at Utah State University. Later, he found his youth split down the middle between his love for football (a die-hard Denver Broncos fan to this day) and working behind the scenes at his family's theatre. "In high school I was ostracized by my football friends for doing musicals and then ostracized by my musical friends for being on the football team," he laments. The problem was solved, he laughs, "when it finally dawned on me I just wasn't very good at football." Football's loss has been theatregoers' gain, as Swenson has been electrifying folks as the charismatic Berger in Hair, for which he was Tony-nominated and accompanied to the ceremony by sweetheart Audra McDonald, whom Swenson first met on 110 in the Shade in '07. The pair plans on reprising Shade next year as a fundraiser for the Hale Center Theatre in Orem, UT. For now, Swenson is happy getting his freak on each night onstage and in the aisles of the Hirschfeld.
Q: Congratulations on Hair. It has been a critical and audience smash, which is the dream, yes?
Will Swenson: It's pretty great. We have the best time, and it's fantastic, top-of-the-mountain, career-highlight stuff. If it never gets any better than this, I'd be totally okay with that. [Laughs.]
Q: Are you able to bask in the connection to the audience this show is having?
Swenson: It ends with that huge dance party where everybody comes onstage, and I don't think [actors] often get to interact with the audience the way we do. The audience comes up, and we get to see first-hand their reaction to the show. You see men in business suits who've been crying, people that just want to hug you and thank you. We leave on a high every night so to speak [laughs]. It takes me awhile to wind down every night because it's such a buzz. I keep using drug terminology. I guess it's embedded in me.
Q: For all the peace and love, Berger is kind of the most symbolic of the limits of the culture of that time, the selfish side, perhaps?
Swenson: He's certainly the least optimistic of the group and the least concerned with the outcome of his decisions. He's just all about the moment, and while Sheila [Caissie Levy] is all about the activism and the need to change the world, I think that kind of bothers Berger. He just wants to live in the moment, and if he feels like smoking right now, great. If he feels like taking his pants off, great. He's just going to do whatever suits his fancy in the moment. There's a line at the end of the show, "I'm just gonna stay high forever." And that sounded great to the hippies back then, with no foresight to what that would end up being like. They really thought drugs were the answer and that it would expand their minds. I picture Berger would be probably on the street somewhere nowadays if he's still alive at all. So, you're right, definitely the darkest shade of the Tribe.
Q: In a way the truest believer, too.
Swenson: Yeah, in a way. He's the truest hippie. The most committed to the hippie ideals, but only so far as his party lets him go.
Q: You've directed and written shows yourself, so you know how hard it is to get even a small cast on the same page. How can you sum up how director Diane Paulus got this Tribe so perfectly in sync?
Swenson: I think she's just brilliant. There are a couple reasons. One is we've been together as a tribe and as cast mates for going on three different calendar years of this project. We've been able to try stuff out for a longer period of time than most shows are allowed. But more than that, Diane had us vigorously dive into homework for our characters — the interaction between the Tribe. You have to believe that all these hippies have partied together, lived together, slept together, and if there's not a certain level of physical comfort and emotional comfort, it just wouldn't read as a unit. So, she had us do these projects in rehearsal where we had to do these presentations based on our characters, and we had to choose music to underscore it and say why the music was significant for our characters. We had to give back-story, how we joined the Tribe, who our closest friends and Tribe members were, and that gave you an immediate knowledge of who every single Tribe member was, and you could then figure out how your character matched up with everybody else. It created this community, and I give Diane all the credit for that.
Q: How has the show affected your life offstage?
Swenson: I don't think you could realistically or effectively pull off a show like this if you didn't believe in the ideals that the show professes. I certainly found myself paying much more attention to the "cheesy" ideas of the hippie movement like love and peace, and trying to embrace those a little more deeply. In New York you can, in your day-to-day dealings, get kind of selfish, you know, pushing someone out of the way so you can get your seat on the subway and not looking for that little opportunity to spread cheer and happiness. Those kinds of things have been more visible to me since I jumped into the show. When I got cast, I spoke to somebody who had done the show before and told me it would change my life, and I was like, "Yeah, sure, it will change my life." But they were absolutely right. I don't think we could tell the story as effectively unless we truly thought we could make a difference. And, you know, the Tribe really, really does. I'm just in awe of Gavin Creel [Claude], who has headed up Broadway Impact for Marriage Equality, and he's holding rallies and really making a difference. And we've gone to protests and we're really trying to walk the walk.
Q: Yes, when I talked to Gavin two months ago, he was so fervent, it made me question what I was doing in my life.
Swenson: He is! And he just does things! He's not someone who's like, "I think I'm gonna go to this rally..." He creates rallies! I'm amazed by his pro-action. He's trying to get the Tribe involved in the March for Equality in D.C. in October.
Q: Your first Broadway credit was in Brooklyn in 2005. Did you ever think of that show as kind of a "bizarro" Hair?
Swenson: I have thought about the drug use parallels. My son, who is eight now, we took him to see me in Brooklyn, and there was a heavy scene where I shot up heroin, and it was really dark, and also in a flashback-y mode, where the drug use in Hair is also in an alternate universe. There was a Vietnam battle scene as well. It's interesting because those are relatively similar ideas, dramatically, but Hair is presented with such purpose, where the idea is to get Claude high, and then he'll see the light. To me, all of the Vietnam stuff and the drug use is presented with more optimism, pointing out how absurd war is, and how absurd drug use is, really, in that it doesn't have the answers. In Brooklyn, it was a much darker take. But yeah, I have thought of those parallels. My character couldn't be more different though.
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Will Swenson and Tribe in Hair
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| photo by Joan Marcus |
Q: Lastly, what is your favorite song to sing in the show and your favorite song to listen to.
Swenson: Favorite song that I sing is "Hair," just insane energy and the pinnacle of the evening, fun, out there, in the audience, I love it. My favorite song musically, and to listen to every night is "What a Piece of Work is Man" — just gorgeous with the Shakespeare libretto and the gorgeous melody.
[Hair is playing the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th Street. For more information, go to www.hairbroadway.com.] Continued...
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