Wayne T. Carr
Music Credits: “Renewal” written and performed by Doug and Judy Smith
Wayne T. Carr: My parents took me to my first show at the Ford’s Theatre, A Christmas Carol. I was a sophomore in high school. I was blown away. I mean they had simple effects. Like, there was one event-- I think Scrooge was in his bed and there was a little pyro thing that just happened and smoke on the stage and nobody ran out the theater. I was like, “This is crazy. This is amazing.” The simple effect of some sparks and smoke just made my 16-year-old brain just explode and I was like, “That was awesome.”
Jo Reed: That's actor Wayne Carr-- he’s playing the title role in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Pericles, now showing at the Folger Theatre, and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.
William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre has had a very unusual history. Although it was very popular in its first half century of life, it's rarely performed today. Pericles is a story of a wandering prince who journeys from country to country, at one moment fleeing for his life, at another marrying a king’s daughter. He endures not one but two devastating storms at sea. He loses his wife and his daughter-- but Pericles is one of Shakespeare’s romances in which redemption can be found when least expected. After years of profound grief, Pericles is miraculously reunited with both. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Pericles, which is directed by Joe Haj, embraces the fantastical elements of the play-- it's a gorgeous, heart-breaking, joyous fairy tale for adults. Wayne Carr plays Pericles as he transforms from brash young man to grieving father and husband. His ability to take that emotional roller coaster and imbue it with genuine expression and pathos gives the play its standing and its heart. When I had the opportunity to speak with Wayne Carr, I asked him to share his thoughts about the character of Pericles.
Wayne T. Carr: Oh, there’s so much to say about him. Where do you start? But I will say that he is an every man, every woman type of a character. It’s a person who starts at a young age, who goes on the journey, has ups and downs and at the end there is a little redemption, and why that happened I don’t know. Did he do something good to receive the blessings that he- he’s had? And did he do something bad to receive the tragedies? It doesn’t really matter. That’s why I like the play so much.
Jo Reed: You begin at this wide-eyed kid and you move through the play and there’s a lot of loss in that play until at the end you’re an old man and you’re kind of completely retreated into yourself.
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah.
Jo Reed: What kind of challenges did that present you as an actor?
Wayne T. Carr: Well, I have to say a lot of people have said he’s an old man at the end and in actuality he’s not really old; he’s just traumatized. He starts out maybe 18, 20 years old, 18-- 16, 18 years go by. His daughter is old enough to get married and go and create her own life so maybe, maybe he’s 40-- 40 years old but now he’s grayed. Stress has made him extremely, extremely old looking but he isn’t old, he’s just gone through so much that he appears that way. I don’t know if you know anybody like that in your life but I have a family member of mine who went through a traumatic moment with loss and was very, very depressed and still is to this day, very, very depressed. And she’s younger than I am, and her hair within a year went white completely-- within a year her whole head went white. And I realized that it’s heartache. And so when I was offered the role of Pericles I thought, "Well, this guy goes through some really horrible things; I would love to create a wig that kind of reflects that and that’s kind of honoring this family member of mine in a way a little bit." Also I saw some pictures of Frederick Douglass and I was like, “I want that.” <laughs>
Jo Reed: There is a Frederick Douglass aspect to it for sure.
Wayne T. Carr: Absolutely, it is. It is.
Jo Reed: How did you get into that character? How did you occupy him?
Wayne T. Carr: Well, I would say that I started from nothing, and what I mean by that is I tried to let any of my preconceived notions or thoughts about the character kind of disappear. I read the play, it took me a while to read it. It’s a hard read, and once I got through it I had my own ideas as an actor to, “Here’s what I want to do with this,” whatever. And I got into the rehearsal process and I realize I’m putting on things that aren’t necessarily helpful for this character. So I came from a spot of kind of, I just want to be an empty vessel and then just see what the language does to my body. And then as we went through the process, Joe would say things like--
Jo Reed: Joe Haj, the director?
Wayne T. Carr: Joe Haj, the director, yeah. He would say things to me like... one of the biggest things at the end he was like, “I just want to remind you he hasn’t eaten very much or drank very much for three months” and that was it, and instantly my walk was different. I realized, okay, he’s barely eating just enough to stay alive. It changes your body if you just think about that, and drinking just drops of water, just enough to stay alive what that will do to your body, and that was enough as far as how the character moved. And he said one thing to me-- Joe Haj said, “Wayne, we don’t have to like Pericles in the beginning” and of course every actor wants to be liked; especially if you’re playing the title character you should like that person, right? No. Joe said, “No, you don’t have to be liked. He’s a cocky young man who has his thoughts and thinks he knows everything,” and some of the stuff he said I agreed with and I took and some I was like, “I don’t know how much I believe that” but we worked together to create the Pericles in the show that we have today.
Jo Reed: It’s a show that while in some ways quite minimalist on the stage—
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, absolutely.
Jo Reed: It nonetheless has some stunning, stunning special effects, a lot of them involving you. Tell me about the first day you rehearsed one of those storms, for example. What was that like to be on the stage and there you are with that gorgeous billowing, silky blue sheet representing the water?
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, that silk was absolutely horrifying when I first saw it. There was no fun involved in the beginning because Joe didn’t know necessarily how to attack it so in rehearsal he brought out this sheet. It actually wasn’t silk at the time, it was like a canvas and they put paint on it so paint was kind of flying off of it. <laughs> That was not good inhaling, but he said, “Okay, get into the center of the sheet”-- they cut a little slit. “Now drown,” those were his exact words, “Now drown,” and so they start flapping the <laughs> canvas around and paint particles are flying everywhere and I’m inhaling this stuff and I’m supposed to be drowning. I’m kind of drowning in a way because the paint <laughs> dust is flying in my face and up my nose. And we eventually got a choreographer to kind of help with the movement of it, and two weeks later Joe was like, “No, this isn’t really working. Let’s go back to the original. Let’s just flail around as if you’re drowning” and I had no idea what it was going to look like or what I looked like. And when we had our first audience at-- in Ashland, Oregon, people seemed to enjoy it and I was like, “Great. As long as other people are enjoying it, I can enjoy it." But the process up until our first audience was kind of horrifying because I didn’t know what it looked like.
Jo Reed: Right, because you’re not just drowning, you’re talking while you’re drowning.
Wayne T. Carr: Exactly, yes, exactly. That was very difficult-- very, very difficult. <laughs>
Jo Reed: How quickly did you get on your feet in the rehearsal process of this?
Wayne T. Carr: We were talking about this as a cast the other day ‘cause Joe really loves to do table work and we sat at the table for at least a week, I want to say... Yeah, I want to say it was a week- week’s worth of rehearsal at the table just kind of talking about the play and the characters and how everybody fit in with the show. And he shared his passion for the play, which I think was infectious to the rest of the cast. And everybody plays a very important part in the storytelling of Pericles that it creates a cohesive storytelling feel, and I think you get that when you see the show. You realize that every element: the music, the lighting, everything is working together. And Joe constructed and conducted that in a very, very meticulous and masterful way, absolutely great.
Jo Reed: As you said, you did this in Oregon, in Ashland.
Wayne T. Carr: Yes.
Jo Reed: What’s it like bringing it to the Folger? First of all, DC is your hometown so--
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, buddy.
Jo Reed: --no pressure. <laughs>
Wayne T. Carr: Oh, no.
Jo Reed: But then the second time-- you’re doing it in a theater that’s I’m sure different from the theater you originated it in so there had to be some recalibration in your physicality, the way you embraced the stage in some way.
Wayne T. Carr: Well, sure, that’s still going on. I think that’s going to go on for the rest of the time because the audience changes the energy and the feel of the show, the space changes the energy and feel of the show, and we’re still getting used to that. We didn’t have much rehearsal time; we jumped right into tech. When you get people in the seats that changes the vibrations of your voice coming off the walls and the acoustic of the place so we’re adjusting to that. The audiences here are different than the audiences at OSF in the sense that at OSF, people have been coming to that theater for 30-plus years with their family. They started in high school and they’ve been coming every year since then. And so they have an ownership of that festival, it’s a destination. Here I have friends who haven’t seen theater ever in their life who were coming for the first time. I went to high school with them. They’re actually coming on Saturday night actually and then I had a friend of mine who said, “I’ve never been to the Folger. Let me check it out.” So I- I’ve met people also who have come to the Folger for the first time and so the energy of those people who may just watch movies all the time is just different. They look at it and I look out into the audience and I see their face and they’re watching TV. There’s no expression on their face; they don’t understand how much their energy is affecting the people on the stage but that’s okay too, you know. Like, we accept all—
Jo Reed: <laughs> Of course.
Wayne T. Carr: --so at OSF these people are theatergoers. They know the actors’ first name, last name, know their families. Here nobody knows me, that’s kind of cool. And my family gets to see it and that’s even cooler I hope. They haven’t come yet so we’ll see. <laughs> Maybe they don’t like it; that would be horrible—
Jo Reed: I doubt it.
Wayne T. Carr: --but I think <laughs> they’ll be okay.
Jo Reed: Folger is such an intimate theater--
Wayne T. Carr: It is.
Jo Reed: --and you can practically reach out; in fact in some productions some people do. They reach out from the stage and they’re touching the audience.
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, absolutely you can do that.
Jo Reed: --and Joe tends to use the audience space as well in the production.
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah. I think the initial concept and what he tried to bring to the Folger is he wants the whole space to be used and the people to feel like they’re in the story, almost like a fly on the wall. If you’re not a fly on the wall you’re the ocean. You’re some part of the play—
Jo Reed: Immersive.
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, completely. You’re some part of the play at every aspect of the play and that’s why I mentioned the energy of the audience changes things. When I look out at the audience I could be looking at the sea. I could be actually looking at the people because they’re in the court. You know, it depends on the situation but they’re definitely a part of it.
Jo Reed: Uh huh. When did you join Oregon Shakespeare Festival?
Wayne T. Carr: My first season was 2012-- April 3rd, 2012. I was an emergency add-on, they lost a guy to another show, and they needed to find someone to play Orlando in As You Like It and Stokely Carmichael in All the Way. And so they needed someone who liked Shakespeare who also can play a civil-rights activist and I auditioned via iPhone <laughs> and sent it to them via YouTube.
Jo Reed: Seriously?
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, and they called me two days later and said, “Can you be here next week?” and that was how I started.
Jo Reed: What do you get as an actor from being part of a company and belonging to a company?
Wayne T. Carr: Oh, it’s sad that the concept of company is disappearing from the American theater but you get a familiarity and there’s an ownership to the work and to the audience and to the space. It’s your space, it’s your company. I’ve only been there since 2012, 3 years, 4 seasons-- 3-1/2 seasons, right. And it is my artistic home right now, and those actors who have been there for 30 years, there’s an ownership of it. It is like your home-- your particular home. Somebody comes in, you welcome them, you feed them, you let them sleep, whatever, but you take care of it, you sweep the floors. It’s kind of like that but with an artistic bend to it. So I get up on the stage and that’s the stage that I’ve been working on for X amount of years and this is my space and oh, I’m going to take care of this in a different way. I’m going to respect the Folger. It’s not my home, I’m a visitor, and that’s-- there’s a different feeling to it and not only with the space but with the actors. It’s cool that I get to come and work with the company that I’ve worked with for three years. I know them; they know me; we can push each other and talk to each other in a different way. “Hey, Wayne, I notice that you’ve done this," and we have those conversations. When I work at other theaters that doesn’t necessarily happen once you get into the run of it so-- not to say that it doesn’t but a company lends itself more to the ability to talk to one another, to push each other and challenge each other.
Jo Reed: Were you interested in theater as a kid?
Wayne T. Carr: I didn’t know anything about theater as a kid really. I didn’t know anything about it. I watched movies. And then my parents took me to my first show at the Ford’s Theatre, A Christmas Carol. I was a sophomore in high school and that was the beginning of my theater love.
Jo Reed: Were you just captivated?
Wayne T. Carr: I was blown away, yeah. I mean they had simple effects. Like there was one event-- I think Scrooge was in his bed and there was a little pyro thing that just happened and smoke on the stage and nobody ran out the theater. I was like, “This is crazy. This is amazing.” The simple effect of some sparks and smoke just made my 16-year-old brain just explode and I was like, “That was awesome. Stuff like that happens in my head all the time but I’ve never seen it live in front of me on the stage." So I was captivated from the beginning. I didn’t start acting or anything like that but that was my introduction.
Jo Reed: When did you start acting?
Wayne T. Carr: My senior year this lovely lady—
Jo Reed: In high school.
Wayne T. Carr: In high school, yeah. They were doing To Kill a Mockingbird and they didn’t have many guys audition, let alone black guys audition. So this lovely lady came out to the football field ‘cause she knew I just kind of did everything, I was- I wasn’t scared to put myself out there. She said, “Wayne, we need somebody to be in To Kill a Mockingbird. Would you audition?” So I went and auditioned. It was horrible but they had no choice so I got the role and it was lovely and I enjoyed myself. And I went to college the next year at Frostburg State University and started majoring in biology and that’s kind of how that happened. And then I met somebody who was going to audition in college and she was auditioning for a show called Carousel and I thought, "I was in a play once, I could do that." I went there and the director said-- Linda McCullough-- she said, <laughs> “Do you have anything to sing?” and I thought, "No, what do you want me to sing?" She was like, “Sing anything.” I sang “Happy Birthday” a cappella, got in the show. It was just like I’ve just been lucky when it comes to theater <laughs> I guess, you know. It was just meant to be so yeah, that was my first show in college.
Jo Reed: Now if I read correctly you got a BA in directing?
Wayne T. Carr: Yes. Yeah.
Jo Reed: Was that something you wanted to do or--
Wayne T. Carr: That’s what I thought I was going to do when I-- I changed my major from biology to mass communications sometime around my junior year and my guidance counselor, I guess is what you call him-- Cookie, that’s what I called him-- Cookie said, “If you major in theater and major in mass communications with a directing focus in both, you’ll be a little more marketable when you get out.” And so I thought, "Why not?", and so my crazy self was playing football while taking 21 credits-- it was crazy-- but I thought I was going to be a technical director for television. I wanted to call the camera angles for a baseball game or something like that, that’s initially what my goal was. So I worked for the news station at my school and directed some scenes in directing class but nothing big until my senior year and I did a play called Suburbia, Bogosian. My senior year I got to direct out on the main stage and it was great and that was that. And then October 25th some time ago I was in the homecoming game and this big guy fell on my back and broke my lumbar three and my football was done. I couldn’t get to my classes and I was done with school. I was like “I have to get out. I can’t pay. I can’t afford to be here another year to complete my degrees.” So the easiest way to get out of undergrad was to become just a theater major with a directing focus and that’s what I did.
Jo Reed: But then you ended up going to graduate school.
Wayne T. Carr: Yes, I did. Yeah. This lovely lady, Mary Z.[ph?] Yost is her name, it was her first year teaching. She was teaching acting, and I would go in and do little scenes for fellow students and she said, “I think you would be a good actor but we don’t really train actors the way I think you should be trained here yet so you should look into going to grad school." So she-- this wonderful woman during our winter break-- she worked with me eight hours a day doing-- coaching me on two monologues. And I went to New York to audition for grad schools in January after the break and got accepted into a couple and chose Penn State. And that’s where I went for my acting training.
Jo Reed: What’s the first acting job you got that you got paid for?
Wayne T. Carr: <laughs> You know, the first acting job I got this guy, Ken Sonkin-- I love him-- Ken Sonkin was a director/actor from San Francisco and he and I became buddies while he was visiting one of his friends, Dan Carter, at Penn State. And he was doing Little Shop of Horrors and he was like “Wayne, I wish you could be in this show. You should be in this show.” And I was like “Yeah, I didn’t audition for it. I’m not a singer like that, whatever,” right. And he was like “I just-- I’m going to create a role for you.” I was like “The hell you’re-- you can’t do that,” right, and so they had their budget all set up and planned and it was done. Ken Sonkin made me a little hobo on the street and I popped out of a trash can like Oscar the Grouch and I loved it. It was awesome. I had no lines, I didn’t have to sing. I was just a hobo on Skid Row, right. He just created this role for me. Penn State was like “We don’t-- we can’t pay you anything really” and so I was like, “I’ll gladly do this” or whatever and then our movement teacher, who was the puppeteer for Audrey II I think is what the puppet is-- the big puppet-- he blew out his back. So they were like, “Wayne, you’re athletic. Can you do that?” <laughs> and I was like, “Sure, I’ll try it” and I loved it and so I was the puppeteer for that. I got $75 a week and I was happy.
Jo Reed: In looking through your resume, I see the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, there is Nebraska Shakespeare, Illinois Shakespeare, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare. Why are you drawn to Shakespeare? What does Shakespeare give you as an actor?
Wayne T. Carr: Well, when I first started acting I was in London and my grant program took us there to study. And so we got to see a whole bunch of shows paid for by the program and then if we wanted to see extra shows we can see-- do that with our own money, but I think I saw 44 shows in 30 days. I just went to the theater constantly. And we got to go to Stratford and I was like, “If I’m really going to be a serious actor, I should see what the Royal Shakespeare-- I should see what they’re doing.” And they did Romeo and Juliet and Comedy of Errors and my jet lag got the best of me and I fell asleep during both of them halfway through and I was so upset at myself. After we were done with that and we went down-- back to the city of London we went to go see The Tempest with Vanessa Redgrave playing Prospera and I was hooked. I was a groundling so I stood up the whole time so I couldn’t pass out-- it was perfect-- and I was just mesmerized. And I literally went the next day and I was like, “What’s playing? I’m going to get a ticket with my own money. I got to see something at the Globe Theatre.” So I got tickets to see Romeo and Juliet there with a Portuguese company speaking the language in their own native tongue and I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I understood what they were saying, and for whatever reason my body could not stop from crying. I was crying pretty much the whole play. I was just a ball of tears and I don’t know what was going on and I thought about it for a long time and then I realized that it touched my soul with the language and the rhythm of it. The musicality of it really got to me. I had no idea what they were really saying or I didn’t get everything that was really going on, but it touched me inside-- and I was mesmerized. And so ever since that day, seeing that show, Romeo and Juliet after seeing The Tempest with Vanessa Redgrave I was like, “This is something I want to study” and I haven’t stopped.
Jo Reed: You were with the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and I’m interested in that because you were a teaching artist there bringing Shakespeare to schools. How did you open up students to Shakespeare because often there’s an-- I don’t know what he's saying-- and it’s work at least to begin that opening.
Wayne T. Carr: Absolutely. I’ve had some great teaching artists who taught me a lot and one of the things that they taught me was that you can do things as an artist-- you can go into a classroom and give the students a little bit different energy than a teacher can. A teacher has a lot of rules and a structure that she has to follow or he has to follow and as a teaching artist I can adjust on the fly. There’s no curriculum. I can make it up a lot of the times. If I find that the students are into music I can go, “Well, you know what? Shakespeare is rhythmic, there’s musicality to it. Matter of fact, I’m going to give you this speech. I want you to drop a beat and I want you to read it.” And all of a sudden they’re doing hip-hop with Shakespeare. "To be or not to be," blah blah blah, and all of a sudden they’re like, “Whoa, that’s kind of cool.” And then they’re talking about it because of music; music just brought Shakespeare to a different level for these students who are freshmen just being introduced to Shakespeare and it opens their eyes to it in a different way. Wherever I go I try to do some kind of outreach or some kind of teaching job or whatever I can do to try to make it more accessible to the youth.
Jo Reed: I want to hear just a little bit about your one-man show at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh.
Wayne T. Carr: Oh, yes. Yeah, that was fun. That was a good time.
Jo Reed: What did you do?
Wayne T. Carr: At Penn State our thesis was we had to create a one-person show and so I was walking around in a bookstore with my classmate, Mr. Steve Broadnax, and at the time I was rocking a bald head and a little goatee, right, a little facial hair. And he was like “You kind of look like Tupac Shakur” and I-- we were looking at a book and I pulled down the book. And I was never really a huge fan of Tupac-- I liked some of his songs-- but I opened the book and was reading some of his poetry and I was like, “This is Tupac’s poetry? Okay.” And so I read the whole book and I was like “Cool.” Went back to the bookstore, saw another book on Tupac and read that book and I was like, “This guy is a little more complex than the media has led him out to be” and became obsessed. And I created this show based off of things that I read from him and his lyrics and his music and created a 45-minute one-man show on Tupac Shakur called I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto and took it to Scotland.
Jo Reed: Did they like it in Edinburgh?
Wayne T. Carr: They loved it. They loved it. It was great.
Jo Reed: As we said, you don’t just do Shakespeare; you played Stokely Carmichael twice.
Wayne T. Carr: Yes.
Jo Reed: You’ve played John Lewis. You’ve played James Chaney-- and I understand these aren’t documentaries but at the same time is it a special-- I don’t know-- maybe “pressure” isn’t the right word but--
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, that’s fine.
Jo Reed: --is there a kind of pressure that you feel playing historical figures, especially ones who are in our recent history?
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah. You know, we can talk for hours on this topic because there is a pressure but no more than any other role because of something that I learned a long time ago from a friend of mine who helped me out actually with Shakespeare where he said, “Hey, Wayne, you played a person who has lived before. Right?” And I was like, “Yeah, Tupac. I played Tupac.” He was like-- basically what he made me realize is that as an individual, as a character, this character is 360 degrees of a person who lives a full life that doesn’t necessarily end with what’s on the page. And so when you’re playing a character like a Stokely Carmichael or anybody who has actually existed or even still exists and living today like John Lewis, you do as much research as you can, you find out whatever it is that you can to make this person whole and full, and then you go from there. And so there is a pressure there to honor this human being, but I do the same thing with Pericles. Pericles, I want to honor him as a human being, as if he lived on this earth, because to me he has-- he does live on this earth, and so I honor that character just as much as I would honor a John Lewis or a Stokely Carmichael.
Jo Reed: You’ve done television.
Wayne T. Carr: A little bit.
Jo Reed: How does it compare to theater? And I don’t mean better or worse but I mean the difference in technique, the difference in the way you think about time.
Wayne T. Carr: Yeah, yeah. I haven’t done too much television-- nothing significant. I did a movie in Slovenia a few years ago and time is a big thing because you wait around a lot and then all of a sudden it’s just like, “Okay, action, go” and then you do something for about a minute and then you’re done for another five hours. And so it’s kind of just broken up in this way that I’m not used to that theater-- there's a connectivity to things, and film and television I don’t-- I wouldn’t say that the acting is really different to me. If you’re talking to someone and they’re right here in front of you, you don’t have to raise your voice, you don’t have to be as animated. I can tell you exactly how I feel right here without being big. On the stage when you’re over there, I have to-- to get my point across I have to make it bigger. You know, it's just how it is. If you’re talking in a small classroom, you’re going to talk one way. If you’re talking in an auditorium, you’re going to express yourself a different way. I think it’s the same thing. It’s a natural thing I think. If you studied acting, you get in front of a camera and the camera’s right here, well, you don’t have to do too much. If you just pay attention to your surroundings, you don’t have to do much. The camera goes out a little further, you can be a little bigger. You’re on the stage, people are a little further, you can be bigger. You get into a space like at the Guthrie where it’s 1100 seats, you can’t be big enough, you know, so—
Jo Reed: Is that part fun?
Wayne T. Carr: That’s awesome. It’s exhausting but it’s awesome.
Jo Reed: You’re taking Pericles to the Guthrie and--
Wayne T. Carr: Yes. I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it.
Jo Reed: Wayne, thank you. Thank you for giving me your time.
Wayne T. Carr: You bet.
That was actor Wayne T. Carr. He plays the title role in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Pericles. Pericles is playing at the Folger Theatre until December 20.
You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.
Music Credit: "Renewal," Doug and Judy Smith
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From Pericles to Tupac Shakur, Wayne Carr embodies fully-realized characters on the stage.