Transcript

Polly: 

I’m Polly Wood-Holland and I'm here talking to Tom Lockhart. Hi Tom.

Tom:

Polly, how are you.

Polly:

I'm good. This is another in our series of interviews with classmates; kind of catching up and providing a little glimpse into what's been going on in their lives. So we've been asking for stories either from Williams or more recent ones, and I happen to know that Tom has a really interesting tale revolving around an audition. It's really great; you're going to enjoy this, so take it away Tom!

Tom:

 Alright, thanks. Great to see you and I look forward to seeing you and everyone else next year in June.

 Anyway, when I was a teenager I saw a production of the Fantasticks which I fell in love with, and I thought at the time someday I need to be in that production. When I'm old enough I would love to play one of the fathers.

Well, 40 years went by, and it was announced that one of our best community theatres in town, Theatre in the Round, was going to do a production of the Fantasticks and I thought, oh, this is wonderful. Besides that, I knew the director, although I hadn't seen him for about 25 years, but I was about the right age for one of the fathers (maybe a little on the old side, but you know there's make-up for that) and I thought; I've got a shot at this. So I prepared my song, I prepared my sides from the script, and I went to the audition.

I'm sitting in the lobby and the director walks by and he recognizes me after all those years and he says, “So great to see you! What do you want to audition for?” I said; “Well, I'd like to play one of the fathers or, as a backup, the old actor.” He said, “That’s nice but I want you to audition for Mortimer.”

Mortimer? Mortimer is just a bit part; he has like a few scenes, a couple of lines and he does a death scene but that's it. I wanted to be one of the fathers. I didn't say that to director, I just said OK, and I went in and I auditioned; I did my song, I did my pieces for the fathers and the old actor and, Stephan, he said,”Well, that's fine, but I want you to go out in the lobby and prepare a death scene. Come back in here in 10 minutes when you're ready and I want to see what you can do.”

A death scene for Mortimer, really! Well, OK, whatever, so I went out and I thought about it. I thought, well, one of the keys of this thing is going to be using the space, which was a true Theatre-in-the-Round on a central stage, with the audience going up in sharply raked seating; truly 360° around. I knew I wanted to make use of this space and so I kind of put some things together in my head there, while I was waiting go back in. I started off at the top of one of the aisles: way up, not on stage; all the way up and I started off kind of thrashing around, moaning and groaning and falling down and tumbling down onto the stage. I finally got onto the stage and I got up and thrashed around a little more and did a few dance steps and finally a pirouette and fell down dead.

 “OK”, the director said. ”OK, that's great," so I went home and was waiting to hear about callbacks. I waited all through the next day, all morning: no call; and in the afternoon: no call. I thought, this can't be right; not even getting called back, so I finally called the stage manager, and she said, well you weren’t called back because you've been cast as Mortimer.

Mortimer! I thought what is with this Mortimer! "Well, let me think about it I'll call you back in half an hour.”

I thought about, well, what is it with Mortimer, and do I want to spend nine weeks, five weeks of rehearsal, four weeks of production, devoting my entire life to doing this bit part. I started to realize that maybe there was some reason why I was being asked to be Mortimer, and I thought, well, maybe this is just a gift and I should accept it. So I called her back and I said, ”I'll do it.”

We start rehearsals; when we do the first couple of scenes, we were in a rehearsal space because the theatre itself was in use with another production, but after one or two rehearsals the director says, ”I want you to work out your death scene, and so you go out and tell me when you figure out what you're going to do so.” I went down and into the space, which it was empty, and looked around and I thought there's going to be key elements that I've got to work into this. One is make use of the space; two, it's got to be choreographed. I can't just wing it, it's got to have rhythm, and it's got to be funny. So I I kind of worked out in my head what I would do. I came back in and described this to the director and he said, “OK, that's fine.”

The next week we did get into the space and it's time for me to go into my routine. I ran up the stairs and thrashed around and fell down, moaning and groaning, and then I tumbled down the stairs to the center of the stage, again fell down moaning and groaning, and got up and did a few tap steps, and then fell down, got up, do a little pirouette, and then I exit the stage. There were a number of vomitoriums around the  stage where you could do entrances and exits, and then there was kind of a race track around the theatre, the area behind the audience, so out of sight of the audience, but they could hear what was going on back there.

So I ran out one, ran about 180 degrees around the arena screaming my head off, with the idea that the audience is going to hear this commotion of sound going by them, and going around, but, “Where are you going; what's happening?” Then I came running full speed in one of the entrances and hit a full knee slide, a la Tom Cruise, right to the center of the stage, and keeled over dead.

“Well,” the director said, ” that's, you know, that's great!” and then he gave me the only piece of direction that he gave me. “If they’re still laughing keep on dying.”

You can just imagine that I could take that ball and run with it, and I did, and we had a great time in the production. Instead of just one just death scene, we added two more death scenes, each one crazier than the last. I tried new bits almost every night, and if it got laughs, it stayed in. So these things kept getting longer and longer and I had just so much fun doing it; it turned out to be one of the best roles I ever had the opportunity to play. It gave me a chance to be creative and and do my own things and to get a lot of laughs. What more could you ask for!

So I think it was it was a gift and I was so glad that I accepted it.

Polly:

I hope that our classmates enjoy listening to that story as much as I did. I I can just imagine what it looked like and wish, wish I could have seen it. Too bad it's not on tape somewhere.

So you're going to be at Reunion, and it'll be fun to chat. I know Andrea is actually in charge of a little cabaret one night, and would love to hear from anybody who wants to do something, so think about that Robert Service poem [you mentioned before we started recording]. Actually I plan to do a Robert Service poem you probably don't know, called Bessie's Boil; you have to look that one up.

Tom

 Don't know that one. I know Cremation of Sam McGee. I worked on The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill. There you go, so you never know where or who you’re gonna be with who knows Robert Service but it's always interesting.

Polly:

I look forward to seeing you, and thanks so much for being part of this. It'll be really a nice addition to all of our festivities.