theatre
The show really sells the importance of saying things out loud. If somebody else is saying it, that means someone else is feeling it, so it validates what someone is going through.”
WhenTorch Song Trilogy debuted in New York in the early ‘80s, it
heralded a new dawn in gay-themed entertainment. A collection of three semi-autobiographical, one-act plays by Harvey Fierstein, it cast an illumi- nating and compassionate spotlight
on gay life (Drag queens! Tea rooms! Gay adoption...Oh my!) in a way that few productions had before. It went
on to win Fierstein both a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play and a Tony Award for Best Play. Revived twice since then (in both New York and London), it has become a staple
among regional theatres and provided countless actors with meaty material to sink their acting chops into. We caught up with SoCal’s latest
incarnation of Arnold Beckoff, actor Andrew Villarreal, to find out what it’s like stepping into the sequined shoes of one of contemporary theatre’s fiercest, gay heroes.
On discovering Arnold: It’s funny, because I had never read the play or
seen it produced until just before I got the role. When I was little doing theater, I would always see this poster forTorch Song Trilogy up in the lobby of the theater I used to work at and I always wondered, “What is that? It sounds so interesting.” I just happened to be skimming the library of plays at another theater and came across it, so I borrowed it and read it. And, it was like, “Where has this man been all my life?”
The therapy of playing Arnold: He has a lovely way of taking the general angst
that we have when facing relationships, love and commitment and fleshing it out with his words and saying everything we’ve all felt at one point in our lives. It’s great to revisit those feelings, face them or work through them and just let myself feel them for the first time. He helps you confront a lot of things that you might have felt before or haven’t but would like to.
Like Arnold, Like Me: Arnold has this immediacy and urgency to figure everything out. If there’s anything that’s human about him, it’s that he kind of wants everything to be his way and he wants it now. He is not open to the journey or the process. I think that is something I work on every day, where I have to remind myself, “Enjoy the fucking struggle,” because one day it’s not there and you miss when you were in the trenches fighting for something. It really resonates with me to see him go through this journey and not have the perfect life when you think everyone else has it and you don’t.
FOR THE LOVE OF
ARNOLD TORCH SONG TRILOGY
by ken knox
Making Arnold His Own Man: The play is so well-written that it’s going to
be difficult to not sound like I have all this really rehearsed. It’s a challenge to make it sound like it’s accidental that it’s coming to you in the moment. I want Arnold to be a surprising person, not to be a calculated one who suddenly comes up with all these wonderful one-liners. He is such an iconic character who really prides himself on his wit. I’m going to try to make it where the humor is coming from a more sensitive, vulnerable place, where it’s not so much a performance but where Arnold is more of an organic, lived-in character who just happens to be very witty.
Arnold’s Lasting Legacy: The show really sells the importance of saying
things out loud. If somebody else is saying it, that means someone else is feeling it, so it validates what someone is going through. It really opens the network of possibility in the realm of nurturing honest, open, healthy relationships, where you’re not full of shame but full of discovery and curiosity and compassion. That’s why I’m excited that we’re doing this show and taking it on. We get to live in the world that Harvey has laid out for us and just let compassion abound for three hours and hope that people walk away with it.
Torch Song Trilogy runs Friday, April 15 through Saturday, May 7 at Theatre Out, 402 West 4th Street in Santa Ana. For tickets and information, call 714.220.7069 or go to
theatreout.com.
APRIL 2016 | RAGE monthly 49
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