Translations - 1995
Apr 12, 2008 0:18:39 GMT
Post by leelee on Apr 12, 2008 0:18:39 GMT
1995 translations interview
Ya'll have probably already seen this but I thought maybe , just maybe there are others like me on this board who haven't read it yet....
Vue2sewell | Rufus Sewell News | Film & TV | Theatre | Archive
THEATER WEEK
BACK
Theater Week
1-7 May 1995
Rufus Sewell,..... Owen.....TRANSLATIONS
photo
Jude Law, Rufus Sewell,
Jennifer Dunas, Billy Crudup.
Justin Kirk, Megan Mullally
In his NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW of the Brian Friel's play, which shuttered after 15 previews and 25 performances, Vincent Canby observed, "The production's best performance is Rufus Sewell's in what is probably the play's most complex, most successfully written role." Ten days after the premiere, the likeable British-born actor sits in his dressing room, prior to a matinee, and asks if I'd mind if he had a cigarette. Opening the window to let out the smoke from his Marlboros, he comes across as candid and droll, as he discusses his Broadway debut.
"I'm enjoying the play, the cast, the part--it's a fantastic part, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that it's on Broadway is only beginning to seep in, now that we've opened." Asked to describe the character of Owen, Sewell states, "It's very difficult to give a one sentence description of anyone -- the same as it would be having to describe yourself." I say that it doesn't have to be one sentence. That's the problem. [ And he's being sincere, not difficult.]
I'd say he was someone who could easily be called an opportunist. He's returned home [ to 19th-century Ireland ] having taken a job with the English army, who are in Ireland to remap the entire country and change the Gaelic names into English. I've spoken to Irish people who are familiar with the play. They say, 'Oh, you're playing the turncoat.' That's the easiest way of looking at it. Things are never that simple. Owen's convinced himself that he's actually bringing his country into the modern age. Sometimes, the killing of a culture is brought on willingly by some of the people within that culture. His dilemma is convincing himself that he's doing a good thing. And then he has to make a decision: Do I throw stones at the people who are throwing stones at my people, or do I throw stones at my people?"
Asked if learned anything from his character, Sewell comments, "If I was to say I'd learned something, I think it would be a very shallow lesson, because anything you can process that quickly and spout out casually in the form of a sound bite, at this stage, can't be a very deep lesson. Maybe in twenty years time, I'll have learned something, and I can track it back to this.
As far as having a favorite moment in TRANSLATIONS, he says, "If I did have one, I'd kill it by mentioning it. The danger of good reviews, when they're precise, is when moments are highlighted. The next time you do it, it's a magic moment. The time after that, it's double magic-- till it's absolutely appalling! I've been witness to and been involved in that sort of embroidery before and it's quite dangerous."
Born in London, he grew up "back and forth between London and Wales." He has an older brother, Caspar, "who's in New York for the first time and having the time of his life. I was doing a show when he arrived at the airport and I sent a stretch limousine to meet him. He got out outside this theater and said, 'Everything I've ever said about you, I'm almost prepared to forget.'
[ he laughs.] This is my first time working in New York, but I've been here before. I'd be happy staying in New York. I think Los Angeles would be a little more trying. Part of the enjoyment of Los Angeles is the fact that you know you're leaving."
As a child, Sewell knew "I wanted to be an actor or a drummer or a cartoonist [ like his father, who died when Rufus was 10 ] . Then it was an actor or drummer. And, at 14, I was as good a drummer as I was going to get. Acting was the only thing that I knew I could be better at. I'm hideously unmotivated, lazy person --- with the one exception of acting. I can actually be motivated and get up in the morning and be the sort of person about acting that I am not generally in life. It's something that still excites me."
Among the civilian jobs that Sewell held were " a road sweep, a laborer, a carpenter's mate. For a couple of months, I had to dress up as a comic-strip character at a printing convention. And I was deputy curator at Marble Hill House Museum." How did that come about? "I lied my way into it. I lasted about three weeks ... But I made enough to take a holiday in Portugal."
At the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, he appeared in three plays. "It was," Sewell recalls, " a valiant and romantic effort to start a repertory company in this day and age. There are no places for new commers now. Oh, God, we were bad. I was the worst. In AS YOU LIKE IT , I played le Beau as Bette Davis ------ with an eyepatch. Once the designer suggested an eyepatch, there was no stopping me. I played a sixty-year-old [ THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR ] , Konstanian [ THE SEAGULL ] , and Bette Davis." At Manchester's Royal Exchange, he appeared in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. He didn't play that as Davis? Laughs Sewell, "No, as Greer Garson. This is beginning to sound a bit camp." When I ask who were his favorite performers------ in addition to Judy Garland-----the actor says, "Stop that.!"
Sewell won the London Critics Circle Best Newcomer Award ( "commonly known as the kiss of death" ) for MAKING IT BETTER. "I played a Czechoslovakian hustler who would do anything for a bag of sweets and a new pair of Levi's. And it turns out he's a spy. Tom Stoppard and Trevor Nunn came to see me in that and I went straight into ARCADIA [ originating the role of Septimus Hodge ] .
ARCADIA was wonderful, because of the honor of being the first person to play a part in a new play by Tom Stoppard at the National Theatre, directed by Trevor Nunn. It was the sort of part that having played it once, I can happily say I would never, ever want to play a part like it again." But, he's asked, wouldn't he have enjoyed the opportunity to play Hodge in its New York production? He laughs and admits, "Of course, but you can't be greedy." Adds Sewell. "There's a danger to parts like that. You get stamped into a certain thing. At the same time, I was doing MIDDLEMARCH [ shown here on PBS ] and that was a similar role.
"Before ARCADIA and MIDDLEMARCH , I played so many offbeat characters that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do what I'd always been frightened of ---- which was to play a romantic character. Having proved to myself that I could, I wanted to leave it. The reason I became an actor was to get from part to part. If I let that slip through my fingers by wanting to be famous rather than wanting to be good, then I'd hate myself for it. So, I turned down a lot of potential work. Then I was asked how would I fancy playing a Dublin busdriver [ in the movie A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, starring Albert Finney ]. One of the producers said, "Oh, not the guy from MIDDLEMARCH; we're talking about a working class busdriver.' Well, I heard about that. I went to Dublin four weeks before they wanted to test me and I worked on that accent and stuff. There was vengeance involved. When the guy who'd made the remark saw the test, he didn't recognize me-------which pleased me a great amount."
Sewell has three films awaiting release: " CARRINGTON with Emma Thompson, COLD COMFORT FARM, directed by John Sshlesinger, and Joseph Conrad's VICTORY with Willem Defoe and Sam Neill." The best advice he's been given was "from David Terrance, the acting teacher at my drama school. I went to him with a poem I'd been working on, 'The Flea' by John Donne, and he said, 'It's good. It's all there, but you must never allow yourself to forget that acting is easy. Work as hard as you like leading up to it, but just remember it's easy.' That, and 'Speak up!' "
In five years, Rufus Sewell would like to be sent a script and have them say, " Which part would you like to play?"
"I don't mean to be that much in demand that they just want me in their film----just that they don't have a preconceived idea. Other than that, I don't care. Of course, I will care when it happens. [ Laughs ] But, sitting in my Broadway dressing room, I can say, ' I don't care.' "
top
Thank you Janet in NY for the article!
Ya'll have probably already seen this but I thought maybe , just maybe there are others like me on this board who haven't read it yet....
Vue2sewell | Rufus Sewell News | Film & TV | Theatre | Archive
THEATER WEEK
BACK
Theater Week
1-7 May 1995
Rufus Sewell,..... Owen.....TRANSLATIONS
photo
Jude Law, Rufus Sewell,
Jennifer Dunas, Billy Crudup.
Justin Kirk, Megan Mullally
In his NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW of the Brian Friel's play, which shuttered after 15 previews and 25 performances, Vincent Canby observed, "The production's best performance is Rufus Sewell's in what is probably the play's most complex, most successfully written role." Ten days after the premiere, the likeable British-born actor sits in his dressing room, prior to a matinee, and asks if I'd mind if he had a cigarette. Opening the window to let out the smoke from his Marlboros, he comes across as candid and droll, as he discusses his Broadway debut.
"I'm enjoying the play, the cast, the part--it's a fantastic part, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that it's on Broadway is only beginning to seep in, now that we've opened." Asked to describe the character of Owen, Sewell states, "It's very difficult to give a one sentence description of anyone -- the same as it would be having to describe yourself." I say that it doesn't have to be one sentence. That's the problem. [ And he's being sincere, not difficult.]
I'd say he was someone who could easily be called an opportunist. He's returned home [ to 19th-century Ireland ] having taken a job with the English army, who are in Ireland to remap the entire country and change the Gaelic names into English. I've spoken to Irish people who are familiar with the play. They say, 'Oh, you're playing the turncoat.' That's the easiest way of looking at it. Things are never that simple. Owen's convinced himself that he's actually bringing his country into the modern age. Sometimes, the killing of a culture is brought on willingly by some of the people within that culture. His dilemma is convincing himself that he's doing a good thing. And then he has to make a decision: Do I throw stones at the people who are throwing stones at my people, or do I throw stones at my people?"
Asked if learned anything from his character, Sewell comments, "If I was to say I'd learned something, I think it would be a very shallow lesson, because anything you can process that quickly and spout out casually in the form of a sound bite, at this stage, can't be a very deep lesson. Maybe in twenty years time, I'll have learned something, and I can track it back to this.
As far as having a favorite moment in TRANSLATIONS, he says, "If I did have one, I'd kill it by mentioning it. The danger of good reviews, when they're precise, is when moments are highlighted. The next time you do it, it's a magic moment. The time after that, it's double magic-- till it's absolutely appalling! I've been witness to and been involved in that sort of embroidery before and it's quite dangerous."
Born in London, he grew up "back and forth between London and Wales." He has an older brother, Caspar, "who's in New York for the first time and having the time of his life. I was doing a show when he arrived at the airport and I sent a stretch limousine to meet him. He got out outside this theater and said, 'Everything I've ever said about you, I'm almost prepared to forget.'
[ he laughs.] This is my first time working in New York, but I've been here before. I'd be happy staying in New York. I think Los Angeles would be a little more trying. Part of the enjoyment of Los Angeles is the fact that you know you're leaving."
As a child, Sewell knew "I wanted to be an actor or a drummer or a cartoonist [ like his father, who died when Rufus was 10 ] . Then it was an actor or drummer. And, at 14, I was as good a drummer as I was going to get. Acting was the only thing that I knew I could be better at. I'm hideously unmotivated, lazy person --- with the one exception of acting. I can actually be motivated and get up in the morning and be the sort of person about acting that I am not generally in life. It's something that still excites me."
Among the civilian jobs that Sewell held were " a road sweep, a laborer, a carpenter's mate. For a couple of months, I had to dress up as a comic-strip character at a printing convention. And I was deputy curator at Marble Hill House Museum." How did that come about? "I lied my way into it. I lasted about three weeks ... But I made enough to take a holiday in Portugal."
At the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, he appeared in three plays. "It was," Sewell recalls, " a valiant and romantic effort to start a repertory company in this day and age. There are no places for new commers now. Oh, God, we were bad. I was the worst. In AS YOU LIKE IT , I played le Beau as Bette Davis ------ with an eyepatch. Once the designer suggested an eyepatch, there was no stopping me. I played a sixty-year-old [ THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR ] , Konstanian [ THE SEAGULL ] , and Bette Davis." At Manchester's Royal Exchange, he appeared in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. He didn't play that as Davis? Laughs Sewell, "No, as Greer Garson. This is beginning to sound a bit camp." When I ask who were his favorite performers------ in addition to Judy Garland-----the actor says, "Stop that.!"
Sewell won the London Critics Circle Best Newcomer Award ( "commonly known as the kiss of death" ) for MAKING IT BETTER. "I played a Czechoslovakian hustler who would do anything for a bag of sweets and a new pair of Levi's. And it turns out he's a spy. Tom Stoppard and Trevor Nunn came to see me in that and I went straight into ARCADIA [ originating the role of Septimus Hodge ] .
ARCADIA was wonderful, because of the honor of being the first person to play a part in a new play by Tom Stoppard at the National Theatre, directed by Trevor Nunn. It was the sort of part that having played it once, I can happily say I would never, ever want to play a part like it again." But, he's asked, wouldn't he have enjoyed the opportunity to play Hodge in its New York production? He laughs and admits, "Of course, but you can't be greedy." Adds Sewell. "There's a danger to parts like that. You get stamped into a certain thing. At the same time, I was doing MIDDLEMARCH [ shown here on PBS ] and that was a similar role.
"Before ARCADIA and MIDDLEMARCH , I played so many offbeat characters that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do what I'd always been frightened of ---- which was to play a romantic character. Having proved to myself that I could, I wanted to leave it. The reason I became an actor was to get from part to part. If I let that slip through my fingers by wanting to be famous rather than wanting to be good, then I'd hate myself for it. So, I turned down a lot of potential work. Then I was asked how would I fancy playing a Dublin busdriver [ in the movie A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, starring Albert Finney ]. One of the producers said, "Oh, not the guy from MIDDLEMARCH; we're talking about a working class busdriver.' Well, I heard about that. I went to Dublin four weeks before they wanted to test me and I worked on that accent and stuff. There was vengeance involved. When the guy who'd made the remark saw the test, he didn't recognize me-------which pleased me a great amount."
Sewell has three films awaiting release: " CARRINGTON with Emma Thompson, COLD COMFORT FARM, directed by John Sshlesinger, and Joseph Conrad's VICTORY with Willem Defoe and Sam Neill." The best advice he's been given was "from David Terrance, the acting teacher at my drama school. I went to him with a poem I'd been working on, 'The Flea' by John Donne, and he said, 'It's good. It's all there, but you must never allow yourself to forget that acting is easy. Work as hard as you like leading up to it, but just remember it's easy.' That, and 'Speak up!' "
In five years, Rufus Sewell would like to be sent a script and have them say, " Which part would you like to play?"
"I don't mean to be that much in demand that they just want me in their film----just that they don't have a preconceived idea. Other than that, I don't care. Of course, I will care when it happens. [ Laughs ] But, sitting in my Broadway dressing room, I can say, ' I don't care.' "
top
Thank you Janet in NY for the article!
(although we might have had a couple of them in the "Have we got all of those pics?" one) - so let's rectify that right now!
[/p]
for finding and posting, GE2! I guess for non English native speakers it is a very difficult play ...
I've seen Arcadia twice but unfortunately not with the original cast. A fabulous play.