THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
As we said our hellos – John Douglas Thompson in Stratford-upon-Avon, The American a few miles from Bath in the West of England – it transpired that John had a connection with our part of the world.
You were born over in Bath, John?
Yes, it looks like full circle for me. This is my first interview with a paper close to Bath... Bodes well!
Then your family moved to Canada – how old were you then?
I was about two and a half/three years old when we moved to Montreal, it was me, my mother and father. I'm of Jamaican descent, my parents were born in Jamaica. My parents came over to the UK and had children – me, my brother Michael, three sisters, Dorett, Jackie and Carol. Dorett remained in Bristol as she was older, and we all went to Canada. I was the baby.
Do you have any memories of moving to Canada?
Not much, other than flying on the plane from, it must have been Heathrow. I remember sitting by the window, it was my first plane ride in my young life at that time and I was looking out the window and being quite amazed that we were flying, and in the clouds.
I've been back to Bath several times, to be with family and sometimes to work. There was a movie called Till that I'm in and we had our UK premiere in London. I've been to London and Southampton to work, and I've been back to come with an American troupe – Chicago Shakespeare Festival – to do something at the Royal Shakespeare Company. This was the Complete Works Festival [the first time that the entire repertoire of Shakespeare's 37 plays, his sonnets and the long poems were ever performed in together in one place, between 2006 and 2007]. The RSC had their own company doing a series of plays and they invited of companies from different parts of the world to do play.
You didn't have a typical entry into acting, you didn't do drama school as a teenager, I think you went into business first?
Yeah, I worked for a Fortune 500 company by the name of Unisys, I was a salesperson and I sold computers to the financial industry. I was training with the company in New Haven, Connecticut, when I met a young lady who was a med student at Yale Medical School. We were friends, but I wanted to turn the relationship into something more so I invited her on a date, and I figured she'd be very impressed if I took her to see a play, as opposed to maybe a sporting event or a movie. She said yes, but on the day she didn't show up. Either there was a miscommunication or something came up, who knows? This was before cell phones so it was difficult to reach people, I went to a pay phone to try to contact her dormitory at the medical school, but I couldn't get through, so I decided to go to the play on my own. It was called Joe Turner's Come and Gone, by the great August Wilson, God rest his soul. It really moved me, and in that moment, as I was watching the play, I said, This is what I want to do, I don't know how to do it of course, or where to start, but I want to be an actor.
After that, I still went back to my job selling computers for another five and a half years, then they started to lay people off and I was one of the people that got laid off. It came into my mind, now is the time to pursue this dream of being an actor. I got enough severance pay to basically not work, but just pursue this dream, so that's what I did.
I got involved with a local director in Providence, Rhode Island, who happened to be a member of a regional theater company and he said they had a drama school, they were auditioning and he said I should audition. I got into the school, a two year program at Trinity Repertory Company. When I graduated I was unemployed as an actor for two years, maybe longer, and then I found my first job. Jobs started to come in little by little after that, and that was my journey.
I do remember, as I was sitting watching that play at the Yale Rep Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, I was so moved that I literally said a small prayer to God. 'God, if you're witnessing what is happening to me right now, this is what I want to do – make me an actor'.
If that young lady had turned up, maybe you would have been more distracted by her than the play, and this would never have happened?
Absolutely! Or I could have been so frustrated from being stood up I could have decided not to go to the play at all. So thank God I did. I thought about it, and I said, No, I'm not going to let this ruin my evening, I'm going to go see this play,
and I was riveted from the first moment. I had no idea! I think I saw a play once before, when my college went to New York on a trip and I got to see the great Roger Rees in The Mystery Of Edwin Drood. Then came Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and what was interesting about that play was I was looking at people who looked like me. It was a black-centered story of the black migration from the South to the North, and it had fascinating characters who reminded me of my own family. I saw something in it that was incredibly relatable, and this theater piece was kind of like a religious experience for me. That other piece was just pure entertainment, but this seemed to be much more soul stirring, it really grabbed me from the very first moment. It was an unforgettable theatrical experience, something that I'll always remember for the rest of my life.
So the first play that you watched seriously had a lot of black characters. A lot of black people would say that they don't get that experience, but that's how you started off?
Yes, that was my standard of what theater is! And it was an excellent production. So that's what I thought theater was – when you walk into a theater, you were going to see productions that would move you to your core.
That's a high bar. One might think, then, that you would have gone on to play lots of modern American roles, but you're more known for the big Shakespearean roles. How did that come about?
Well, I was attracted to Shakespeare early on, and once I got to drama school, even more so. The BBC had all Shakespeare's productions videotaped, with the RSC I believe, and I would go rent three of them a day and watch them before starting my first class. I really fell in love with Shakespeare through that, as well as just reading it. I had to do a monologue of Shakespeare prior to getting into drama school, because that was the requirement for the audition. I knew of Shakespeare because I went to a Jesuit High School and a Jesuit college, we did study a little bit of Shakespeare in our English class along with other famous writers, but no plays, nothing practical, I just read it. So when I had to audition for my drama school, I started to read a lot of Shakespeare monologues and I fell in love even more. When I was in drama school, I knew for sure that I wanted to be a classical actor. I asked my teachers to make me a classical actor so that I could do classical productions. The Greeks and Shakespeare were my favorites. Part of that is because I think in the essence of those plays are all the great characters that you find in contemporary plays as well. It just seemed the best place to start would be with Shakespeare and the Greeks.
Start at the top?
Well wherever it was! You know what I mean? I think as we look at modern day characters, they are reflections of these great characters that you find in Shakespeare and the Greeks. They often hearken back to those characters in some way, shape or form. And I felt like, well, if I can do Shakespeare, then I'll be able to do everything else. Shakespeare was the measuring stick.
And of course, you're now over here to do Othello. You've played Othello many times, at different stages of your own life, do you think your life experience has changed the way you play him?
Oh yeah. I think as one matures, as your life moves and you evolve, you bring different things to the role. You understand more things about the role and about the play, and also the world in which you live changes, and that changes people's perception and your reflection on the play as well. That all leads to different productions at different times. Nothing is ever the same when I've approached the role. And you hopefully mature and evolve as an actor, and what you've learned you can then apply to it. The first time I did it, I was just really flailing, I didn't quite know what I was doing. Over the years or over the approaches, I've been able to learn a little bit more about acting, and my own maturity as an actor and as an individual often create new interpretations of the character and the productions that I'm in.
Shakespeare more than any other genre, if you can call him a genre, is probably more adaptable, and capable of more interpretation, than many other plays.
Yes, and I think you want to work on these roles, not just once but several times, to get the full breadth of them and understand them. They still are a mystery, it's not as if it's a problem solved. It's a process that you continually engage in because it is so worthwhile. That's what it is for me. I've often played roles more than once, because they warrant more exercise, more excavation, more looking into. One production is not enough.
Is this new Othello a traditional, 'period' rendering?
Yeah, I would say very Jacobean, which is fascinating for me, because I've never done a production of Shakespeare in that period. So this is all very new for me, and yielding many different aspects that are quite exciting.
Are there any other differences compared to Shakespearean productions you've done in the States?
The way in which we've been approaching Shakespeare in the States is very much like I'm experiencing now with the RSC. But I would say that there's probably more Shakespeare happening here than there is in the States, there's less of an opportunity to do work with Shakespeare in the US, primarily because of Covid and what that has done to the theaters, they've had to pull back on their budgets, and typically Shakespeare is a little bit more expensive than your average contemporary production. But the approaches have been very similar. I do think there's a desire to see Shakespeare in the US, and Americans really love Shakespeare.
How have you approached this new production?
It's really exciting, an interesting interpretation and production of the play. Certainly, from my perspective, it's nothing like I've done before.
Are there any of the big Shakespearean roles that you haven't played, that you still want to do?
Oh, yes, on my bucket list would certainly be Lear, Coriolanus... I even dream of a Falstaff somewhere. There's a Falstaff inside of me, I don't know where, but I have to find it! Those would be the three that I see on the horizon, and hopefully get an opportunity to play.
You have to have a certain, shall we say, maturity to do Lear.
Yes, and I still feel I'm too young, although Paul Scofield did it in his 40s, so that gives me hope that you can attempt a role a little bit sooner than you think. But I'm 61 so I'm getting to the space where a Lear would make sense for me to attempt.
There's a sweet spot where you have to be mature enough to play Lear, but not too old… Olivier, when he did it last, couldn't lift his Cordelia.
[laughs] Yes, you gotta have a little bit of strength left so you can carry Cordelia. That's when I'll know, if I don't get the opportunity to play it, it'll be because I ran out of strength! I gotta keep the core work going, keep the arms working, so I can lift Cordelia. That's so funny. It does require some youth and also some age at the same time in order to fully accomplish it, right? Those Shakespeare requirements, which are all so very specific sometimes with these major characters, as to what you have to be capable of doing in order to accomplish the role.
I've been in King Lear maybe five times. I played Kent twice. I played Edgar, Edmund... The last Lear I was in was with the great, God rest her soul, Glenda Jackson in New York, on Broadway and I did another one with Sam Waterston, the great American actor. I've been around many great Lears, watching the play, being in the play, and I'm certainly looking forward to my opportunity to play the role.
You have done many other things as well. You did Satchmo at the Waldorf.
Yes, and I just finished doing Endgame, the Samuel Beckett play, I played Hamm in that at the Irish Rep in New York City. I've done several contemporary plays and the one that you're talking about was my only one person show, contemporary or classical. Satchmo at the Waldorf was about Louis Armstrong. It's a fascinating play, because it's very much about not the public Louis Armstrong that you see, but a very private Louis Armstrong that you don't see. It was written by, God rest his soul, Terry Teachout, who was the great theater critic for the Wall Street Journal. He was also a music critic earlier in his career, and he was fascinated by jazz and by Louis Armstrong, and decided to write a book about Louis Armstrong, which the play is based on. That book was quite wonderful because it was the only book about Louis Armstrong from cradle to grave, it spanned Armstrong's whole life. From that book, he decided to write a play with the main characters in his life. So I played Louis Armstrong as well as his mobster manager Joe Glaser, and I also played Miles Davis. Miles and Louis really were quite contentious with one another, as they were different styles, different approaches. I really enjoyed doing that. I did not know a lot about Louis Armstrong before I did the play, but I studied his music and his life. In New York, they have the Louis Armstrong Museum, and they have the Louis Armstrong House, you can go and visit it. In the museum, they have all these private tapes that he made. He bought a reel to reel tape recorder early on, and recorded just about everything, not only music, but conversations, meetings, discussions at home with his wife, everything. Terry Teachout was the first critic to listen to those tapes and it helped create his book. You got to see this fascinating individual whose public persona was magnetic and cheerful and gracious and ebullient, but people didn't really know what his private life was like, and these tapes revealed it. I did maybe a couple hundred performances of the play in the States, and I'd love to do it again. A one person play is difficult in the sense that it can be a lonely experience because it's just you. You don't have another actor to come on stage with you. The other actor is essentially the audience. I put it down for a little while, and I'm kind of ready to get back to it, because I am a big, big Louis Armstrong fan from having worked on the play and just immersing myself in his music.
Is there a chance of seeing you do it over here?
From your lips to God's ears! [laughs]
You've recently been in The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes' HBO series. Was that fun to do?
Yeah, it is. It's a period drama, but many things about it are factual. This was the first period drama where the African Americans that were in it were portrayed in this way – I'm a patriarch of an African American family, the Scotts, and we're quite wealthy. You typically wouldn't see the black elite class in these kinds of stories, so I'm glad that Julian wrote that in and wanted that to be a feature of the production, it's a first of its kind for a costume drama about the United States, to highlight a black elite family. And there's all these stage actors, we've all worked together in one way or another, so it's really good to get back in touch with each other and work with each other.
You've had success on screen, but is the theater really where your heart is?
Yeah, of course. I think a lot of actors who work in film and television would say that. There's something about the theater, because it is alive and in the moment. And the biggest thing is the amount of time you get to work on material. In the theater world it's far more than you would get in the television or film world. So you can go further, do more, it really allows you to exercise your acting skills and imagination in the way that film and television sometimes don't because of the time constraints. Theater requires and demands it, in order to work on a play, to build it, you start with this rehearsal process and so many wonderful things can be yielded from that. Acting is still acting, but it's a different world, and I think most actors prefer having the opportunity to rehearse something over a period of time and then perform it. There's lots of things that happen in the rehearsal process. As you get to know people, and you get to know the history of the play, you build a production, you start to exercise your craft in different ways. Your imagination is excited, your creativity starts to build. There's so many beautiful things that happen over the course of time with the rehearsal process that sometimes the actor can't get to do with film and television. That's why many actors come back to the stage. And where am I going to find characters in the contemporary world of film and television of the scope of Othello or Richard III or Prospero or Hotspur? Even after that rehearsal process, and you've built it and you've worked with the director and worked with your fellow actors, it doesn't end there, because then you've got to present it to an audience, and that's another interaction that will change what you do. Because at the end of the day, we're doing this for the audience. It's as if we've created this gift that we want to give to the audience, and hope that they receive it in kind, but the audience really helps us form that gift for them. It's really an interesting experience when the audience comes in, to see what works for them and where the story lands and what we can do better to make the story more impactful. We don't do this in a vacuum. We do it for the audience that wants to come to see the show.
You're over here for the US election, November fifth?
Yes, and I will be voting from here. The last time I did Othello was when Barack Obama was running for the presidency of the United States, and we were a week into it, I think, then the election happened and he won. It added a new perspective to the production as a whole, that this man had won the election and would be the President of the United States, possibly the most powerful man in the world. It happened for the actors that were working on it, of course, but it also happened for the audiences who looked at the play in a new light. We didn't enforce it on them, it was just what was already out there, and so I think audience members will come to this production with whatever has been going on in the world that can be relatable to this play. That's what they bring when they sit down and watch this piece. They may be conscious of it, or it can be unconscious, but that's what happens, and it helps to change the piece each time people see it. That's what makes live theater so special.
Thank you so much for that. One final question. What's the best thing about being John Douglas Thompson?
Having the opportunity to work on this great poetry of Shakespeare – that's all I can think of right now because that's what's in front of me!
To book tickets to see John Douglas Thompson as Othello, go to www.rsc.org
