Star Spotlight: Reed Birney, The Dream of the Burning Boy
By: Robert Diamond Mar. 29, 2011
Star Profile:
Name: Reed Birney
Show: The Dream of the Burning Boy
Character: Larry Morrow
Q&A:
Q: How did you get started in acting?
A: I was one of those freakish kids who always knew that this was what I wanted to do. I remember being five and saying to a group of grown-ups that I wanted to be an actor and they all chortled as they looked at each other. Probably in horror. There was maybe a week I wanted to be a fireman.
Q: This is your second consecutive show at Roundabout Underground (Tigers Be Still), what brings you back?
A: Larry Morrow is one of the greatest parts I’ve ever had, in a beautiful, beautiful new play by an amazing new writer and directed by a brilliant young director, Evan Cabnet. Who wouldn’t come back? I feel so lucky to get be be in this production and tell this powerful, sad story.
Q: Roundabout Underground acts as an incubator for new plays and playwrights. What’s it been like working on a play that is continually developing?
A: I first became involved with The Dream of the Burning Boy two years ago when I was asked to read the play for David West Read’s class at NYU. It was a very early version of the play but even then had such depth and sophisticated storytelling. And David and I recognized that we might make a good team to work on this play. And we have over the last two years, including this past summer at The O’Neill Playwrights Conference. It has been a unique experience for me, and one of which I am fiercely proud, to have been able to collaborate and influence the play and the character of Larry and now to have it so well-received. My favorite thing as an actor is to work on new plays and this has been completely thrilling. We did an enormous amount of work during this rehearsal process and in previews. The play changed tremendously. I am not sure I have ever worked with a new writer who has, as effortlessly as David has, shown up with new pages that completely solved whatever issue there was, on the first try. No drama, just, “Let’s try this,” and it has always made it better and been breathtaking in the economy and ease.
Q: As a more established actor, what role do you play in a cast of relatively inexperienced actors?
A: Partly because I am decades older than everyone else in the cast and because of the nature of my role, I feel like I have some responsibility to, this sounds weird, to be the “Dad”. Whether they want me to or not! I can offer some advice and perspective, perhaps, to the kids who are just starting to hack their way through this forest. It’s a wildly talented group of people, kind of awe-inspiring actually, and no one is crazy so there is really very little for this “Dad” to do.
Jessica Rothenberg, Jake O'Connor, Reed Birney and Alexandra Socha in
The Dream of the Burning Boy; Photo Credit: Joan Marcus, 2011
Q: What’s your funniest on-stage mishap?
A: I honestly don’t remember anything really going terribly wrong onstage. Perhaps I have happily blocked it. I’ve only had trouble not cracking up onstage once: I playEd Simon in Hay Fever with JoAnne Woodward and Judith Ivey in 1982 at Kenyon Festival Theater. Every night, the after-dinner parlor game that opens Act II was impossible to perform without falling over from laughter. Torture. But still one of my happiest times onstage ever.
Q: Do you have any theatre-related superstitions?
A: How dull am I? No. I remember when I was 23 and doing The Master and Margarita at the Public with Andre Serban. It was very difficult job, made worse by an enormous cast and difficult personalities, and I whistled once backstage, a rare moment of happiness during it, and one of the senior company members made me do an elaborate routine to counteract it, spinning and spitting and going outside, some such nonsense. And he wasn’t kidding. I thought what a lotta hooey.
A: How dull am I? No. I remember when I was 23 and doing The Master and Margarita at the Public with Andre Serban. It was very difficult job, made worse by an enormous cast and difficult personalities, and I whistled once backstage, a rare moment of happiness during it, and one of the senior company members made me do an elaborate routine to counteract it, spinning and spitting and going outside, some such nonsense. And he wasn’t kidding. I thought what a lotta hooey.
Q: When you’re not onstage you are…
A: I have a fantastic family that I haven’t gotten to see nearly enough with this crazy year I have had. I love being home with them and hanging out. Both of my kids want to be actors. Must be a recessive gene. But I am a very lucky man.
Q: What advice do you have for aspiring performers?
A: There is enough to say here to fill a couple of books. It’s a hideous life, which they will find out for themselves soon enough, and the most fantastic one imaginable, which they probably already know. But the thing I keep relearning is this notion of keeping the bigger picture. You absolutely never know what’s going to happen next. As recently as 2007 I was in a production that was very, very bad and I had a very small role and I was in deep despair that I had, in fact, come to the end. An ignominious end to my journeyman career. And by the same time a year later I was in Sarah Kane’s Blasted and the world changed. If you love it, do it for the love of it. And have great friends. And laugh as much as you can. And remember it’s only a play.
You can see Reed Birney in The Dream of the Burning Boy at the Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre now through May 8, 2011.
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