Interview: Dylan Godwin of THE GLASS MENAGERIE at Alley Theatre

Dylan Godwin is one of the resident company members of the Alley Theater, who just opened the GLASS MENAGERIE and is playing Tom. This part is one of his dream roles, so Broadway World writer Brett Cullum jumped at the chance to ask him how it feels to have a dream come true and find out what it is like working at Alley Theatre.  

---

Brett Cullum: What is it about Tom? THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a classic by Tennessee Williams. But what is it about this role that you were just like, “Oh, my gosh, this is a dream! I really want to do this.”

Dylan Godwin: Well, you know, I had a mentor all through my childhood who ran our community theater in the town where I grew up, and he introduced me to this play when I was eleven years old. He gave me a monologue from it and asked me to memorize it. And so I did. And you know, what does an 11-year-old know about the complexities of Tennessee Williams? But he planted a seed in my brain. I read the play, and as with many works of great literature, at every juncture that you read it in your life, you get something new from it. And so it's always been a play that has been in my consciousness. And this mentor that I'm talking about. We lost him in 2020, and it had always been something that was in my mind and a role that I've always wanted to do because Tom is widely known as being the most like Tennessee Williams. Of all the characters in Tennessee Williams' plays, there's a loosely autobiographical thing about THE GLASS MENAGERIE. And so it's just always been in my head, and when the opportunity came up to do it. It just felt like this wonderfully synchronistic set of events. So here we are in the middle of it, and I couldn't be happier.

Brett Cullum: Tennessee Williams, and particularly THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is something that actors grow up with, no matter who they are. It's one of those hallmark plays they make you read. I actually chose to read it in high school because I had an odd goal of reading every Tennessee Williams work. It's a very interesting premise, and Tennessee Williams identified himself as gay. And Tom is hiding that in his character, correct?

Dylan Godwin: I mean, I think that is a, you know, in some productions, you really can latch onto that in other productions, they don't quite focus on it so heavily. But as a gay person myself, it was one of the things that stuck out to me as a younger adult when I first started reading it with that in mind. It's such a huge part of Tom's journey in the play.

Brett Cullum: Well, it's so cloaked. It's very much of its time, and this is 1944. How do you approach it from your modern eyes and get back there? How do you establish this character and bring it to life because you and I are in a different world? 

Dylan Godwin: You know, not to go off on too much of a tangent about it, but I went to school for musical theater, and often when they were training us to be able to fit into any role, you oftentimes heard for the gay guys, “You need to learn to butch it up.” You had to for this role or that role. And you know, for a lot of years, there were a lot of approaches to this play that were always in the back of my mind. I  had a revelation five or six years ago that I was like, “Gay people have always existed. Queer people have always existed, and some are better at butching it up than others. And so it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that there are characters like that in these great works of literature, at varying degrees of cloaking it or hiding it, or really not being so good at it.” Realizing that in my work has freed me up in a lot of ways to feel like these characteristics and these people do exist in this literature, particularly in Tennessee. Williams. He was an anomaly at the time for being able to be a very out and proud gay man at a time when there weren't very many people in the Zeitgeist that could hold that title. 

I approach it like any other play; you think about the circumstances of who he is and the world that he's living in, and most of the play takes place in their apartment with just his mother and his sister. A person can be a little more themselves in that regard and a little more free with how they are. I think that Tom's journey is one that is sort of about that. Everyone always talks about Tom and thinks of Tom as needing to escape this world, but when you attach to it the identity of who he is and how his identity probably couldn't exist in that world, it gives you a real understanding of why it was so important for him to be able to get out and find some air to be who he really was, or is rather.

Brett Cullum: I was thinking, what is it about THE GLASS MENAGERIE and Tennessee Williams that makes it still relevant today? It gets produced again and again and again, and it never goes away. It's always there. It's always at the forefront of theater. So, what is your take on why it's so universal?

Dylan Godwin: It's a story of family, and family is not always nuclear and perfect. But the thing about this text that endures… You know Sally Winger is playing Amanda, and being on stage with her is like being next to a force of nature. She is so skilled and honest, and the work is so deep that even the first time, we read those mother and son scenes together. You come to understand how these scenes, whether they take place in the thirties or now, he has written the most honest and true relationship between a mother and a son. I think it's that quality that allows this play to endure the test of time because anybody in the audience, gay, straight, and indifferent, can look at that relationship and see something of their own relationships with their parents or the people that they're closest to.

My therapist one time told me, “Your parents will never give you the keys to leave the nest. You have to steal the keys and leave the nest on your own because they'll never agree to it. And there's a core of that at the center of this play. His mother can't allow him to leave because of his responsibilities there, so he has to find some way out of it himself. That's kind of a little sentiment that's been going through my head as we've been rehearsing this play a lot.

Brett Cullum: You've been a company member of the Alley since when because I feel like you've always been there. 

Dylan Godwin: I have been officially in the company for six years. I've been working at the Alley for… oh, my God! … either 15 or 16 years now.

Brett Cullum: What is it like being in the company as opposed to not being in the company? What is the difference? 

Dylan Godwin: It's been my dream. It's wonderful! My mentor was the one that I spoke about when I was a kid. He would always say, “So many people that go into theater get the idea of I need to be in this place to do theater, New York or LA, or whatever,” He always instilled in me the real action of what's happening in the American theater is happening at regional theaters. Because when you work at regional theaters, you have the opportunity to play things that are not just relegated to your specific type. When I was at Sam Houston State University, I began seeing what the Alley was doing. You know those people I held in the highest esteem: Todd Waite, James Black, Jeff Bean, Elizabeth Bunch, all of these people! I started looking at them and saying, “Wow, that's a place I want to be because I spent the first 15 years of my career as a freelancer. And while that is wonderful, there's an element to being a freelancer that is like, yes, I booked a job. I can focus on this job and have a great time doing this play. But in the last two weeks of the run, I have to split my focus and start thinking about hustling for my next gig. Being in the company at the Alley, we are able to know what our whole season is like at the beginning of the year. It's allowed me to refocus my energies on my work, not have to worry about the next thing and divide that kind of energetic poise you have when you're working on a play. You want to be able to stay in it. You want to be able to stay in that world and keep your head down, and keep discovering, and keep growing. The longer that you play the show, and having the opportunity to be in a company, allows me to do that in a way that I haven't experienced before, not to mention that those names that I just mentioned were such idols of mine. You know, I get to work with them every day, and I really feel like when you get to work with peers that you admire and that you trust. It allows your work to go a couple of pegs higher than it would when you weren't. 

The other prong of that with being in a company is that when you're freelancing or coming into a contract somewhere else, you will often meet the company you're working with on the first day of rehearsal. So, you must build that intense trust and connection on the spot. The people that I work with at the Alley. We have been working with each other for years, so we have a shared vocabulary. We are all very familiar with each other's processes. So we know how to pull those things together and get to the meat of the play faster because a lot of that work has already been done for us because we've been together for so long.

One of the wonderful things about Rob Melrose, our artistic director, is that Rob is one of the most collaborative, open-hearted, kind people that you will ever meet. When he came in, and he transitioned into the role of artistic director, he asked everyone in the company to email him five roles that we would love to play in our career at some point, and they could be roles that we feel are outside of what we usually play or are, you know, close to what we usually play. But he gave us that opportunity to, you know, explain to him and to tell him what things we would like to do. And Tom was at the top of my list. Rob is a giving person who is really invested in what the people who are collaborating with him want to do, and what makes them passionate is that he knows that that kind of passion only breeds better work. So if there were ever something I would want to try differently, I feel completely comfortable enough with Rob to sit down and meet with him and say, “Could you see me doing this, and not just could you see me doing this? But could you help me figure out how to do this?” And that's the kind of organization that we are. It's about figuring out what people want to do and what places they would fit best in, and coming all hands to the pump and making that happen for them.

Brett Cullum: I appreciate you taking the time to talk about it with me today. THE GLASS MENAGERIE runs at the Alley through March 16th 

Dylan Godwin: Thank you, Brett.

To post a comment, you must register and login.