Interview: Growth, Change, and Empathy: Bill Nolte Muses on FIDDLER and Art

"It's all about growing and being willing to change...about finding a way to look at things from both sides and learn to empathize."

The soft-spoken man sitting opposite me thoughtfully answers my question about the universality of the musical theatre piece in which he stars, Fiddler on the Roof. There is a gentle, heartfelt quality to all his comments, and one understands immediately why Bill Nolte makes an ideal Tevye. The Broadway actor, singer, and visual artist makes his Maine State Music Theatre debut on July 20 in a part he has played twice before, and he waxes eloquent about the experience in Maine and his reunion with director/choreographer Gary John LaRosa and many of the veteran cast members.

I have worked with Gary John before at Cape Fear Playhouse in Fiddler [Nolte's other Tevye was with director Richard Stafford at the Westchester Broadway Theatre]. That was two and a half years ago, so I have had some time to let things sink in and time to dig deeper and explore the show and the character even more." Nolte praises La Rosa's staging process: "He honors the original choreography and direction, but he lets people take chances and try new things. He is open to new rhythms and to discovery, rather than being stuck on exactly what he has done before. We are able to try something which leads to something else and on and on."

Despite the short rehearsal period at MSMT, Nolte feels confident about the outcome. "They have hired a number of people who have done the show before and done it with one another, so that definitely helps, and thus Gary John is able to spend time with the new ensemble. We put the whole show together in a week, and now we have time to let it set in. We have all the pieces, and now we can work to see how they fit together. It is going to continue to morph and finally blossom, but I already feel this time we have gone deeper than ever before."

Nolte, whose acting resume boasts some fifty Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional productions, explains why Fiddler on the Roof has always held a special place in his heart. "One of my earliest theatrical memories was of seeing Leonard Nimoy as Tevye in Toldeo, Ohio. I fell in love with the show then and there. When the actor, himself, first undertook Tevye, it was as the understudy on the national tour in which he also played Lazar Wolfe in the show. "I jumped onto a moving train," he says. "Since then I have tried to come up with new things to make it my own. For some reason this time the role is ringing truer than ever for me. I don't know if it is where I am in my own life or where the nation is politically..." He trails off.

So how does Nolte now understand that embraceable, inimitable, larger-than-life character? "He is Everyman. He is trying to raise a family, and he is surrounded by all women. And, naturally, women in 1905 Russia did not have a great many possibilities. They didn't receive an education and life was constrained by the insularity of the shtetl. For Tevye, the entire play is about change and the willingness to embrace change and grow from those experiences. When I think of my own life, for me a bad day might be the fact that someone put sugar in my coffee or the train was late or I went to the wrong address for an audition. For Tevye it is about entire villages being ransacked and about his own daughters making choices he cannot comprehend."

Continuing the parallels he feels with Tevye, Nolte says, "I grew up in a small Ohio town where everyone knew everyone else's business. I have gone through period in my life when I loved that and others when I didn't much care for it. Now I am at a point where I see it as quaint, and I embrace it again. I was raised a Christian; I became a Buddhist for a while, and I have explored and embraced Catholicism, so I have looked at a number of religions. I can easily empathize with the suffering the Jews experienced. In Tevye's world every day was a challenge. As an actor, too, you are often confronted with 'no, no' - with rejection, and I can identify with that feeling of knowing you have to get back up again. For Tevye it is his horse's lameness, for example, and he begs God to please help him, but ultimately he knows he has to stay positive and just keep going."

Nolte, who is a classically trained singer, also appreciates the wonderful musical moments in the show. "I love the opening of the prologue where we first meet this odd group of people - people in all sizes and shapes with weird names and professions. It's like introducing the audience to this whole new language. Then there is "If I Were a Rich Man," which I know so well I could perform it in my sleep and the beautiful song, "Havela," that is so unique and musically challenging in its intervals and rhythms that it is almost an art song. And, of course, there is "Anatevka" when they are all struggling to be hopeful."

It is no coincidence that Nolte talks of the score for the Bock-Harnick musical is terms of art song. The actor began his musical theatre studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory where he majored in both opera and musical theatre. He tells the story of his finding his way into music. "I had always had a desire to become a painter, and I began my studies at University of Michigan in visual art. But I realized I didn't want to be a commercial artist, which would surely have been necessary in order to make a living. So I dropped out and came back home, and that was when I discovered I could sing!"

On an impulse, Nolte found the Bach Conservatory in the Yellow Pages and arranged an audition. As he tells it, "I was so frightened that I chickened out of the first appointment. I went home and called and said I couldn't find any parking. But they told me to come back the following week, and so I did." Nolte's first voice teacher, Robert Harless, became a trusted mentor and friend. "Robert taught me to relax; he gave me solos to sing in church, and he urged me to apply for the Cincinnati Conservatory."

And so "naively, blindly, and maybe even courageously," Nolte did do just that. He sang as a tenore leggero and even shared a locker with Kathleen Battle. He says the classical training has influenced the way he sings in musical theatre. "I breathe; I think about [voice] placement, but acting always comes first for me. I am a classical singer and a good singer, but above that I try to be a good actor."

After graduating from the Conservatory, Nolte went to New York in 1976 and tried "to pursue both opera and musical theatre" - a strategy that "got me nowhere very fast. I knew I had to decide. And actually, my career has kind of embraced me. I went the Broadway route," though he did take three years off to work as a textile designer before returning to the stage in 1981.

Nolte has been fortunate to have worked in landmark shows with legendary directors almost from the start. In 1985 he made his Broadway debut in Trevor Nunn's production of Cats as Old Deuteronomy and went on to perform in Me and My Girl, The Secret Garden, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and 1776, before landing several roles he considers among his signature parts. "Playing Franz Liebkind - [he also played Max Bialystock for a while] - in The Producers has probably been the highlight of my career. I did the role on and off on Broadway for five years, closed the show there and did both national tours, Las Vegas, and also regional productions."

Nolte also cites two other shows for which he retains a special affection. "I did this very intimate, seven-character show, Amour which was written by James Lapine with music by Michel Legrand. It only ran for three weeks on Broadway, which was a disappointment, but it had been a delight to work on in development. I remember doing rehearsing for a workshop of it right after 9/11 in a studio on 42nd Street. There were all these anthrax scares and bomb scares, and I know I just felt really safe working on this gem of a show and making art."

The other role, that of Richard Mason in Jane Eyre, became another of Nolte's favorites. "We developed it in Toronto, and it was fun to work up there at the Royal Alexandra Theatre and later at La Hoya. We would work on it in fits and starts, but little by little we made it to Broadway and enjoyed a yearlong run. I was very proud of that show."

In addition to these performances on the Great White Way and another list of off-Broadway and regional credits that reads like catalog of major musicals - Damn Yankees, Hello Dolly, She Loves Me, Man of La Mancha, Oliver, Sweeney Todd, and Jekyll and Hyde, among many - Nolte has sung numerous concerts, recorded quite a few cast albums and has created five solo cabaret shows over the years. For the smaller cabaret setting, he says, "The choice of material is very important. You can't just sing lush ballads. You have to balance those with humor; you have to make the evening personal and share yourself with the audience. It's an opportunity to make an intimate connection with your audience." He tells about one nightclub show he performed for Seaborn Cruises that took him to India. We got to stay in Dubai for a week with all paid expenses, and that was fun to be a tourist, but the first day we got to India, Mumbai was bombed and there were all these incidents of piracy. I decided though that since I was actually in India, I would not only do my act, but then I toured the entire Golden Triangle."

His eyes light up in the spirit of adventure. The actor believes that ongoing learning is an important aspect of life and art. "I continue to take acting and voice classes," and though he did not become a visual artist as his primary métier, he has emerged as an accomplished watercolorist, who has studied painting over the years at prestigious institutions such as New York's Art Students League. He says watercolors attract him - not oil or acrylics - because, much like theatre, "they exist in the moment. I love it when my mistakes perform for me, when a puddle of color on the page has a gradation or paint crystallizes." These are moments of discovery for Bill Nolte and some of the many raison d'êtres why the arts - music, theatre, painting - have become his native language, his way of connecting with others, and so much a part of his being.

He explains the feeling with an example from Fiddler on the Roof. "Doing this show right now, right here has so much resonance for me, and I hope it will for everyone else in the cast and audience. For some of the younger cast members who were not even born when Fiddler made its debut, it is interesting to see how it affects them. They are getting a real taste of 1905 Russia, what it was and is like to be Jewish, what hard times these people struggled through. It has been eye-opening for all of us. The story is not about one ethnicity, however. It is far more universal. I hope audience here takes away empathy. I hope they understand that these people on stage may come from a different time, place, and culture, but I also hope they can see themselves in the characters and the story, especially in Tevye and the family. Anatevka may be a far off village, but what the Fiddler characters experience is still hugely relevant today.

Nolte pauses for a minute to gather his thoughts and articulate them with a quiet resolution: "Everyone in Anatevka is wrestling with the effort to remain hopeful, to use their brains rather than their brawn to survive. As change gradually comes into their lives, they ask themselves how they can change without resorting to violence, but rather by holding on to hope.

Photos courtesy Maine State Music Theatre

Fiddler on the Roof runs from July 20 - August 6, 2016 at the Pickard Theater, 1 Bath Road, Brunswick, ME 207-725-8769 www.msmt.org

Bill Nolte's next engagements will take him to the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, MA to portray Major Metcalf in The Mousetrap August 23-September 3, 2016, and then on to Geva Theatre Center in Rochester to play Marcus Leicus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, October 4-November 6, 2016.

To post a comment, you must register and login.