BWW Interviews: Spotlight on AN ILIAD’s Hans Altwies

I met up with Hans in between his Matinee and Evening shows of "An Iliad" on Saturday.  In the short time since he arrived here in 1993 to go to school at Cornish College of the Arts (where he graduated in 1996) this 39 year old from Detroit, Michigan has become one of the hot tickets in the Seattle theater scene.  But beyond that, he's also a really great guy.  A devoted family man and down to earth guy with whom you just want to hang out, he proved himself the consummate storyteller (like he portrays in "An Iliad") even before we sat down when I simply asked, "How did the show go this afternoon?"

How did the show go this afternoon?

So at the beginning of the play I always get the person in the front row to hand me a program so I can look at it and see what city we're in and there was nobody in the front row.  So I asked, by pointing, to the woman in the second row if she would hand me her program and she did not respond at all.  And I pointed again and I did the gesture of opening the program, she still didn't get it.  I said "paper" and she still didn't get it so I got down on my stomach and I stretched over the front row and I leaned over and I grabbed the program out of her lap and I went back on stage and I stood up.   And then inexplicably, the person behind her gave her his program.   I have no idea why he did that.  And then after I was done I said you can have this back then she had to turn around and give the program back the other person.  It was all very strange but she had no idea what I was doing.  That was an adorable moment.

What do you do for a living outside of theater? 

Theater's my main job.   When I'm not doing theater I like to be a carpenter but I haven't had to do that much.

What was your first show in Seattle?

My first show in Seattle was Bellevue Repertory Theatre's production of "Much Ado About Nothing".  I played a priest.

What do you do to prepare for a role?

Usually for a role you're allowed the time, because you're not spending all your time working on lines, to do as much research as you want.  Depending on the play and depending on how much there is to research I do as much as I can.  I did not do a lot of research for this play because I had to use every hour to memorize lines.  I read "The Iliad".  I read a book called "In Search of Troy".  I skimmed a book that I had read in the past called "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning".  I mean, I have a family and Amy works a lot.  So the time that I had to work on the play was 10:30 to 2:00 in the morning at home in my shop and I would read it all the way through over and over again.  I just read it aloud like I was talking to someone.

How was it working with authors Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson on a new work like this?

I was trepidacious.  It was a recipe for disaster in a lot of ways.  So she didn't know me, she had never met me.  We had a conversation on the phone.  I had read the play obviously.  And I told her in the audition, when I first picked this thing up I said, "This is not for me.  There's no way I can do this, I'm not smart enough.  I'm not able to do it."  And then I read the whole thing out loud and I said, "No I disagree.  I would love to do this."  I said to her whoever gets a chance to do this is going to have an incredible experience.  Because this is Denis O'Hare and her actual words.  So there's Fagle's, the translation that they used for the Homer and all the rest the words and all the modern language is literally transcribed.   Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson, in room together, with a video camera on, talking to each other about certain chapters they had read.  They gave the tapes to interns and the interns transcribed them and they culled what they needed from the transcriptions and started piecing together this play.  So the voice of Dennis is very present.  He is the uber actor, I mean this guy, he's amazing.  His facility is boundless.  I mean TV and musicals he can do anything.  So, it was super intimidating to walk in with very short notice doing a one person play. I'd never done a one person play before.  Written by somebody for somebody specifically, that is no longer going to be doing this, that is held in such esteem.  It was terrifying.  She was so gracious and she was so nimble the way that she was able to communicate with me and kind of feel how I needed work and how I was gonna get there.  So much credit has to go to her being able to find this play as it suited me, and how I could best do this play.  That was not how he would do this play.  It was very clear this was going to be this actor's version of this production not me trying to do Denis O'Hare.  She also said, and this is important to her as she was writing it, this play is like coat you put on.  Many people can do this. There is no longer any agenda that he is the only person who does this play.  This play can be done anywhere by any actor who is capable.  And that's how she likes to think of it.  Anybody can do this play.  He (Denis) came in three different times and it he was super super generous.  I'm sure it must've been very strange for him but he was only helpful, only made me feel great.  He was super cool and very smart and very helpful and very funny.  They were all love. 

Was it difficult to find your own voice?

She allowed me, she led me, but she also just allowed me to bring my poet.  There's a lot that they still don't know about this play.  It's a piece in process, and I'm sure they will change a lot for the production that they're doing at the McCarter at the end of December.  They are finally going to get the chance to do it together at the McCarter.

The poet is he's great he's this crusty old time traveler and I didn't stray that far from my initial reaction to it in the audition.  Which was my version of it.  We didn't have to work that much on the character it was more working on the technical aspects of it of how to tell the story how to find the arc and have it not be boring for an hour and half.

So how was it being onstage by yourself for an hour and a half?

It's a trip.  It is mostly a trip the first minute and a half because every night you're meeting this whole New Group of people and they communicate volumes in the first minute and a half.   With how they respond and how they're listening and who they are and how comfortable they feel looking at me because I can see pretty much all of them.  There's so much work to do that I can't think about the fact that I'm onstage. Oh my God I have 50 more minutes. I can't think about it,there so much work do which is great.  I know that I have to keep this thing moving like crazy.

You're the co-artistic director for the New Century Theater.  Can you tell us about that?

New Century Theater Company, NCTC.  Not the National Counterterrorism Commission.  New Century Theatre Company.  If you punch in NCTC it's like, WHAT?!

There's a group of us that live real close to each other and we would get together just hanging out discussing our job we started hearing ourselves and friends saying the same things over and over again.  Theatre in this town had really plummeted in the last fifteen years.   We had lost a lot of mid-size theaters.   Jobs were escaping.  People were leaving.  Seattle was a force in the late 80's the early 90's and an important place nationally.  And all of us had families and mortgages and we didn't want to go anywhere.  But we have standards, we want to be great.  We don't want to be good we want to be great theater artists.  And if you're living somewhere and the ceiling is so high, basically pride takes over and you say, "I want this place to be better.  I want to this city to be better."   So as many friends who are theater artists get around to, they say, "Let's start a theatre company."   We'd get drunk and talk about it for about two years before we actually finally, finally got a group of people together at my house and we started talking about it.  What would this mean, why would we do this, what would be do, how would we do it?  And then finally John Langs who directed our first show said, "If you don't pick a date, you are never going to do anything.   Pick the show, pick the date and that is your starting point."   And Paul Stetler my co-artistic director had just come back from doing "The Adding Machine" in San Diego and he said we should do this play.

It just felt like we did something many other artists in this town could have done.  Take a group of professional actors; we're all at a certain level.  We're working at the big houses but there are a lot of people who could have done what we had done I think.  It was the right sort of professionals, we're adults, we weren't young, we had experience under our belt.  We put together a vigorous lean aggressive programming style, Steppenwolf like theatre mission and that's kind of who we are.   And it just seemed like the city was desperate for it.  There's nothing like us in this town but hopefully they'll be more things like this in town because you've got the fringe and you got the Rep and you need things in between, otherwise you don't have the cycle of theatre artists.  You need the full gamut to create a culture of theater going. 

You're doing "Much Ado About Nothing" this Summer with your wife, Amy Thone.  Have you ever worked together before?

We met doing a play together.  We met doing "Romeo and Juliet" at The Children's Theatre and I was playing Lady Capulet and she was playing Tybalt.  We have done close to 15 shows together.  We do best when we get to work together.  One thing we figured out in our relationship is that we don't do well when we don't see each other.  We both love theater in much the same way.  There's no fear of it ever being problematic because we've only ever really enjoyed working together.  It has been very boringly happy.

Was the first show you ever did?

First show I can remember ever doing was a play that I made up with my friend in the living room my friend's house. I was probably five or six but I remember it perfectly.  We made up a story about two lions and one of them got hurt and one of them came along and rescued the other lion. 

What has been the favorite role you've played?

I'm not done with this but this is pretty damn special.  It's super special I never ever would have seen this coming.  Either that or Iago.  Or Sharkey.  Sharkey in "The Seafarer" was pretty fun too.

What was your favorite show you've done?

I think my favorite show to do, just because Amy was pregnant with Stella, and it was a group people that are very, very good friends of mine was "Othello".  With Russ Banham as the director and his wife Jenny Sue was in it and Amy was in it and our dear friend John Bogar and our other friend Dan Dennis and Bill Hall who was in "Fences".  It was such a great group of people and it was such an intimate rehearsal process.  And it was such a good show and audiences responded so well to it and it was so fun.  That was my favorite show.

Who is your favorite person to work with?

My wife.  I'm glad I get to work with her again.

What's your Zen thing to do to unwind?

I'm going through all the things I can't say. 

We have a hot tub on our roof at the house.  I built half the house we live in and we have a hot tub on our roof and I love sitting in the hot tub with my wife.  I love having friends over at our house.  Having community close is super important.

Everyone has something they geek out about.  What's your geekdom?

I geek out pretty hard on two things.   One is boring and that is really, really, really great stage acting and the other is good tools.   Carpentry tools.   Really, I geek out hard on carpentry tools.  I can build pretty much anything.  If it doesn't include a machine or a motor, I can build pretty much anything.

If you would like to catch Hans on stage, his current show, "An Iliad" performs at the Seattle Repertory Theatre through May 16th.  For tickets or information contact the Rep box office at 206-443-2222 or visit them online at www.seattlerep.org. and

 

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