Interview with Jay Karnes by David Fickbohm of Theaterkat

Dave Fickbohm lives in Marin County and regularly reviews live theater productions in the San Francisco Bay Area. Contact Dave Fickbohm at davefickbohm@gmail.com

Jay Karnes Interview

How did you become interested in the theater?

When I was in high school, a very small college prep school in Nebraska, the last thing I ever thought I would want to do was to get onstage and talk in front of people.  I couldn’t imagine at that time anything more terrifying than that.  But it was a small school, so everyone had to everything.  I didn’t want to play football or run track or do chorus but there were only 22 people in my class so you didn’t have a choice.  My freshman year, they had auditions for the school play, which I never even considered attending, and they cast the play, but then one of the actors didn’t like his roll and dropped out, so the drama teacher — who I adored — asked me if I would do it, and I said yes, and it took.  From that point on, every play the school did, I was in.  And when I got to college I started auditioning there.  I thought I was going to be a lawyer or something like that, but that was really a delusion.  I was actually a terrible student, but just before my eighth year in college, I auditioned for a little Shakespeare festival in Nebraska and got cast as Demetrius in “Midsummer” and small roles in “Hamlet,” and there were two Equity actors there, who made $325 a week, or some ridiculous sum like that; I thought that actors were either movie stars or waiters, and meeting these two guys who traveled around from little theatre to little theatre, putting together in a year maybe $20 grand or something like that, I thought, I could do that.  What a nice gentle life that would be.  It was an epiphany, really, and at that moment I realized that maybe this was a real possibility, not just some sort of pie in the sky thing.  It was a wonderful moment.  And I’ve never looked back. And I never considered doing anything else from that point on.  I was 24 that summer.
 

What is your favorite Shakespearean play?

Marco Barricelli as Richard, and he was wonderful.  I really didn’t understand the appeal of the play and the part before that.  I didn’t know it, really, before that production.  In fact, I didn’t really know “Julius Caesar” before we started working on this Marin Shakespeare production.  That’s one of the great things about Shakespeare, getting to discover these plays, and try to figure out what they’re about.  And Richard III is one of the great roles in all of drama.  I love Hamlet too.  ”Hamlet” is a much better play than “Richard III,” but Richard is such a great role.

What is your favorite play, Shakespearean or other?

That’s tough.  If you take Shakespeare out of the picture, I love Coward’s “Private Lives,” Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” Pinter’s “The Birthday Party.”  There’s a long list of them.  

What is your favorite Shakespearean role?

Richard.  Hamlet.  Brutus, right now.

 

 

Is there an actor, theater director or theater teacher provided you with special inspiration? 

Yes, all sorts of people really.  There was a director/dramaturge combination years ago at this little festival called Shakespeare L.A.  I did one show with them, playing Mercutio.  Christopher Tabori directed that and Diana Maddox dramaturged it.  They were revelatory in terms of accessing Shakespeare and his words.  Working with the cast of “The Shield” — Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, CCH Pounder, Glenn Close —watching them and working with them has been, again, revelatory.  Something else that sounds a little silly, but I think about all of the actors who came in during seven seasons of “The Shield,” some of whom came in for two scenes or something, and so many of them were so fantastic. And it’s really humbling to think about how many great actors there are and how few of them get the opportunity to really show their skill.  Those actors came in and did the work and went home and you never saw them again, and the work they did was really phenomenal.  That was inspiring as well.

What book or books are on your night stand?

Oh no.  I’ve got one embarrassing one.  Actually, I’m not going to be embarrassed by this, because it really helped me.  ”Simply Shakespeare” — a modern, line-by-line translation of “Julius Caesar.”  They put Shakespeare’s lines on the page, and then the modern equivalent on the other page.  Sometimes they miss, and sometimes it isn’t helpful but sometimes it’s very helpful; there was a line that Barry Kraft, our brilliant “Julius Caesar” dramaturge, and I were confused by and we didn’t get, and these people did.  In the orchard scene when the conspirators come in, they ask, “do we trouble you?”  And Brutus says, “I have been up this hour, awake all night.”  What this book showed, is that he’s been up and out of bed for the past hour, but hasn’t slept all night.  It’s not a repetition; it’s two separate thoughts.  The not embarrassing book is “Plutarch’s Lives,” the Dryden translation.  I’m reading more Roman history, past Julius Caesar.
 

What do you look forward to when you wake up in the morning?

I was talking to a friend from LA and telling him how happy I’ve been and how much I love doing this.  When you ask, what makes you happy? Is it money, is it fame, and is it success?  And those things have value, but what makes you happy really is energy, that thing that gets you out of bed and inspires you.  Well the thing that has been providing me with that energy is being here working on this play.  Right now, what I’m looking forward to when I get up in the morning is going to the theatre and being part of a community and being able to work on terrific material.  That’s been an extraordinarily powerful force for me.  And of course, seeing my children, that’s probably the thing I look forward to most in the morning.
 

Are there any habits or traditions you follow before going on stage?

I like to go through my whole part, say all the words.  I compulsively check and recheck my props.   When you do TV or film, there is a prop guy who gives you your prop right before the camera starts to roll, and then puts it back when it’s over.  And more than once, the prop guy will come up to me and say, “you come from the theatre, don’t you,” because he sees me checking my props.  But I won’t relax unless I do it myself.

When you were a young child did you think you would become an actor?

No.  God, no.  It would have been the last thing I would have thought I would do

 

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