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Patrick Stewart Interview



Copyright © 1997 The Washington Post Co.

'Patrick Stewart, Inside a Murderous Mind'
- By David Richards


Washington Post Staff Writer
By Craig Herndon - The Washington Post
Wednesday, November 12, 1997; Page D01



Actor Patrick Stewart knows what it's like to want to kill someone. Like all of us, he says, he's experienced his share of murderous thoughts.

But this particular morning, with sunlight pouring cheerfully through the window, he's trying to figure out what goes on in a killer's head after he's committed the deed. What does it feel like to have murdered?

"It's much easier to know the pre-experience, I think," he says in a sonorous voice that sounds like thunder dipped in honey. "But obviously I've never murdered anybody. I haven't even done much murdering onstage. Just battle scenes and sword fights -- and that is all kind of silly."

The man with the gleaming ovoid pate, known the world over as Jean-Luc Picard in the syndicated TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is poised to take on the title role in "Othello," which begins performances at the Shakespeare Theatre on Tuesday. It's one of the theater's most demanding roles -- an impossibly high hurdle, he believes, that separates the great actors from the near-greats -- and he's already feeling the pressure.

"I'm pretty sure I can get through the killing of Desdemona eight times a week. Yes, I think we can do that," he says. "But then, you see, I have another 25 minutes of stage time after she's dead. All Desdemona has to do at that point is lie in bed. There are stories of Desdemona's who have actually fallen asleep and come to with a great start, wondering where they were. But Othello goes on. I've got to keep the play going for 25 more minutes!"

A self-confessed addict for research, Stewart has been grilling psychologists about violence and obsession. He's been reading scholarly treatises like the one that sits on the coffee table before him, "Shakespeare as Prompter: The Amending Imagination and the Therapeutic Process." He's even hoping to pick up a few pointers from author John Douglas, who profiles serial killers for the FBI. "He looks for clues on the murder scene," Stewart explains. "So I'm going to give him the `Othello' crime scene and ask him to do an analysis of it."

In the posh town house in Northwest Washington where he is staying, the 57-year-old actor has just brewed himself a cup of coffee and collapsed on a couch. For all his apparent exhaustion, there is a curious elation to his mood. The night before, he had his first full run-through of Shakespeare's tragedy. It took six hours. He didn't get home until well past midnight and by then his mind was reeling.

But he'd finally had a real taste of what it was like to be Othello, a character he has yearned to portray since he was 14. For the first time, he had gone the full distance, from the exultation of love to the darkest reaches of jealousy and despair.

"You have to throw yourself at something like that," he says. "You can't hold back and can't say, `I'll try that tomorrow.' It's got to be now. As I was coming home in the cab last night, my bones ached and I was kind of licking my wounds. But I thought, `You've actually done the role.' Granted, in a rehearsal room, and wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with substitute props and some actors still carrying scripts. But I'd done it. I'd gone from beginning to end. I'd died in that bed."

Role Reversal

According to the dictates of the times, Othello is not a role Stewart should be playing. The character, a Moor from North Africa, is the lone black in the opulent society of Venice. And Stewart, who was born in a tiny Yorkshire village, the son of a career soldier, is white -- even a bit wan at this hour.

In another age, actors like Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier simply blackened their faces for the part. But in our post-civil rights era, that practice has been discredited. Ironically, even as the proponents of nontraditional casting have done much to break down racial barriers in the theater, Othello has become a role for blacks only.

"It does seem to be one of the few works where racial separation runs through the play as an absolute, consistent current," observes Jude Kelly, the British director who is staging the production at the Shakespeare Theatre. "To say that it doesn't matter who plays the role strikes me as a bit balmy."

Stewart, in fact, had pretty much given up any dreams of portraying the tormented Moor. "I felt a certain irritation at having been caught in this bind of political correctness," he says. "But whenever I imagined myself grandiosely trying to take on the characteristics of a North African, I thought, no, I can't do that."

Then, several years ago -- he's not sure how -- an idea struck. Couldn't the colors be reversed? What if Othello were white and the Venetian society that hails and then rejects him were black? Nothing about the work would have to be altered and the role could be his after all. From that brainstorm has since sprung what Kelly has dubbed a "photo negative" production.

Stewart had trouble finding any theater willing to do it, however, until he approached Michael Kahn, the Shakespeare Theatre's artistic director, who leapt at the chance. "It seemed especially right for Washington," Kahn says. "The issue of race and racial difference is actively part of this city's dialogue, all the time, every single day. You can't say that about every city. But it's part of the fabric of life here and it concerns people deeply, not just intellectually. Washington seemed the most fruitful place for this project."

Apparently, others agree. The run for "Othello," which concludes Jan. 4, was completely sold out by mid-September. No previous show at the Shakespeare has generated that kind of early response. (Standing-room tickets are still available and can be purchased an hour before performance at $10 apiece, with a limit of two to a customer.)

"I don't think we're trying to make any more major a point than Shakespeare himself was trying to make," Kelly says.. "We're just making it differently. What's fascinating for me is that you have 22 African American actors onstage who know what racism is about, and one white British actor who may know the effects of racism but has never experienced it the way they have. So the images of racial hostility flip back and forth. What it all means, I think, will depend very much on the color of the person who's watching."

Boldly Going

For Stewart, Othello may be the boldest attempt yet "to step out of the spacesuit," as he puts it. He was a well-regarded member of the Royal Shakespeare Company when he landed in "Star Trek" in 1987. But seven years as Capt. Picard, plus one "Star Trek" feature film (with another to follow about a year from now), have put his face in world's pop culture gallery.

"For a lot of people, I will be locked for all time on the bridge of the Enterprise in my spacesuit," he admits. "Not only am I reconciled to that, I'm quite proud of it. The show represents quality television. It was intelligent, thoughtful, argumentative, and it also told wonderful stories."

At "Star Trek" conventions, his appearance has been known to set off pandemonium that "reminds me of what it must be like to be Paul McCartney." Even now, his daily arrival at the rehearsal hall on Capitol Hill provokes a flurry of excitement in the nearby schoolyard.

Before the television series came to an end in 1994, however, Stewart had already set out to diversify his image. His first effort in 1991 was a one-man version of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," in which he played 39 different characters on a bare Broadway stage -- children, women, spirits and Scrooge. "I had a friend who said I actually played the goose at one moment, but I have no recollection of that," he notes dryly. He followed that tour de force by performing the aged Prospero in "The Tempest" at the New York Public Theater, a production that also ended up on Broadway.

As a flamboyantly gay interior director in the motion picture "Jeffrey," he switched gears again, and his latest role, Captain Ahab, the crazed killer of white whales in an upcoming four-hour TV miniseries of "Moby Dick," couldn't be further from the reaches of outer space.

"I guess the point has been made. I've put as much distance between me and that spacesuit as I can. Perhaps I can relax a little bit now," he says. "Of course, I've experienced situations where I've not been considered for movie roles because the studio or the director was afraid I carried all the wrong associations. But that's diminishing."

He pauses. "On the other hand, Jean-Luc Picard is a name that opens countless doors."

That Voice

Kelly describes Stewart as a "carnivorous actor" who wants to "eat drama." That's evident even in casual conversation. His voice rises to majestic peaks, dips into hushed valleys, then scales the peaks again. Stewart has been bald since he was 19, and the effect of the unusually high forehead is to put his eyes in relief and reinforce the exoticism of his features.

"More than once these past few weeks I've found myself thinking, `I must be out of my mind! Why did I ever want to do this?' " Stewart moans. "I was talking with my closest friend in London . . . and he asked how it was going. I said, `There are times when I feel as if I am drowning.' "

The voice is building now. "Once you get to Act 3, Scene 3, it's like being caught up in a huge surf. You are pounded by experiences and overwhelming feelings that oscillate violently. Sometimes within one sentence. I go from passion and adoration to the most extreme expressions of loathing and self-hatred I've ever had to try to get close to."

Here, the volume drops and the eyes glint mischievously. "And my friend replied, `Well, you know it killed Olivier, don't you? That's why he avoided it for much of his career. And you'll remember that Edmund Kean died onstage, right after delivering the Pontic Sea speech.' And then he mentioned someone else who was never the same after playing it. `The role,' he said, `is simply unactable.' "

Patrick Stewart -- in the thrall of tumultuous passions, spent, excited and every inch the Shakespearean actor -- lets out a peal of laughter that rattles the chandelier.

Copyright © 1997 The Washington Post Co.

 

END OF INTERVIEW