By Kevin Hylton
May 20, 2003
James Van Der Beek Returns To Off Broadway
(An Interview With The Star Of TV and Film About His New Role In Lanford Wilson’s Play RAIN DANCE And His Work On TV And In Film)
It’s not exactly what you’d expect from James Van Der Beek. Van Der Beek in a Kevin Smith film? Sure. Van Der Beek doing a new TV series? Why not? Van Der Beek in a play off Broadway? Pardon me? And yet, as I sit watching the final episode of DAWSON’S CREEK on WB (although I am hesitant to admit this fact) in my apartment in New York, four floors below me James Van Der Beek is performing on stage right now in the Signature Theatre. The Signature is closing its season of Lanford Wilson plays with the New York premiere of Wilson’s play, RAIN DANCE. Lanford’s new play was commissioned a few years back by Jeff Daniel’s PURPLE ROSE THEATER where it received its first production.
RAIN DANCE tells the story of four people who are living in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1945. The play takes place in a small cantina on the evening of July 15, 1945. Soon the United States will drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Los Alamos, for those who are historically challenged like myself, was the location where the U.S. did much of its research for the bomb and the first successful tests at its “Trinity” site were conducted around the sixteenth of July. James Van Der Beek plays the role of HANK, a young mathematician/scientist from the Bronx who was involved in the project. Harris Yulin is PETER, an older German scientist who contributed to the work in Los Alamos. The other two characters are IRENE (the wife of PETER), played by Suzanne Regan and TONY (a Native American Military Policeman), portrayed by Randolph Mantooth. Regan is a veteran from the Purple Rose production that was, like the Signature Theatre offering, directed by Guy Sanville. The play looks at the strain these characters are under in light of their work and life in Los Alamos during this time. I recently sat down with James Van Der Beek to discuss the play, his acting for TV and film, and his feelings about acting on stage.
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James Van Der Beek is best known for his role as DAWSON on the Warner Brothers’ now-defunct show, DAWSON’S CREEK. The show made it through six seasons and became something like THE WONDER YEARS for a new generation of teenage television viewers. James was born in Connecticut. Despite having a father who pitched for the Dodgers, James is a Yankees fan. But of late James has spent most of his time in cities outside of New York where he’s been acting for television and film. The actor got his first break working on stage at the Signature Theatre in a play by Edward Albee. The play was FINDING THE SUN and Albee directed it himself.
Van Der Beek: I was sixteen years old at that time, and I had never done a professional stage show. I mean, I’d done community theatre. But the next thing I know I was being directed by a three time Pulitzer Prize winner.
Movie Poop Shoot: Did the importance of working with Albee dawn on you at that time?
Van Der Beek: You know, thankfully, I think I was just dumb enough and naïve enough. I didn’t know enough to let it really throw me. I would say things out of pure naiveté and people in the room would just gasp. And Edward was great. He would just smile. And I think he may have appreciated it because he was used to people walking on eggshells around him. He was really different. What I remember most from that experience was one incident. He let me stumble through this monologue that I gave to the audience for almost three weeks, doing it wrong. And doing this and that and this and that and then in typical Albee form he said four words to me. And it made it all fall into place. And I went “Ah ha. Ok. Boom.” And it made sense of the entire play for me. But that’s his gift.
So it was this experience that began James’ acting career and also seemingly planted a theatrical seed in the young actor. And yet the theater seems like an unlikely destination for James right now. He’s had great success with television and recently starred in what may have been his most interesting and important film role to date, THE RULES OF ATTRACTION.
Van Der Beek: I’ve wanted to do theatre for a while now. It’s just hard to do it. To get a play that you can rehearse and go up in three months is just kinda impossible. You develop a lot of bad habits doing TV. Just because you’re shooting eight pages a day and you’ve got so much that you’ve gotta get done that you take a lot of short cuts. Doing theatre is like going to the gym for an actor. So, I thought it would be the perfect way to cleanse all of the TV out of my system. I had been thinking about it and talking about it and reading a bunch of different things. And then I read RAIN DANCE, which is the one that I am doing, and it is a new Lanford Wilson.
The Signature Theatre is unusual in its mission. The Theatre sponsors a playwright in residence for the term of a year. Over the course of that time they present new and old works by the playwright. In the past the theatre has focused on the work of some very prolific playwrights including Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, and Horton Foote.
Movie Poop Shoot: Has Lanford been involved with the production at the Signature?
Van Der Beek: Yeah. He’s been at every rehearsal.
Movie Poop Shoot: And how does that impact on your performance and rehearsals?
Van Der Beek: It’s awesome. He’s an invaluable resource. To have the guy around and to listen to him talk and he’s a playwright so sometimes you have to keep that in mind when he’s telling you things. But having him around has just been invaluable.
Many times actors for film and television are able to work with a script and reword lines in order to make the dialog feel more natural. It seems that typically actors seem to have a more reverential view of the playwright’s words.
Van Der Beek: You certainly don’t ad lib [with theatre]. And you wouldn’t want to with a playwright like him. A lot of times when you try and memorize something in TV that is not the case. Frequently in TV you’ll have a thought, and you have to say it, and you realize, “Oh that’s how they wrote it?” And then you’ll have to change it in order to help yourself out. In this case [with the play] you just always go right to the script and trust it. And you know that if it’s not working, then it’s something you have yet to discover about the character, rather than a problem with the script. So it’s great to just have that as a given and be able to trust that.
Movie Poop Shoot: Having said that, how is it that you would say you went about preparing for this role since you are going from film to TV to theatre?
Van Der Beek: It’s a completely different animal. I always considered myself this theatre actor whose second home was in front of a camera. But after not doing [theatre] for six years I realized, “Holy Shit, I’ve become more adept at film than I am at stage.” I’m all of a sudden feeling almost amateurish at times. I did a play in-between the pilot and the series and that was the last time I was able to do something. But, yeah, it’s just a completely different animal. With film you’re focusing on the minutia of something. And even how the day is structured I found has really kinda thrown me. On a film set you work for very concentrated little spurts. It’s like running wind sprints throughout the day and then you have a lot of down time in-between. Whereas with theatre you’re rehearsing basically all day and you get ten-minute breaks every hour or two hours or whatever equity says you have to have. And then you have a lunch break. But other than that you’re focused on it and you’re concentrating and you’re dealing with the entire thing. You’re dealing with the character’s arch from “A” to “B.” And it’s a process where you’re going to have days where you’re working and you don’t get it and you feel lost. And then you come back the next day and one thing will click into place and you’ll watch everything else just kinda get adjusted. You change one thing in act one and it makes complete sense of something. And especially with the way that Lanford has written this guy, who is a scientist. The character is constantly going from thought to thought and idea to idea and to something that happened ten pages prior. And it’s just a lot to chew on. I think it’s really great doing stage. They call it acting from the toes up. The audience can see everything and it’s not going to play if it’s not all just right.
Movie Poop Shoot: In a perfect, equally compensated world would you gravitate towards theatre, film, or TV?
Van Der Beek: Especially after this experience, I think for myself I have to go back and forth. I really like film. And one thing that this experience has taught me is that I really like film and how much I like being on a set and making movies and just the whole process of it. The other thing that’s interesting about theatre is that you are your own editor. So you have to make all of those choices on your own. Whereas in film it’s often about offering up as many choices as you can to the director or the editor and letting them shape the performance. In film acting is almost brainstorming. Where with a play you’ve gotta make some definite decisions. In film you need to as well, but you have to nail them down a little more on stage. But the other great thing that you get to do on stage, that you don’t always get to do in film, is to actually spend some time working with other actors. It’s like great jazz. You start to learn what other people are doing and you listen to them. You take from that and you throw something back at them. And then you see how it affects them and before long it’s four people all making music.
There are some very substantial differences between film and theatre. Many directors of film like to keep their frame moving. Others prefer to take their characters and move them within a steady frame. Some directors have a very hands-on approach with their characters while others merely say a word or two about how they want a performance and hang out behind the monitors or in the back of the theatre. So what is it that James is looking for in a director?
Van Der Beek: You want someone who is listening, who is watching and is very observant. He or she can’t be afraid of what people will think of them or their film. I want someone who is really concerned with the truth of the story. But really many of the same things apply to both film and stage. Nobody likes result ordered direction. No one likes line readings. The one difference in terms of directors between film and theatre that I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if this is universal or not, is that in film it seems to me it’s more about, directors saying “What do you need. How can we get this or get that? Do you want another take?” And one thing the director of RAIN DANCE said a couple times is “I need to see this or I need to see that.” Which is great. He’s shaping the whole production. He’s letting you know where you should be standing on the stage and how it’s going to look to the audience. And he does need to see that.
James has yet to make concrete plans for his next project. He’s presently looking at some independent film scripts and says that somewhere down the road he would consider writing or directing something himself. As for a 90210esque DAWSON’S CREEK reunion he said in no uncertain terms that “won’t happen.” To close our interview together I probed James with some questions of the Lipton kind.
Movie Poop Shoot: I’m going to name a couple of people that I know you’ve worked with in projects over the past few years and I’d like you to give me a few words describing them.
Van Der Beek: Okay.
Movie Poop Shoot: Roger Avary (Director of THE RULES OF ATTRACTION)
Van Der Beek: Oh. Fearless. Absolutely fearless and a mad genius.
Movie Poop Shoot: Fred Savage (Actor from THE WONDER YEARS and acted with James in THE RULES OF ATTRACTION).
Van Der Beek: Great guy.
Movie Poop Shoot: Did you watch THE WONDER YEARS when you were younger?
Van Der Beek: I totally watched WONDER YEARS when I was a kid.
Movie Poop Shoot: Because, in a sense, DAWSON’S CREEK has become THE WONDER YEARS for another generation.
Van Der Beek: Yeah. One of my first thoughts, when I read the pilot for DAWSON’S, was that it kinda reminded me of THE WONDER YEARS. Fred’s a great guy and a very good actor. And it’s nice to see that he’s a full human being. Everyone knows him as a kid on TV, but when you get to know him he’s just like everyone else.
Movie Poop Shoot: John Voight (starred in VARSITY BLUES with James)
Van Der Beek: What a great mentor. One of the most giving actors I’ve ever worked with. Everyone should be so lucky to work with someone like John Voight in their career. To give you an example of something he did. Here’s John Voight for you. It’s about a scene from VARSITY BLUES,(he Laughs) for which I was not exactly robbed of an Oscar. It’s a scene in the end of the film, in the locker room, where I was yelling at him and telling him that he didn’t care about us. We were shooting it and it was feeling kinda speechy at first. He was always kinda fucking with you off camera too. In a great way, he was trying to get a rise out of you with little comments here and there and starting talking in character off camera. But at one point he turned around and left and shut the door in my face. I got so pissed off and screamed, “Fuck you!” and slammed the door back at him. And after the take he was like “Yeah. Do that.” And he had done that for me. It was my character like taking his down and he understood that. And he gave me that great action by doing that.
Movie Poop Shoot: How about Jason Mewes? (JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK)
Van Der Beek: (Laughs) I didn’t get to spend too much time with him. But I love his lifestyle.
The Signature Theatre’s production of RAIN DANCE opens May 20th and is slated to close on June 29th. Tickets can be obtained through the theatre’s box office at (212) 244-7529 or through the Signature’s website at www.signaturetheatre.org.
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