The Best Compliment Any Actor Could Receive

I suppose you could say William Salyers is my Burbage. Just as Shakespeare wrote the roles of Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and Lear for the actor Richard Burbage to premiere, I too have been, over the last 15 years wrighting roles with Bill as my primary actor in mind. Now, I should be clear: Bill is not the only actor I’ve written roles for. There have been others. Kellie Waymire leaps to mind, and then my heart breaks again thinking of her untimely passing.

But let me focus on Salyers for this essay. Simply put: knowing Bill Salyers exists has helped me have the temerity to pull parts into the world that I might otherwise have despaired could be properly performed, at least by anyone I knew personally.  Bill would argue that this is nonsense; that I would have written roles like Audie McCall, and my versions of  Louis Slotin,  Stonewall Jackson and Francis Collins even if I didn’t have the hope that he would one day play them.This is just one way that Bill, like so many actors, misunderstands the crucial function played by great performers in the process of making plays.

Bill spent many years doing strong work in Seattle theatre before moving to Los Angeles to make his grab at a slice of the Hollywood pie. (The fact that Equity limited the kind of stage work he could do up here in ways it did not in the Southland was also a factor, but more on that in my yet-to-be written essay “Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar”.) Salyers has been especially invaluable to the development of new plays, originating such roles as Mr. Wickett and Truett in Louis Broome's Texarkana Waltz, Hampstead Hamilton in Jillian Armenante's In Flagrante Gothicto, Audie McCall in my own Tuesday  and of course the title role Louis Slotin Sonata, for which Salyers received a Backstage West Garland Award for Best Actor.

Bill happens to be that old school sort who arrives at the theatre before anyone else and leaves after all the other cast members have already thrown back their first shot. It was well after final blackout one night during the L. A. run of the Sonata when the house manager came backstage and told Bill someone was waiting in the lobby to talk to him. This was odd, since Bill didn't remember having any acquaintances in the audience that night, but the play was pretty controversial, so he figured it might just be someone who wanted to hash out one of the play's divisive points with him in lieu of the playwright.

Waiting for him in the lobby was a slight elderly woman. Bill politely introduced himself, but the lady, in a heavy Eastern European accent, skipped past formalities. "Are you Jewish?" she asked. Louis Slotin had been Jewish, and his struggle with his faith was a principal thematic thrust of the play. Bill, however, was not Jewish, and told the lady so.

"But you are European, no?" she persisted.

"No, ma'am." Bill smiled. "I'm just a country boy from Oklahoma."

"Oh." She seemed puzzled. "Well, then where did Mengele come from?"

During the play Louis Slotin has a nightmare in which he imagines himself as Josef Mengele, escaped from Auschwitz and fleeing East across the Eurasian continent. At this point Bill guessed where the old lady was going. Many Jewish audience members, and scientists, objected to Mengele’s inclusion, believing hotly that no self-respecting Jew, or scientist, would ever envision himself as one of the most heinous pseudoscientific torturers of all time.  Bill began dutifully defending the playwright: "Well, I think what the author meant by Mengele is that often during our deepest feelings of grief and shame we cast ourselves as the most evil character we can imagine."

"No, no,"  said the lady. "Where did Mengele come from... in you? How did you know what he was like?"

Bill admitted, "I didn't. I have no idea what Mengele was like. I can only imagine."

"That's strange," said the lady.

Bill began to feel uneasy. "Why strange?" he asked.

"I knew Mengele," she said.

The very air between them seemed to tighten. "You... knew Mengele?"

"Yes."

Bill had to ask. "You were at Auschwitz?"

"Yes."

"You actually saw him face to face?"

"Many times."

"I—I don't know what... to say."

"Your performance was very convincing."

Bill made a motion to touch the lady, on the arm perhaps, some gesture of common humanity; but the woman stiffened, instinctively pulling back. She politely bid him good night and left the theatre, leaving Bill to ponder, less with pride than baffled awe, how it could be possible to blindly reach across the chasm of half a century to summon up the monster that still haunted this woman's memory.

Some times such is the power of theatre, such as it is.

 

***

 

I think  anyone who has actually witnessed Salyers’ transformation from Slotin into Mengele can vouch for how disturbingly uncanny it was.  An off-hand Teutonic arrogance entered his voice and something very palpable died behind his eyes, as he began to speak these words:

 “My name is Doktor Joseph Mengele.  I am physician and a scientist. I am wearing the skin of a foolish Canadian Jew who tried to kill me…”

 

 

***

 

 (I wrote an earlier version of this essay in 2003.  I have revised and posted it here in anticipation of using it to support my essay “Why Locally Grown Plays Matter”, which I hope to have published by January 15, 2010.)

 

 

Comments

[Julia]

Thank god for those moments, and for actors like Bill.

I'm glad to see this blog and I look forward to reading your thoughts, Paul. Even though I'm now one of the ex-pats from theatre life (although what I'm doing now is a kissing cousin to art), I'm still married to it and I still nurture a love and a frustration with the state of theater in America today. I would love to see more good stuff, dammit! I'm sick of going to things out of obligation and not excitement.

[Deborah Puette]

How this essay makes me wish I had been pulled into the substantial orbits of both Salyers and Mullin in time to have seen this show. But better late than never.

[Matt]

Great stuff, I aspire to that sort of transformation.

[Stephen Salamunovich CSA]

An amazing story and one that proves what I tell actors regularly. It's not a profession for weenies. When an actor truly risks all and lays their body, heart, mind and should (not necessarily in that order) out for the truthful advocacy of their character and for the audience, it's a true gift to us all. When it goes beyond trying to portray something or someone and becomes "being" the character, true discovery happens for both the actor and the audience and we all learn more about who we are. Bill embodies that regularly. I miss his artistry and his generosity of spirit as you used to come in a regularly grace my auditions, making me look good on many occasions. Bravo to Bill and to your beautiful piece here, Paul!

[Paul Mullin]

Thank you very much, Stephen! Bill has been a true inspiration, and what's even more important, a true friend over the years. I treasure him.

(But for cripes sake, DON'T TELL HIM THAT!!!)