In The Camelot Theatre’s production of “The Producers,” Nathan Monks plays Franz Liebkind, a volatile former Nazi who wrote the “worst play ever written,” “Springtime for Hitler.” A trained actor and singer, Monks is new to Camelot Theatre. We met at Starbucks on Crater Lake Highway in Medford.
NM: I’ve been fortunate enough to be cast in multiple shows for the upcoming year. I’m very excited about that.
EH: What was the audition process like?
NM: We were asked to prepare about a 2-minute monologue and 16 to 32 bars of a song. Then they gave you a slip of paper with just a single musical line on it and the starting pitch. They asked you to sight read it: a little testing of your overall ability to read music.
John Keating(left) and Galen Schloming, Photo by Judith Pavlick
“Double Trouble,” directed by Jim Giancarlo at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre, features stellar performances by John Keating and Galen Schloming. These young actors play songwriters who are hired to compose music for a Hollywood movie and find themselves confined to a sound studio in a madcap situation. They are invaded by numerous iconic Hollywood characters, also portrayed by Keating and Schloming. One Sunday afternoon, we visited between shows in the balcony of the Oregon Cabaret Theatre.
EH: How many characters do you play?
JK: We both play five characters.
EH: How do you play a woman? How is it different from playing a man?
GS: There is a sensuality that informs the character. The pacing is a little slower and the gestures are a little more fluid. You spend enough time in heels, and it takes you a lot of the way there.
Camelot Theatre’s next production features Shirley Patton and Steven Dominguez in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Driving Miss Daisy.” The play explores the growth of a friendship between an elderly white Southern lady, Miss Daisy, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, during the 1960s and ’70s.
Patton came to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the invitation of Angus Bowmer in 1958. Her career as an OSF actor spanned 30 years. Before coming to Ashland, Dominguez spent 20 years as a professional actor in New York City. One afternoon, the three of us chatted at Boulevard Coffee.
Ashland Contemporary Theatre’s current production of Tom Dudzik’s comedy “Greetings,” now playing at the Ashland Community Center, features Levi Anderson as Andy Gorsky, a young man who brings his fiancée home to meet his family only to encounter a surprising situation.
Anderson, a Southern Oregon University graduate, works in film and video as a key grip and cameraman. He is fairly new to acting. We chatted on a snowy day at Downtown Coffee in Talent.
EH: You’ve done some acting?
LA: Only on camera in independent films and videos. My friend Ross Williams has X-RATS productions; they do local commercials and internet videos. We did a 10-minute short film that was released this year called “Self-Inflicted.” That was my first leading role. I played a sadomasochistic character that is always beating himself up. He is struggling, looking for love, so he is trying to find and date a nice girl; but all of the women he meets are weirded out because he’s always covered in bruises and cuts. It’s kind of a dark comedy. Before that, I did slapstick comedy in little web video skits. There’s a recurring one, where I get chased by zombies. In the first skit, I eat this energy bar made for people on the run from zombies. We made a follow-up to that where I find this energy drink made for people on the run from zombies, and then there’s one where I find this rancid old hot dog, and I eat that. Basically the theme is that I get this gastrointestinal discomfort from whatever I’ve eaten or drank. I get away from the zombies with explosive diarrhea. In those videos, I have no lines, I just run and make funny faces and pretend to explode.
Douglas Young is performing in Theatre Convivio’s production of “The Fantasticks,” opening Thursday at the Bellview Grange in Ashland. Young works in the computer industry; but with a bachelor’s degree in theater and his love for acting, Young often can be seen on stage in community theater productions. We chatted at Ruby’s Neighborhood Restaurant one summer afternoon.
EH: What attracted you to acting?
DY: It was the ability to explore the inner workings of people very unlike me, that exploration of other people in a very real way. I embodied them. I had to think about, “How do they feel, and how would they represent themselves externally to other people?” It’s almost a physical knowledge of another person and how they might behave. It’s still my imagination, but it’s informed by my study of this other character.
Daniel Stephens plays Poole in “Jekyll and Hyde,” the provocative musical opening June 21 at Camelot Theatre in Talent. A freelance choreographer and teacher, Stephens is equipped with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts and a master’s in dance. Until 1997, he spent nine seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as a dancer, choreographer and actor. Stephens has performed in 10 shows at Camelot.
EH: What is the difference in performing in the old Camelot Theatre building versus the new facility?
DS: I think the main difference is that you don’t have to go outside the building to get to the other side of the stage. One winter, we did “Brigadoon” and I was running between scenes, in the snow, in soft shoes and a kilt.
Michael J. Hume, along with Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner, wrote “Dogpark: The Musical” now playing at Oregon Cabaret Theatre. The trio has written other musicals, including “Holmes and Watson Save the Empire,” which Hume directed. He is currently in rehearsal for “The Heart of Robin Hood” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We chatted one afternoon about the process of writing musicals with friends.
MH: It was like “Singing in the Rain.” Malcolm would be on the piano; we could just sit there writing songs and creating riffs. Then I’d come home and write, and we’d send computer stuff back and forth.
EH: It’s nice that you can collaborate; writing alone can be daunting.
Ashland Theatre 