Actor Anthony Heald has spent nine seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, playing such iconic roles as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” and the Stage Manager in “Our Town.” This year, he plays the Narrator and Mysterious Stranger in “Into the Woods” and the Duke of Buckingham in “Richard III.” We chatted at Noble Coffee. This is the first in a two-part Backstage column.

EH: When you get a part, how do you attack the character?

AH: It depends on whether it’s a new play or if it’s a classic. If it’s a new play, I try to stay as open as possible, to get a sense of what the character is, realizing that in the process of rehearsing, there are going to be a lot of changes. I try to stay open to the changes, and think in terms of what would help the character or the project.
If it’s a classic, I like to learn all the lines long before rehearsals begin. I like to research previous productions, the time period in which the play was written, critical opinions of the play, to see what great minds have done in looking at the play: what they consider pitfalls, and what they think the main themes are, so that when we start rehearsals, I have some ideas.
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Actor Denis Arndt is currently starring as Prospero in “The Tempest” and playing three supporting roles in “The Great Society” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Arndt has had a long and prosperous stage, film and television career. We visited over a scrumptious brunch at the Greenleaf Restaurant in Ashland. This is the first of a two-part Backstage column.

DA: I think that almost all theater should be approached as an athletic event. I think that there’s a physicality to it. Aside from the fact that you have to have some basic chops, you have to speak clearly. You need to know how to breathe, no less than a singer has to know how to breathe, especially in Shakespeare. We used to have contests to see who could actually hold a breath and sustain meaning through seventeen lines of iambic pentameter. Not many people could do it. You start thinking of yourself as a bagpipe, this huge bag that you have to keep filled, and of course that takes a certain kind of commitment. That’s just the technical part of it. There’s also very much of a “spiritual” aspect to it. Theater is a human act, a collective human act.

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