Which of the characters you’re playing is your favorite?
It’s hard to choose one, when your range is from a petulant six-year-old French boy-king to an unwed pregnant peasant to a loathsome prison guard. But I’d have to choose Miss Wilson, the nineteen-year-old proper British lady with a serious freak flag to wave. She meets John law at a time when she is just discovering her sense of independence and how she can use her feminine wiles and family fortune to get what she wants, which, right now, is a good thrill.
What are you most excited for the audience to experience when they come to The Improbable Fall, Rise & Fall of John Law?
The absurdity of the story and it’s characters are so much fun. Matt Herzfeld, our playwright, does such a great job of using humor to highlight true absurdity of the way the financial system works and the people who put it in place in this story. I hope the audience has a lot of laughs and a lot of good questions after seeing this production.
If you became a millionaire overnight what would you do with your newfound wealth (besides donating generously to your favorite non-profit theatre company, of course)?
In all honesty, I would have to donate approximately half of the money, because my mother always told me if you ever have a great fortune, it’s your responsibility to give half of it to those less fortunate, and apparently I’m a mama’s girl. So, maybe my favorite non-profit theatre company would be in luck! After that, I would pay off my graduate school loans and probably my partner’s loans, because I like him. Honestly? I probably wouldn’t have that much left after that! Maybe just enough to fund a summer drinking wine and eating cheese in Italy.
What’s the most surprising thing about John Law or the history of money that you’ve learned working on this play?
I mean, I come from a family of people in finance and I became an actor. So, I’ve learned a lot and most things I’ve learned have surprised me. But mostly, I guess it would be how arbitrary it can be, in the sense that everything is man-made. Someone decides something should be and then that person convinces enough other people of the same and then it is so. It’s pretty mind-boggling when you really think about it.
What’s your take on John Law (or at least Matt’s version of John Law) – hero, villain, or somewhere in between?
Oh, I’d have to say just a really smart guy who could think outside the box and was way ahead of his time. Unfortunately, that can be a recipe for disaster both professionally and socially. |
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