What character do you play?
Ted, Ted Cranston. Ted represents men of a particular generation and place. At home and in the office, they find themselves often struggling to prove that they matter in a world they no longer exclusively run or comprehend.
What do you think you will find challenging about playing your role?
It often feels like a yawning chasm between Ted's sense of self-worth and evolving new reality. The challenge is to flesh out the humanity and heart that beats at the character's core.
What is this play about? What do you like most about the play? What do you like least?
My take on AMERICAN HERO is that it is an economic "folk-song" that contains frustration, comedy, and self-discovery in equal parts. These human characteristics are especially relevant in this age and time where uniformity and profit are often valued over creativity and inspiration. What I really enjoy about the play is its compassionate, ironic, biting sense of humor, which perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the American worker who battles valiantly each day to stay afloat in our current economic uncertainty. Does AMERICAN HERO flirt occasionally with a patronizing attitude towards its characters, their situational challenges, their sympathies and empathies toward the world at large as well as with each other? Perhaps. But it is the play's ability to penetrate through this and assess its characters strengths that shines through.
Anything you want the audience to leave feeling and/or thinking about?
Yes. That they are able to leave with an upbeat, reflective, response to the inherent desperation that exists in a post-recession world; a reassurance that they, the audience, and their equivalents in AMERICAN HERO, still matter and have a place in this world.
What is your favorite line in AMERICAN HERO?
"Do you mean here, like, on this planet? Or here, like, in this sub shop?"
What is the worst job you have ever had?
Among the most memorable would have been emptying, rinsing out, and disposing of the remnants of large containers of various toxic-chemical ingredients for a well-known, well-regarded Company. A tiny cog in a very large technological-corporate entity.
Ted, Ted Cranston. Ted represents men of a particular generation and place. At home and in the office, they find themselves often struggling to prove that they matter in a world they no longer exclusively run or comprehend.
What do you think you will find challenging about playing your role?
It often feels like a yawning chasm between Ted's sense of self-worth and evolving new reality. The challenge is to flesh out the humanity and heart that beats at the character's core.
What is this play about? What do you like most about the play? What do you like least?
My take on AMERICAN HERO is that it is an economic "folk-song" that contains frustration, comedy, and self-discovery in equal parts. These human characteristics are especially relevant in this age and time where uniformity and profit are often valued over creativity and inspiration. What I really enjoy about the play is its compassionate, ironic, biting sense of humor, which perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the American worker who battles valiantly each day to stay afloat in our current economic uncertainty. Does AMERICAN HERO flirt occasionally with a patronizing attitude towards its characters, their situational challenges, their sympathies and empathies toward the world at large as well as with each other? Perhaps. But it is the play's ability to penetrate through this and assess its characters strengths that shines through.
Anything you want the audience to leave feeling and/or thinking about?
Yes. That they are able to leave with an upbeat, reflective, response to the inherent desperation that exists in a post-recession world; a reassurance that they, the audience, and their equivalents in AMERICAN HERO, still matter and have a place in this world.
What is your favorite line in AMERICAN HERO?
"Do you mean here, like, on this planet? Or here, like, in this sub shop?"
What is the worst job you have ever had?
Among the most memorable would have been emptying, rinsing out, and disposing of the remnants of large containers of various toxic-chemical ingredients for a well-known, well-regarded Company. A tiny cog in a very large technological-corporate entity.
