Ron Orbach | Performer of the week

Best known for his role as Cher’s curmudgeonly DMV instructor in Clueless, Roy Orbach’s varied career as a character actor has included work in theater, television, film, and even video games. Born into a family of entertainers (Jerry Orbach was his cousin) in 1953 in Newark, New Jersey, Orbach gained his Equity card in Chicago 30 years later, and now he returns to the city for a scene-stealing turn as Bottom in Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Orbach speaks to us about director Gary Griffin’s concept affecting his preparation for the role, how he kept his performance honest after transforming into a donkey, and the way Shakespeare’s work fits into a culture obsessed with exploring the sensuality of more conservative eras.

Set in early 20th century New England and turning the Mechanicals into amateur musician-actors, did director Gary Griffin's concept have any effect on how you approached Bottom’s character and his backstory?

You know, I can’t say that it did. The fact that we are using music from the last century has had an influence on some of the behavior that would be a bit more American and contemporary rather than being set in Athens, where Shakespeare originally intended it. But that aside, the language is key in Shakespeare, and you better get on board with that or you’re going to sink really fast. I knew that once I got the part, and I just focused like a son of a bitch on the language. I worked with a few Shakespeare scholars in L.A. before I came here, and then there were a few staff at CST that I also worked with.

It really was a whole reeducation for me, because I hadn’t really done a Shakespeare play since back in 1975, when I played Snout and covered Bottom in a production at [Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts] in California. So though I was very familiar and had seen many productions of it—it’s probably the play of Shakespeare’s I’m most familiar with—still I’m not nearly as experienced with Shakespeare as so many of my fellow actors in this company who have done many, many Shakespeare plays. I knew I had to get on top of the words and make them my own. It really is like learning a foreign language in many ways. You make the words your own, and once you do, then some of the things you’re talking about—backstory, character development—can be safely burst. 

I really enjoyed how natural Bottom was when he wasn’t performing or working from a script, but when he does start acting, he’s not very good.

Thank you (laughs).

Is it easy to switch into “bad actor” mode or is that more of a challenge?

I have to credit our director, Gary Griffin, in terms of that, because he really wanted us to talk like regular guys. To really be regular people that later find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. If we were too clownish or over-the-top in the early scenes, then the play within the play wouldn’t be enough of a contrast, wouldn’t pay off in the way it now does. He really kept a leash on me in a way, and I’m grateful to him for it, because these parts can be very trappy, especially if you’re familiar with—there are so many films, so many different actors that have played these roles, and some of the moments are so iconic that you can fall into doing things that we’ve all seen and heard before. Gary just didn’t want to do that with this production in any way. He was very insistent about it, and for me it was a very healthy and helpful way to think about it.

My audition for this, I put myself on tape from L.A., and I was happily shocked that I got hired, because you don’t get hired off a tape for a theater audition very often. Because it was on tape, it had to be more cinematic otherwise it wouldn’t have been very watchable, so as a result it was very simple and focused, and for [Gary] it was the template. He kept urging me to remember what I did in the audition because it was simple, because it was honest, because there wasn’t a lot of artifice added to it. Once we got into rehearsal, naturally I was doing “Shakespeare!” My performer’s instinct wanted to make larger, more animated kinds of choices, and he kept bringing me back to “tell the story, tell the truth, keep it simple and as honest as possible.” I’m glad you picked up on that, and I owe him a lot of gratitude for his great wisdom and taste in helping me toward that.

Speaking of emphasizing the down-to-earth human elements, your character probably has the most magical experience of the play when he becomes part donkey. Did your intentions change once he turns into an animal? How did you hold on to that simplicity and honesty?

We went through a lot of choices with it. I was interested in exploring the effects of becoming part animal, but what we kept coming back to was the idea that he doesn’t know that he’s got donkey’s ears on. He feels exactly like the same guy he was before, and that was Gary’s desire. Let’s just see what happens if he’s the exact same guy but with donkey ears and a tail. To see that guy trying to make sense of this extraordinary circumstance that he’s in was both, from Gary’s point of view, funny and also touching and human. So I let go of some of it. I wanted to “hee-haw” a lot more (laughs), and I wanted to emphasize—we went back and forth about the sexuality with Titania, for example.

If you read the script carefully, there’s absolutely no indication in the text that Bottom has the least interest in Titania. She’s in love with him, but he’s really more interested in the fairies and the power and the status of being anointed by her. He never really expresses the love for her that she does for him. We went around and around with that, but came back to the fact, and I think it’s the right way to go, that he’s intrigued and attracted to her because she’s definitely the most beautiful creature he’s ever had the good fortune to be around. Any regular guy would have to have some response to that. At the same time, she’s a little wacky, and that scares him a little. It’s a little “be careful what you wish for,” because it may not quite pan out the way you imagined.

Tracy [Michelle Arnold] and I are still continuing to explore and investigate those scenes even now as we’re into the run, and I think that’s also something Gary said that’s quite wise: “We’re never going to 100 percent get it.” It’s peeling the onion. Hopefully we get a good, large percentage of it, but even after we finish the run, and this has happened to me many times, where you’re sitting and ruminating, daydreaming, and you go, “Oh my god, that’s what I should have done.” After you close three weeks ago. I think this is a play that will have that effect on me as well, but that’s the joy of doing it eight times a week. It’s never going to get old. It’s not like being in a run of Guys & Dolls for six months. This is something that’s going to reveal itself, offering an actor the opportunity to continue to make discoveries every time out.

I noticed a Downton Abbey influence in the styling, which made me think about how pop culture has become enamored with shows like Downton and Mad Men that emphasize sensuality in a more conservative era. How do you feel Shakespeare’s work, specifically Midsummer, fits into that trend?

That’s a big-ass philosophical question, I’m just a lunch-pail actor (laughs). I don’t know if I could give you a satisfactory answer on that but I’ll take a whack at it. I think if you really commit to and investigate a historical period, and really just serve as a mirror and reflect what you learn, you have the opportunity to have a perspective about our current times. I think that’s why there’s such a passionate interest in Mad Men and Downton Abbey, we watch these people that are dealing with a such a different set of social mores and cultural customs, and yet we see in them so many of the same issues that we still deal with today.

In spite of the fact that we are so much more evolved and our social sexual customs are so much more liberal than they were in those periods, it doesn’t really matter, we still have to deal with love and loss, pain and sorrow, struggles with money, politics, religion. If you look at our current politics, isn’t it astonishing that we’re still haggling about abortion and gay marriage and contraception and shit that I thought we had long ago settled? But we’re still arguing about them. There are still parts of our society that have very different views than we may. It’s confounding, but I think that’s why these things are successful, whether it’s Mad Men or Downton Abbey or Shakespeare, because we look at them and we see ourselves.

I happened to go last night to see the last preview of A Catered Affair at Porchlight, which I urge you to see. It’s a beautiful piece. And again, it takes place in the Bronx in the ’50s, very different time and very different culture, but it has such a powerful reverberation. It’s so human, so rich with connectedness for our times, even though we’re light years beyond where these people were. That is why I love what I do. Hopefully we’re able to make it relevant in some way to now. It’s not easy with Shakespeare, there’s so much there that can distance an audience. The attention span of current audiences is so deteriorated because of TV and film, but also because even in the theater, if they paid $125 on Broadway, they want chandeliers, they want effects, they want people flying in harnesses to feel like they got the biggest bang for their buck. But to me, that’s not what the theater should be focusing on doing. The theater does other things so much better. The kind of thing you’ll see in A Catered Affair is what it does the best: the unique connection between human beings. Seeing live people on a stage affecting each other in powerful, profound ways, and moving us or making us laugh, making us cry, making us angry.

I yearn for theater that trusts, and this is why I love our production of Midsummer. It’s sort of like a blank canvas. Just that carpet, no furniture, there’s no set. [Mike Tutaj’s] beautiful projections have created environments for us and the audience, but I love theater that respects the audience enough to ask them to bring their imaginations to the party and to do some of that work. Some theater is very linear and objective, and the set is all detailed, and you’re pointed very clearly at what you should be thinking and feeling and when and how. That has it’s place, but what really moves me is when you do it more minimalistic with lights and sound and you just have some great words and wonderful actors that tell you a great story and hopefully move you and effect you with that simplicity. That’s what I respond to most powerfully when I go to the theater, and what I hope to do as an actor when I’m in a play.  That has the greatest satisfaction for me.

A Midsummer Night's Dream runs through April 8 at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (800 E. Grand Ave, 312-595-5600). Read our review of A Midsummer Night's Dream here.