On Mamma Mia! and Machu Picchu

Chatting — and cursing heavily — with Pearce Bunting.

by A.D. Amorosi

Read A.D. Amorosi's feature on Bunting in Theatre Exile's production of Blackbird.

City Paper: Last time we spoke you were donning a beard for Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey's Oedipus at FDR. Where were you in the process of Blackbird and what were your immediate feelings and thoughts about David Harrower's text?

Pearce Bunting: The only thing I did for Blackbird while in Philly doing Oedipus was to take the photograph for the postcard. [Director] Joe [Canuso] and I would hang out in his backyard and talk about it a little, but the only other thoughts were reacting to people saying, "Hey, I hear you're doing Blackbird, man I can't wait to see that, that's intense, huh? Are you READY for that? Fuck." And there's this phase between when I know I'll be doing something and before I start it when it's not real yet and I'm basking in that feeling that's not unlike having already done it, but deep inside my mind is saying "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" in a pathetic little voice.

CP: What kind of a trip was Live Arts 2008 and Oedipus at FDR after having done Mamma Mia! on Broadway and road tours?

PB: Here's the chronology with Mamma Mia! and me. I did the tour for two years, starting in 2002. I left for two years when my kid was born and thought that was it for Abba. We moved to L.A. for a year and a half, then we moved back to NYC and I needed work. I called up Mamma Mia!, re-auditioned and got the Broadway show. I'm in the middle of my third year on Broadway now. Stuff shows up in my life when I need it. Manu asked me to play Oedipus and Mamma Mia! let me leave to do it. And when I left, it was a mental-health month. I've done close to 1,500 performances of Mamma Mia! all told. Before that, I hadn't done anything more than two or three months — repetition takes its toll. So Oedipus was a trip. I was living my old life for a month and out there at the FDR, it was like the Fringe used to be when it first began — dirty and audacious. And it was a return to a kind of work I had done before but at the same time, totally new. It was better than a month away on an island because I got to hang out with all these incredible people, work with Manu, learn something and play Oedipus. Performing that show with Jimmy Sugg's soundtrack rolling through my brain was psychedelic — true sensory overload and deprivation at the same time.

CP: Let's face it — the memory bank is overdrawn here: What was your first Philly stage role and what the hell did you think about it?

PB: The show that started my career was The Groves of Academe by Mark Stein at People's Light & Theatre in the New Play Festival. They were doing a lot of second runs from the Humana Festival at Louisville and I was an assistant stage manager. I sat in rehearsal every day, on book for the actor who I believed the whole time was too old for the role. He was 30 and the character was 22. The play was a dialogue about comedy between a college professor and his student. I was the right age and I already WAS the character. I sat at home at night, reading it out loud and knowing I would kill it. Then, as fate would have it, the actor had to leave a week before the show opened because his marriage was falling apart and I got the role. Tom Teti played the professor and we did kill it. We got great reviews, which was validating.

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CP: Were you able to determine the big differences between companies and directors and their psychic minutiae? Or were we one big amorphous blob?

PB: Like I said before, I just wanted everyone to want and like me. It wasn't until I worked a lot and got back from drama school that I started realizing what kind of people I wanted to work with — mostly people with vision, who were more experienced than me and liked to take risks.

CP: Who did you get along with first and best in terms of companies, directors, actors, writers in Philly and why?

PB: Ken Marini really stood up for me and took the ride from my being an irresponsible fuckup to a sober person. Mark Lord and I met at Yale — he directed the first thing I ever did there, so later on we started working together on a lot of site-specific, deconstructed theater. I'm very proud of the work we've done together. And Blanka [Zizka], ahhh, Blanka. We've really had some fun together — Sansom Street, Prague. ... I realized that my career would probably be all over the map, so my criteria became, "Have you ever done anything like this before?" I liked being able to go from Shakespeare to Beckett to Bruce Graham to David Ives. But I took anything that came my way. I needed those benefits, you know? I can remember how scary Endgame was. I blew up the pages and wallpapered my apartment with them. I started out having no idea what it was about and now I think it's probably the greatest play ever written.

CP: Who did you do your best work for?

PB: Same people. I think I've done my best work for people who "got" me. Ken Marini and I have done some great work together, especially All My Sons at Cheltenham. That was a relatively normal role for me. Kenny tried to teach me that the threat of an explosion can be more important than the explosion. I'm still trying to learn that one. When I first started working with Mark Lord I just did what he told me and tried to make him happy. He was coming from his heady place and I was coming from my Yalie guerrilla naturalism. I felt cool being in his productions but it frustrated me a lot. Then I saw his production of Pictures of Alice at Bryn Mawr College and I realized I didn't need to know what the actors' thoughts were. As long as they believed it, it supported the scene and I believed it. That helped me let go and trust him more and then all of the crazy shit coming out of his mouth started to make sense. I worked hard to get to work with Blanka. My audition for Road was a trial by fire — I lost my mind for a night and when I got that role it felt like one of the great achievements of my life. I think she started to trust me and that role and that play set a new standard for me. It wasn't until after Mamma Mia! that Joe Canuso and I really worked together, but by then we had talked and laughed and been through so much together in life that when we finally did Killer Joe, we had a blast. On the other hand, Jim Christie and I did good work on Coyote on a Fence, but I always felt he was mildly irritated with me. He probably thought I was a pain in the ass.

CP: Between 1995 and ... whenever you left town ... give me please a one-sentence definition of what Philly theater was from the mind of a Yale-trained actaahh.

PB: I left in 1996, right after Quartet at the Wilma, to be a host for Travelers on the Discovery Channel and travel around the world for two years. I could give a flying fuck about Philly theater then. I was flying to Machu Picchu for breakfast, baby. But as a runner-up answer, the Philly Fringe was just starting and Pig Iron and New Paradise Laboratories. The University of the Arts and Temple were spittin' out new actors and people were starting to move to Philly to work. Everything was growing new legs, which is a great time to be part of something.

CP: What did that signify to you, winning that first Barrymore? And didn't you feel like every critic in town — not me, bub — wanted to suck your dick because of it?

PB: I would be lying if I said I wasn't proud. I won the first one. I was doing All in the Timing in Vienna when the Barrymores happened, so I couldn't be there to accept and that made me feel cool on top of feeling proud. In fact, I felt like a fucking badass. But it doesn't mean much past that, does it? Who cares now? It was like having the greatest orgasm known to man after months of continually screwing and then I went out for schnitzel. But I still have the bragging rights and I got to present the award the next year with Zoe Caldwell.

CP: I talked about your greatest hits. What're you greatest failures?

PB: My greatest failures? None. Just passionate misses.

CP: OK. I'll throw a few plays and roles at you if that's cool, and you tell me what comes to you first and what the whole thing signified. Quartet, playing Valmont, at the Wilma?

PB: Quartet. I was too young to play that role. The production was gorgeous and Janis Dardaris was brilliant. I loved dying in the tub in drag and hated that every time I tried to enter at the beginning, whistling "La Vie En Rose," my whistle dried up. Jim Christie still talks about how much he loved it. It signified my last play to date with Blanka.

CP: Coyote on a Fence and John Brennan at the Arden?

PB: I worked with Bill Zielinski for the first time and we work good together. I think it's one of Bruce Graham's best plays. John was based on a real guy on death row and I did a lot of research for that role. I felt like a real grownup. I turned 40 the night it closed. And Bruce introduced me to his agent, who's now my agent, too.

CP: Endgame and Hamm with Big House Plays & Spectacles?

PB: With Endgame I started out having no idea what it was about and now I think it's probably the greatest play ever written. The last night, I went to a place in my mind and my soul that I'd never been to before and I've been trying to get back to ever since. Our plan is to do it every 10 years. We just worked on it a couple months ago, before year 10 ran out and we're trying to decide out how to mount it again soon. I'll do that play until I'm as old as Hamm.

CP: The Lover and Richard/Max at Walnut Street Theatre?

PB: The Lover. My first time with Pinter, my first gig at the Walnut Street. Sonja Robson was scorching hot. I need to work on my British accent.

CP: All in the Timing and Don at Philadelphia Theatre Co.?

PB: I finally got to do a comedy and I was good at it. The director was a maniac; a total asshole, but he had done it in New York and knew what worked. The stage manager dug up an ancient scrapbook that had reviews of my grandfather who acted at Plays & Players in the 1920s — that made me feel connected to something bigger. Then we took it to Vienna and I met Klaus Maria Brandauer in a bar.

CP: Mastergate and Manly at InterAct?

PB: Mastergate was another comedy. I suck at puppetry and Robert Smythe is a master, I thought I might finally learn how to do it just being around him but I don't have the touch — I still suck. You have to give the puppet power and I'm too selfish. I loved playing the old senator with the Alka-Seltzer, though. Robert let me go there and I really milked it.

CP: Somehow around 2001, I feel like I lost track of you. Was somebody after you for cash? And why didn't you call me if so?

PB: I moved to New York in 1999 after Coyote on a Fence, auditioned a lot and didn't get any work. I did some downtown theater and I got a job hosting a show called Spa Finders. And I won't say anything more about that, not even if you pay me. I got married, played Macbeth at People's Light and took the six-week SITI Company workshop, doing viewpoints and Suzuki stomping. 9/11 happened the second week of that. Then I got the tour of Mamma Mia!.

CP: Mamma Mia! — a national tour for two years and back to Broadway for a minute: How'd that same part treat you after so long? And if I sing "Dancing Queen" how will you feel?

PB: The role is as fun as the people I'm playing with and they've all been great, so it's still fun. Sixteen hundred shows later. No really, it is. If you don't believe me, come see for yourself. Can you sing? I can't.

CP: Working with Matt Saunders and Joe Canuso on Blackbird certainly brings you kinda full circle what with Killer Joe and all. What say you of the vibe between y'all?

PB: I haven't seen Matt Saunders yet, he's so damn busy now that he's a big-deal set designer, but I will soon. Right now, it's all about Joe and [co-star] Julianna [Zinkel] and me. Joe and I are always good and the vibe between the three of us is high-voltage love.

CP: Any trepidation steeping into this? Blackbird has that whole Night Porter Bogarde/Charlotte Rampling feel to it. What do you make of the play and what you do with it?

PB: Blackbird scares me to death. The guy I play is scared to death, too. It's an intimate, dangerous dialogue between two people. It stirs a lot of shit up inside you — whether you're in it or you read it or you're watching it. It won't let you escape. It's brilliantly written. The characters talk like real people, awkwardly, cutting each other off, letting words hang in the air, letting words do everything they can do. It demands that the actors doing it be insanely focused and completely present with each other, so we're figuring out how to do that.

CP: After all we've talked about — what seasoning do you bring to Ray and anything that'll follow that role?

PB: I have no idea what's going to happen next. I'm turning 50 in March, so I've lived a bit. I've done things I'm ashamed of, I've been a selfish, greedy prick, I've shut down emotionally, I've pretended to care when I didn't, I've believed what people said about me, I've been addicted and I've visited my own personal hell. I've also learned how to love. Every day I go to rehearsal, I allow everything I've done and everything I'm feeling to inform what I'm doing, give as much as I can and tell myself that I can do it. I say it over and over and over.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)