For the Time Being

I worked with Claire Willett a few years ago on a reading of her play "How the Light Gets In."  I was newly returning to acting at the time, and was very happy to have the opportunity to be on stage.  When I saw her casting announcement this year for a staging of W.H. Auden's Christmas oratorio "For the Time Being," I sent her a note asking to audition.  She wrote an enthusiastic reply saying that if I hadn't contacted her, she was going to contact me.  It turns out that she had had me in mind to play Herod ever since that previous project we did together.

Herod is a challenging part.  He doesn't appear until late in the piece, then his entire contribution is a 1600 word monologue in which he rationalizes his decision to order the Massacre of the Innocents.  Herod's scene causes a huge shift in tone within the poem, and is there to place the overly familiar and sentimentalized scenes of the Nativity into a modern context.

Herod

I spent two months learning the monologue.  I knew I had to have it completely in my bones.  It took a lot of work, but along the way, I learned quite a bit about how to do memorization.  I was very happy with the results.