Bill Irwin
Congratulations on winning the Tony. As an actor, was that something you'd dreamed of one day achieving?
Yeah. [Laughs.] I certainly had.
Well, I'm happy to hear someone be honest about wanting it!
[Laughs.] Well, on the day the nominations were announced—and it's full of nostalgia now—it's one of the only days in this business where you get to rub shoulders with people you rarely meet or see. And it was a great day, but at one point [reporters] were asking a bunch of us, "Do you wanna win?!" And we kind of looked at the floor, and looked at each other, and then everyone said, "Yeah. I would like to win the Tony, yes!"
Yes, Virginia Woolf has recently altered its performance schedule and announced "Last Weeks." What's up with that?
Not at all. But then a play's running time has nothing to do with my decision to see a show. I just make the leap. Like if a show takes 70 minutes, then that's the journey.
And if it takes 270 minutes then that's the journey.
Sometimes you look at your watch?
OK, then let's talk about something timeless: Edward Albee. How did you two first become acquainted?
In Waiting For Godot at Lincoln Center?
Was doing The Goat helpful to finding your way into Virginia Woolf?
Correcting the guest, very George-esque.
Had Edward ever seen your work as a clown with David Shiner?
In performance I noticed that you have a particular physicality as George—standing with a bowed-like quality, sort of lead by your hip or belly at times. Is this a conscious choice?
Really?
So, leading with your tummy is a combination of "mask work" and "body language"?
I hear you go to the gym to keep up for Virginia Woolf.
Do you and Kathleen ever work out together?
Speaking of Kathleen and the cast, do you all have any nightly rituals that help you get into the relationships for the show?
Off to a fighting start?
Finally, I understand you've been doing some readings of new things. Anything you can tell us about?
Sounds like icing on the cake.
See Bill Irwin in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street. Click for tickets and more information.
Very anxious. You know, [the Tony Awards] was the night of a lifetime. But my one big disappointment in the evening was that Kathleen's name wasn't called. When my name was called I just thought it would be that she'd be called next. But you know, it's like what she said at one point—about a week before the Tonys. We all had dinner together and Kathleen said, "You know, I just wish we could stay nominated now." It was a pressured time, but a golden time. It was stressful. But of course now the nostalgia of looking back at that good time when all four of us were nominees was before the summer set into "Broadway Ticket Land," and all that.
Well, this play's a big piece of work. And if I may say, both by way of "press puff" and personal passion, it's not as onerous as... You know, when some people hear it's a nearly 3-hour work in the theater, it sounds like a big investment to make. But it feels to me—and I've talked to a lot of people who've seen it—that it is not that onerous.
Yes, that's the journey.
I agree, that is the way to approach [seeing] a show. And the better part of me, I hope, does approach things that way. But now that I'm a suburban parent with a commute from Nyack... Sometimes... [Laughs.]
I suppose.
Well, friendship is always mysterious. And that friendship in particular is very mysterious to me. I mean, over the years I had seen Edward speak at various functions and knew of him as a sort of force in one's brain. But I was first introduced to him in a hallway at a sort of casting place several years ago at an audition for The Goat. David Esbjornson introduced us and we shook hands. Later I found out that Edward had seen me on stage in some Samuel Beckett work.
At Lincoln Center, I think. But also in a piece at the Classic Stage Company called Texts for Nothing. It was a piece that wasn't written for the stage but it makes for some interesting monologue material and I was lucky enough to get permission from the [Beckett] estate to do the actual text, as Beckett had wrote it. And since Edward is a great devotee of Beckett's work, that had put me on his radar. Then somehow—and I don't know who I have to thank in the end for being considered for the role in The Goat—when [original star] Bill Pullman had done his time, I got to know Edward through working in The Goat. And that's when you really get to know Edward, when you're in one of his plays.
I think absolutely. I think it was essential. I don't think Edward would have thought of me for this role, nor would I have been ready for it if I hadn't done The Goat first. I mean, I'll tell you what I think of as a quintessential Edward Albee story. And Bill Pullman, actually, tells it. He said, first day of rehearsals of The Goat—brand new play, nobody knew what it was, and it was a very odd premise for a play—and Bill, in his excitement, said, "I can't believe I'm sitting here doing this with Edward AL-bee." And Edward said, "It's Edward AHL-bee." And when he said it, I wasn't even in the room, but I feel certain that Edward said it both with a kind of challenge—like, "Let's get things right. Let's determine who's the authority here."—but also with a kind of twinkle in his eye, like, "You wanna joust?"
It is George-esque! That's what [Virginia Woolf's director] Anthony Page said, "If you want to get to the heart of George, spend some time with Edward."
I don't know. And I would love to find out.
Big obstacles and challenges. And I could bore you to tears about those. But let me just say that, you're right, it is a text-driven role. But I also think any piece is a physical piece. Especially a great play. Any great play—like a Waiting for Godot or Virginia Woolf or Hamlet—with acres of text, is a huge and primary responsibility when you take it on. But the crux of the story in these great plays—or the essential flash points—are often physical moments. Somebody attacks somebody! There's a fight! And Edward's like that in this story. I mean, it's words, words, words, words, story, story, story, story—an immensely intricate textual dance. But it's the very visceral and often violent images that are at the core of the play. And for this role, George, he talks on and on, but I think his physical being is an essential part of the role. He is standing there in a way that tells the audience that he is what he is: complicated, beaten, tortured, but also angry, hurt, with some kind of strength, too.
Well, you know, I have this wonderful little piece of foam rubber on my tummy.
Yes, [costume designer] Jane Greenwood and I talked and talked about it. And I kept saying, oh she's going to forget this. Then of course we went to the fitting and she had taken everything we had said and distilled it down to this little, almost indiscernible, but very essential little hump of foam rubber. And as soon as I put that on everything sort of falls into place.
Yes, that's right. And you know, as in any great play, the other characters tell you a lot about your character. [Martha] calls him "paunchy" and he says, "I don't have a paunch," almost like there's this defensive history to his saying that. So it's all there in the play. But, boy, I am ready to play a role sometime soon where the chest or some other part of my body leads me. Cause I keep telling my chiropractor, "Woo, I gotta not let those hours on stage dictate my physical presence."
That's the great irony: Turner and I are both on these machines, lifting, lifting... [Laughs.]
We did once or twice in Boston [during the pre-Broadway run] when we were in the same hotel. She has a little more stick-to-it-tive-ness than I do. She's an incredible person with an incredible history. You know, she's overcome R.A. [Rheumatoid Arthritis]. She's an amazing tower of strength. So she has a very strict regimen with her Pilates and gym routine, whereas I'm more of a smorgasbord shopper. You know, now that I'm in deep middle age I have to get on these machines and get the joints moving and sweat a little bit. I find it so culturally ridiculous. I mean, to get on these machines it costs several thousand dollars and a lot of voltage just to move my body, but... [Laughs]... I watch TV while I'm doing it.
We do. We've built a kind of set of rituals. It started with Kathleen… Well, I guess it comes from all four of us, really, and our stage management team. We have a "fight call" [rehearsal] at one hour before the show, and there's always an embrace. Everybody gets a hug at the top of the day and at the end of the day, after the curtain call. So no matter how many notes we may have for each other there's an embrace to kind of leave the stuff on stage.
It's funny, they tend to emerge almost in a Darwinian way, that it's almost hard to find the beginning of. When we were doing The Goat we had a chant we did together, that the previous cast had not done. These things are very hard to pinpoint. But they really become an important a part of things. Now at Virginia Woolf, even before the "fight call," at an hour and a quarter before, Kathleen and I run lines. Or more and more, we just sort of chat and run a couple of lines. [Laughs.] But at "places" we always clink rings. We have these cheap brass costume wedding rings. We clink those to sort of set the marriage.
Yeah, like a piece of brass on a piece of brass.
Well, the morning after the Tonys I was down in Tribeca doing this reading of a new Deidre English script. It was 9:15 in the morning, but like, I was not gonna be in a room reading with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep? [Laughs.]
I was a little bleary-eyed. I didn't read particularly well. [Laughs.] But to have Robert DeNiro say [imitating DeNiro's husky voice] "Congratulations." Then to be in the room with an artist like Meryl Streep—while she's still thinking about [a new character]?—well, it was really something.