Quick Q&A: Jason Butler Harner

David Cromer’s not-to-be-missed production of Our Town has a compelling new Stage Manager in Jason Butler Harner.

Had you been to Our Town before you took the role?

I saw it for the first time with my good friend Adam Bock last May and loved it. I was so happy to see a play where people were just talking to each other and where I was really moved at the end. Frequently you see or read a lot of stuff that you’re hopeful will have something to say but with all the best of intentions it doesn’t quite deliver. When they asked if I’d be interested in taking over for David (Cromer) I thought it was an insane idea because he was so good. I’d never taken over before, but I felt like I’d be missing an opportunity for growth if I denied that so many themes in the play were synchronous with my life right now. I think I saw it five or six times, once with Jay Russell who is also fantastic.

Since you saw David in the role so often, was it hard to get him out of your head?

It was really hard. David’s a friend, and he has a particularly distinctive voice – his joke is that it’s like a car alarm. It was a lesson in talking to him about what he thought he was doing, how I perceived what he was doing, and then re-calibrating while keeping the integrity of his production. The bulk of the process was making sure that everybody was fitting together with the right tone.

production photos: Carol Rosegg

Usually an actor plays an intention off another actor. Is it fair to say that doesn’t apply to this role?

The line between character and self and commentary is unique, even from other direct address I’ve done like The Glass Menagerie. In the marriage section of the play there is some scriptual indication – the Stage Manager is peeking through there when he says that he’s always interested in how big things like marriage begin. Otherwise I’m providing facts and, especially in the first act, it’s a little brusque. Wilder calls for a dryness of tone which is a great onus to just guide the audience through. The joy is that it frees me from sugar-coating anything and from trying to make the audience comfortable. I’m taking care of them, of course, but with tough medicine. Understandably there are some unhappy people during those first twenty minutes when the lights are still on and they realize they’re not going to go down. David warned me about that – “you’re just going to have to give them the facts.”

How do you deal with the audience members who are visibly resistimg the experience at first?

I don’t want to reprimand or judge anybody. For me, acknowledging that yawning person, or even the over eager person, and the way that echoes into the play that night is more often a bridge to awareness that we’re all in the same room. I love capitalizing it. That’s been the great surprise joy of doing the play, that it’s so unpredictable. I love the happy accidents in theatre – part of what I loved about acting with Billy Crudup in The Coast of Utopia was that there was always a sense of play and spontaneity. It’s been so much fun with this play to say that I have to accept where I am that night and who this audience is and be open to it. If I just keep doing that play, they’ll get it in the end.

I’m thinking of that one guy the night I saw you in the show who was clearly dragged there by his wife and not initially open but by the end…

Yeah, that guy! At the end of the third act I have a fantastic private moment for myself where I’m standing by the exit sign and able to look at the audience and assess what the nature of their experience has been. That guy was one of the people crying the most. It’s been a great, humanizing lesson for me to give people the benefit of the doubt and just do the play. And it’s fascinating, particularly with the father-daughter dynamic in the play, to see grown men in the audience become emotional.

Do you become emotional or do you push that away in order to retain the Stage Manager’s observational distance?

It doesn’t happen every show but there have definitely been times when whatever’s reverberating for me that night has made my experience unique. But I think the answer to the question is yes, I push that stuff away in order to guide the hopeful catharsis. Some nights the emotion is so palpable in the room that I have to fight harder not to well up. The saddest surrender for me was that I loved this show so much that I wanted to be a part of it, but to be a part of it means to demystify it and not to have that experience again myself in order to manipulate the evening correctly for the audience.

Is there a part of the play that strongly resonates for you personally?

As soon as I accepted the job I didn’t sleep that night and then I freaked the f out. On one night of no sleep, all the reasons why I should do the play and not a movie or something else were suddenly the reasons I should not do the play. The first thing that dropped in for me was the Babylon speech. I just love it. I’m very conscious of it right now because it asks “what are you doing with your life?”. It’s about being more conscious of the foundation and impact of your life and of everybody. Obama’s election brought a terrific amount of hope and an awareness of one’s responsibility to our neighbors and community. I’m not a “look at me do a tap dance” kind of actor but I’ve been self-involved sometimes.

Isn’t a little of that the nature of the beast, since an actor’s product is himself?

As an actor you have to have a thick skin for the business and for the life of it in order to have the thin skin to do the work that you love to do.

Seeing the show again I was struck by how honest all the performances are.

The fact of the matter is that even the best of actors in the world are more in it some nights than others, so people learn very good skills to bring themselves into the present moment or to manufacture it. The only way this production works, because it’s so intimate and in the white light of honesty, is if every moment is unfettered. I don’t know how Jennifer (Grace) and James (McMenamin) have done that soda shop scene as many times as they have and still keep it honest and with a pulse. Ken Marks is ridiculously amazing, Lori Myers, Kati Brazda, all of them.

We had an amazing matinee the Sunday you were there with three older couples and a group of college freshmen. It was an electric audience where everyone was very present with each other. I took the marriage section of the play to one of the older couples who shrugged their shoulders as if to agree that they too didn’t know how big things such as marriage begin or how you suddenly reach the age of 70. The man held up his finger to indicate 71 and with that, the college freshmen applauded them. It was the quintessential hope of what you want for this play, for people to be in the same room at the same time with the same observations that trickle into their own lives.