We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tony Abatemarco a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tony, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
As blessings go, I’ve had my share of substantially meaningful projects throughout my career. One thing I’d like to share about that claim is that so many of them were either presented to me despite my initial uncertainty about doing that one job, or my low expectations throughout. A story I’ve often shared with students and colleagues is how I got to direct the great Julie Harris on Broadway.
In 1987, after being seen by Grace Zabriskie in a one-man show called JOHNNY DAKOTA WRITES IT DOWN, written by Nancy Barr and presented at my tiny store front theatre, The Night House, Downtown LA, I was cast in a three character (one played by Zabriskie) Argentinian play by Eduardo Pavlovsky called CAMARA/LENTA (SLOW MOTION) at Stages 45 seat theatre in Hollywood. We got sensational reviews, I got my first LA Drama Critics’ Circle Award nomination and the play ran for months. Coincidentally, Suzi Dietz, who had just begun her first season running the newly renovated Pasadena Playhouse, offered me the direction of THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with an all-star cast including Buck Henry, Rue McClanahan, Chloe Webb, and Frances Conroy. That in itself was my most meaningful directing opportunity since manning the helm of productions as a director.
Round about the third month of CAMARA/LENTA’S run, when audiences were beginning to thin down, we reached a Sunday night when Sindy Slater, our stage manager, informed us there were only three people on the book that night. After conferring with each other, we approached our director, Paul Verdier, to ask if we might cancel that night as there’d be as few watching as there were on stage. Paul went ballistic and insisted we do the show. Reluctantly, we acquiesced.
Lo and behold, the three people watching that night were singer, Tom Waits, his wife, Kathleen, and five-time Tony winner, Julie Harris. Afterwards, Tom and Kathleen took us out for drinks and raved about the show. We didn’t hear from Julie immediately.
But two nights later, I dropped in unannounced to the Pasadena Playhouse to keep a managerial eye on my BLUE LEAVES cast and, if needed, give some notes. Outside the post-show dressing rooms, who should have been in the audience that night but Julie Harris. I introduced myself as the director, she recognized me from the play she’d seen me in that Sunday night, and that began a creative partnership that lasted eight years, culminating in my directing the Broadway play she received a Tony nomination for, LUCIFER’S CHILD by William Luce, one final time for its incarnation as a film for A & E TV, where it became their highest selling home video of 1995. It was Julie Harris who requested I take the helm.
The moral of this story? Do your best work when you’re entrusted with a great project, no matter how uncertain you are, how long the run, or who might turn out to see it. You never know who’s out there watching. They can change your life.
Tony, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Having been seriously dedicated to telling stories, inhabiting them fully, whether as an actor, director, writer, or producer, I’m a bit over-the-top when it comes to waxing on about the importance of creative endeavors. I’ve been doing this work with diligence and joy since I was 14, when I was cast in one Long Island middle school play called OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder, which without exaggerating, saved me from delinquency and within one week’s rehearsal set off the career in art and performance I continue doing passionately today, at nearly 72.
Expanding on that foundation, and at the risk of some hyperbolic preening, I believe that there is a primal necessity for human beings to hear, see, and absorb stories, and that the function anyone who makes art serves for society is shamanistic. We who create stories become them for a time, allowing you who take them in to understand the human condition without risk or fear of being damaged by what you see. It’s a spiritual work at times, incorporating metaphysical and sometimes comprehensive transformations. When I play someone who lives or dies as a result of conflicts within himself, within society, or with individuals who oppose my mere being, I am enacting a story that has the potential, when done well, to generate understanding, or change, or forgiveness. There is something fundamental to civilization those insights can manifest. There is a reason why, in the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, doctors often prescribed seeing a play as medicinal to what ails you. There are accounts, historical records of the indigenous people of the Great Plains, among whom medicine men and women and in some cases, Berdache, or “people of the third sex”, who were consulted to transform internal conflicts, by enacting them, inspired healing.
I like to think that playing Mark Rothko in RED helped me to distinguish pride from principles, that playing J. Edgar Hoover/Cassius in THE TRAGEDY OF JFK/Julius Caesar helped me to grapple with how fear can motivate power, and yes, how playing Editor Webb, Emily’s father in OUR TOWN, helped me appreciate the balance between civic and familial responsibilities.
If, by living through these characters in these stories and so many more, my world expanded exponentially, then the mission of my art has been worthwhile. I hope that mission has been as useful to those who’ve sometimes witnessed it as it has been for me, the purveyor.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
This story should be under the title, “Lesson Learned”.
In 1993, I played the starring role in the California premiere of David Hirson’s verse play, LA BETE, at the 1,500 seat John Anson Ford outdoor amphitheater, directed by Paul Verdier. We rehearsed throughout the summer, opening in mid-August. Because of the verbal and sometimes physical acrobatics the role required – a twenty-five minute, uninterrupted opening monologue in rhymed couplets – I felt assured that, as one friend had confided in me after seeing the last preview, I was en route to becoming “the next Robin Williams.” I believed him. But I knew that one reviewer for LA’s major newspaper, who had frequently given me exemplary reviews for my serious work, just as often panned me for my comedy. And there she was, heading down the aisle toward the front of the house on opening night. That week, I told all my friends and co-workers, “Don’t tell me about the reviews.” That Friday morning at 8:30 the phone rang. “I TOTALLY DISAGREE with her!” were the first words out of my friend’s mouth. The one friend I neglected to warn. And so, we went on playing to half houses for another week and closing, never to be performed by yours truly again. I would not be celebrated as the “next Robin Williams” after all. But I’m still willing to, as the song goes, “Take a deep breath, brush myself off, start all over again.” I’m content with just being the next me.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The dream of stardom is probably the most elusive one to hold on to once you’ve worked as long as I have. For me, it was a young person’s fantasy, which took many years and detours to understand how rare and unrealistic it is. The percentage of people who achieve “A-List” status, in the various on-camera industries or on stage, is so small compared to the rank and file performers of even the highest quality, it’s mind-boggling. I once picked up a few Players’ Guides from the 1930’s & `40’s, thumbing through them to see all the BIG STARS I could identify, only to find that for every one or two per page, there were twenty or thirty I barely recognized. WITH LIFELONG CAREERS!
But more than how many “unknowns” continue to have sustained, work-a-day careers with voluminous output, what in some ways still disconcerts me is that there is quality at every level. I’ve seen work done (and have done some myself) in tiny, attic-sized theatres that is as astonishing as that of any star performer. Forgive me for boasting.
The lesson for me to learn here is one of value. By that, I don’t mean how much others value what I do, it’s how I value myself. Once I begin – and in all truth, I’m getting closer with each project – to value the process of making something, and making it as good as I can, then I find satisfaction in its doing. It’s easier somehow to apply that to myself. Call it a good, hard-earned survival mechanism. I still find it tragic when I find some extraordinarily gifted other artist not recognized for their worth. Raise a glass to them.
Contact Info:
- Website: TonyAbatemarco.com
- Instagram: # abatemarcotony
- Facebook: Tony Abatemarco
Image Credits
Daniel Reichart Wilber Urbina