Latest / The BSB Podcast / Exclusive Interview: Chris Steinmayer and Kevin Fitzhenry of St. Dunstan's 'Seminar'

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Exclusive Interview: Chris Steinmayer and Kevin Fitzhenry of St. Dunstan's 'Seminar' · The BSB Podcast

• 0:00
  Thank you so much, Kevin and Christopher, for joining me today.
• 0:02
  How's your day going?
• 0:03
  Or your evening, I should say.
• 0:06
  Oh, very good, very good.
• 0:08
  just got back home from teaching a spin class and so I didn't have a chance to shower, but I think I'm okay.
• 0:16
  It's night off from rehearsal though too, right?
• 0:18
  that's nice.
• 0:19
  Yeah, I'll be as soon as I get off this, I'll be running lines.
• 0:22
  uh You're actually, speaking of rehearsal, you're about what, a week out, a week and a half out from rehearsal, Chris?
• 0:28
  Yes, that's correct.
• 0:29
  We open next Friday, October 10th.
• 0:32
  How's the rehearsal process been so far?
• 0:35
  It's been great.
• 0:36
  um It hasn't been too intensive.
• 0:39
  I've been involved in shows where we're there like, it seems like four nights a week, maybe five nights a week.
• 0:46
  And this has been, it's been great.
• 0:48
  It's been three nights a week and we've been very productive.
• 0:52
  I think Fitz will agree with me on this, that we've been uh pretty solid from the get-go.
• 0:57
  Once we got our blocking, we've been running the show and uh just kind of like tightening it up as we go.
• 1:04
  and it just gets tighter and tighter.
• 1:06
  It's been great.
• 1:07
  Yeah, it's a very kind of straightforward show.
• 1:09
  It's a very short script.
• 1:10
  It's only a 90 minute show.
• 1:12
  There's no intermission so we can get through the entire thing in one rehearsal.
• 1:16
  So it's great to be able to kind of come back and go back and redo things if we want to and really hammer a lot of stuff home during the rehearsal process.
• 1:24
  So it's been great.
• 1:26
  So this really sounds like there's a lot of extra, not extra time, but like there's time to really flesh some of this out as you're doing, because 90 minutes, that's probably not
• 1:34
  a full rehearsal, correct?
• 1:35
  Correct, yeah, we usually rehearse for about, you know, three hours.
• 1:38
  Sometimes we'll go a little over with, but we want to be conscious of everybody's time, right?
• 1:42
  We're not professionals.
• 1:43
  We don't get paid to do this.
• 1:44
  We're all amateurs.
• 1:45
  So we all have jobs and lives outside of rehearsal, but we love to go to rehearsal.
• 1:51
  It's always my favorite part of the day when I get to come there and watch these guys just do what they do on stage.
• 1:58
  Yeah, I agree with that.
• 1:59
  It's my favorite time too, to just come and kind of inhabit the character and enjoy the time on stage with everybody,
• 2:07
  Especially because Chris, it's kind of a small knit of, uh it's a small cast, I should say.
• 2:12
  There's only what, five of you?
• 2:13
  Correct.
• 2:13
  Just the five of us.
• 2:15
  What's that like?
• 2:16
  What's that energy with just kind of, you know, five people on stage?
• 2:19
  There's not a lot of, you know, you're there.
• 2:22
  You're kind of up front with everybody.
• 2:23
  Yeah, this is a different experience for me.
• 2:26
  I haven't been in a show of this nature really ever before.
• 2:31
  I've done a lot of musicals and the last, I would call it a straight play that I did was Arsenic and Old Lace.
• 2:38
  played Jonathan and you know, that was a lot of slapstick comedy and fun, but this has been like the first really outside of a musical meaty role that I've ever had a chance to
• 2:49
  do.
• 2:51
  Being able to work with these folks in this cast has been wonderful.
• 2:54
  They're all like really solid and we're solid from auditions and it's just, it's been great.
• 3:03
  The fact that it's a small cast means there's not a lot of wasted time and I love that.
• 3:08
  Kevin, so, you what is the story of Seminar?
• 3:12
  You what is, you said it's a 90 minute play, so sounds like it's very quick paced, but what's going on in the show?
• 3:18
  Yeah, so Seminar is about like four young aspiring novelists in New York City and their willingness to pay $5,000 for a private seminar with this kind of recklessly brilliant
• 3:33
  unorthodox professor who they think is going to lead them on to become better writers and will help them in achieving their goals and their dreams and
• 3:43
  He does do that, but in a very different way than they imagine it.
• 3:47
  He kind of has to break them down in order to build them up.
• 3:51
  So it's a very dramatic comedy, almost dark comedy, if you will, about the, you know, what we want to do to achieve fame and how can we do that and the realistic nature of being
• 4:03
  able to achieve our, achieve our dreams.
• 4:06
  Chris, what is your character in the story and what is your kind of narrative throughout it?
• 4:11
  Well, I play Leonard and Leonard is a bit of a hot mess with his past has really shaped him as far as how he is in this moment in the show, his experiences uh facing uh
• 4:28
  acceptance and rejection.
• 4:31
  then ultimately, I don't want to give away too many plot points, but I mean, ultimately, kind of betrayal as well by a student.
• 4:40
  uh
• 4:41
  and that impact on him because it kind of ruins his career and then he's trying to build his career back but his career coming back is different.
• 4:50
  He's not
• 4:52
  the world's this incredible writer anymore, at least not in the public eye.
• 4:58
  He's away from that.
• 5:00
  And I think what really focuses Leonard is around honesty.
• 5:06
  Are you being honest as a writer?
• 5:08
  Are you being honest about your own work?
• 5:10
  Are you being honest about the work of your peers?
• 5:14
  ah Are you being honest with yourself?
• 5:17
  And what's interesting is I think
• 5:20
  there's a part of Leonard that's not exactly honest about himself and he hides kind of behind that.
• 5:28
  I loved Kevin's look on his face when he said that.
• 5:31
  Well, without saying too much, Kevin, what was going through your mind when he said that?
• 5:37
  No, Chris has done just a great job of kind of delving into Leonard.
• 5:42
  And it's always fun when an actor gets to play a character that is so far removed from their natural personalities.
• 5:49
  knowing Chris, as long as I have for the last couple of years, and now getting to work with him on stage, uh it's just been great to kind of like, we take this meaty subject,
• 5:57
  this guy who, like you said, is a bit of a mess and we just kind of have fun.
• 6:02
  digging right down, digging into him, letting him kind of explode on stage a little bit.
• 6:07
  So I think any time you have the opportunity to work with a character like that, it's kind of fun and exciting, even though the material might be, you know, a little dark and at
• 6:16
  times cringe worthy of like, I can't believe this guy is saying this, but we kind of intact it with a lot of enthusiasm.
• 6:22
  The way that the entire cast has been, they've just been very enthusiastic about the characters and the subject matter.
• 6:28
  Yes.
• 6:29
  It sounds, Chris, like it's truly a really complex character that you're bringing to life.
• 6:36
  He is complex and it's interesting to me because it took me so many reads through the script and just being with the lines in the dialogue before I realized some things.
• 6:50
  And even today going through it this morning as I drove in, I was running every line of mine in the car.
• 6:57
  that I have memorized and pointing out where I've got issues, things were dawning on me, like the bit about honesty and how there's a part of Leonard who is not honest about
• 7:08
  himself.
• 7:09
  In the final scene, he admits to the student that he's been working with, the student that he sees something in, he admits to him finally that there's something about Martin that he
• 7:21
  hasn't shown anybody else.
• 7:23
  ah
• 7:24
  and that he's fearful, he's fearful himself of rejection, so much so that it's almost paralyzing.
• 7:30
  And what is it kind of like to see it like I can only just imagine what it's like bringing this show to life with these incredible actors It sounds like Chris really understands the
• 7:38
  character and is trying to dig even deeper into it himself to really bring that to life
• 7:42
  yeah every actor has kind of been able to dig deep into that and really everybody kind of reads the show and kind of says you know I really don't like this character but I love
• 7:51
  playing this character and this character would I would never do what this character does or I can't stand what this character says but every actor you know Chris to everybody has
• 8:01
  just kind of you know delved deep and kind of look at it and they come to us and say
• 8:06
  you know, okay, what's wrong with this character?
• 8:07
  Do they have some kind of affliction?
• 8:09
  Are they addicted to drugs?
• 8:10
  What kind of tics do they have?
• 8:12
  What are they doing?
• 8:13
  You know, there's, you know, a week between each of these like seminar sessions.
• 8:17
  What are they doing during that week?
• 8:19
  How creative can they be?
• 8:20
  So it's a lot of fun when an actor can really, the actors themselves had a lot of opportunity to come up with a lot of backstory, really what fuels their character, what
• 8:29
  kind of drives their motivations.
• 8:30
  And it's fun to explore that every night during the rehearsal process of just.
• 8:35
  trying out different things.
• 8:36
  Let's do the scene this way.
• 8:37
  Let's try it this way.
• 8:39
  it's really just, this rehearsal process for me has been a lot of fun because it is a short show.
• 8:43
  It is a small cast.
• 8:44
  So it really lends itself to being able to kind of play and experiment a lot during rehearsal.
• 8:49
  Chris, what is your process for developing a character like this, and does it differ from other characters you've done in the past?
• 8:56
  Yeah, that's such an interesting question because I never really thought of having a process before.
• 9:01
  um I read the script.
• 9:04
  I try to glean as much from the dialogue, not only my character's dialogue, but the characters around me, all of their dialogue, the whole script.
• 9:14
  I try to glean everything I can from that, but then you start having to read between the lines.
• 9:22
  Everything about Leonard is all there.
• 9:26
  There's a monologue that lays pretty much his entire character out, a lot of his motivations for what he's doing in the
• 9:34
  show, uh, situations that he's talking about situations with other cast, other members of the cast or characters in the, in the show.
• 9:43
  Um, I'm just, it's just spending a lot of time reading it, reading it over and over and over again, and just opening my mind to what, what's really going on here.
• 9:57
  like I said, this is the first real deep, um, character that I've had to really get involved with.
• 10:03
  And I'm grateful for the opportunity and Fitz here has been, he's been so supportive and, ah and he's been great with his direction and just giving, just giving like little things
• 10:13
  that I might've missed or something that I may have been looking at, not quite the right way.
• 10:18
  He's been right there with just the right hint to get me motivated or get me moved into that, that, that perfect slot.
• 10:26
  So Kevin, it sounds like you have a very collaborative approach when it comes to bringing a show to life.
• 10:31
  Yeah, I I try to be an actor's director.
• 10:34
  I am an actor myself.
• 10:36
  So I always think, how do I want to be directed if I was an actor?
• 10:39
  What's useful to me?
• 10:40
  I have certain rules that I kind of follow as a director about not inhibiting the actor.
• 10:47
  Like if I cast a person in a role, it's because I trust them to bring this character to life, but also to bring themselves to the process and how they work.
• 10:55
  And I want to listen to their ideas about what they have for the character.
• 10:59
  I want to hear what they have to say.
• 11:01
  And you can't just be like, no, this is how this character is and this is how you're going to do it.
• 11:05
  It doesn't work that way.
• 11:06
  It has to be the collaborative experience.
• 11:08
  So being able to work with everybody, you know, hearing their feedback, what they think about it.
• 11:14
  I mean, there was some character work stuff that we did just a few weeks ago where we didn't rehearse at all.
• 11:19
  We just sat down.
• 11:21
  I sat down individually with every actor and we we talked about their character and what their character is feeling and how they are personally feeling and.
• 11:29
  you what they like and don't like about the characters and kind of find ways to meld that and find the trouble spots that they're having and saying, I really don't like how this
• 11:37
  character does this.
• 11:38
  I don't understand why the character says this line.
• 11:41
  I don't know why they do this action.
• 11:43
  And we kind of take the deep dive and say, well, what would you do?
• 11:46
  Or, you know, how do we fix this or what feels more comfortable for you on stage to be able to, you know, what kind of emotions do we want to elicit?
• 11:53
  What type of conflict are we trying to, you know, battle here?
• 11:55
  So it's been a great collaborative process and you have to be that way as a director.
• 11:59
  You gotta trust your actors that they're gonna bring these characters to life and you need to give them the space to creatively play with it, to bring their own ideas and then to
• 12:10
  maybe suggest another way to do it if you think it doesn't quite work.
• 12:13
  Because I'm looking at it from the audience perspective going, as an audience member, they might not understand that.
• 12:19
  So what if we, you I don't say do this a lot.
• 12:22
  I think as you can say, say,
• 12:23
  Yeah.
• 12:24
  this or hey let's play with this and try something different.
• 12:27
  So I try not to be, you can't be a dictator on set as a director.
• 12:31
  You gotta let everything kind of know free flow and allow the actors to bring their greatest skills you know to the table.
• 12:39
  I think what really kind of makes a lot of sense with that is, know, it sounds like Chris, you've spent, you know, not that you haven't spent a lot of time with these characters,
• 12:46
  Kevin, but like Chris, you get to spend a lot of time with one character and you really get to go over those lines and really understand it.
• 12:52
  It sounds like you're spending hours a day almost with this character.
• 12:55
  So you do get to glean a little bit of insight on how maybe he or at least your interpretation of him would interact with these different people.
• 13:02
  It's out of like the whole picture.
• 13:03
  You get that like that.
• 13:04
  You get to see the tree for that moment.
• 13:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:07
  Yeah, that's that.
• 13:07
  Yeah, that I would agree with that.
• 13:08
  Yes
• 13:11
  so what has been maybe challenging about bringing this show to life either from like, and Kevin, start with you, like either as like just challenging you as a director, even like
• 13:20
  challenging you with the space.
• 13:22
  Cause I know you mentioned that you recently had to change some blocking to some things, like, so maybe things weren't working out the way that they were supposed to.
• 13:29
  We did we you know, it's it's a unit set It's kind of one one set piece for like 95 % of the show and then the very last scene we have to completely change locations and We had a
• 13:42
  couple of different ideas on how we were going to change that set and once we came up with What that solution was going to be and how we were going to change it then we realized
• 13:51
  though We don't have as much room as we thought and we need to adjust where things are and that kind of required us to
• 13:58
  really re-examine the final scene of the show, which is a very pivotal, crucial scene, and kind of say, all right, let's do this.
• 14:04
  mean, even the other day we were adding some final tweaks and I think we ran the scene, what Chris, three, three, four times in a row just to make sure that you guys had it down.
• 14:12
  Because now we're like, okay, it's comfortable now for the actor.
• 14:15
  It doesn't feel weird.
• 14:18
  They're not congested.
• 14:19
  They don't feel like, I don't know what I'm doing here in the scene.
• 14:23
  So it presents those kind of challenges too where
• 14:27
  yeah, we really got to re-examine this.
• 14:28
  If this set is now going to look this particular way and we have to refocus some blocking, it's, but that's also, you know, kind of fun and challenging.
• 14:37
  So that way when you get to rehearsal, it's not just run it and be done.
• 14:40
  It's like we discovered a few more things about the characters as we were re-blocking it.
• 14:43
  Awesome.
• 14:44
  That's awesome.
• 14:45
  uh Chris, how has this challenge, I know you mentioned that you don't do a lot of straight shows.
• 14:49
  Has that been the biggest challenge or is there other aspects of this that have really challenged you to, as an actor?
• 14:56
  No, this has actually been something that I've been really dying to do.
• 15:00
  I have been really wanting to sink my teeth into something like this where I'm not having to dance because I'm not much of a dancer.
• 15:07
  It takes me a long time to pick up choreography.
• 15:09
  ah Singing is really comes naturally.
• 15:13
  I'm good at that.
• 15:14
  like just something where I can just slow down and be in a moment like in the show and
• 15:23
  And the challenges have been like really, I like to joke with people about, this Leonard guy is not much of a stretch for me, know?
• 15:32
  But he really is.
• 15:33
  I mean, my wife will say, please don't bring Leonard home with you, you know?
• 15:38
  And so, and that has been the challenge.
• 15:41
  And I sometimes feel him creeping in.
• 15:44
  Like I get like...
• 15:45
  uh
• 15:46
  uh upset with something at work you know or the way something is going and it's not going the way i think it should go and i kind of feel a little bit of Leonard creep creeping in
• 15:55
  there so i the challenge has been to like hey that's Leonard he's over there i'm chris i'm over here i'm not Leonard so just leave him on the stage leave him on the page yeah leave
• 16:09
  him on the page i mean i do like
• 16:11
  people that know me will say that, yeah, Chris, you he lets the, you know, the F bombs fly.
• 16:18
  ah something I've been trying to, you know, be conscious of, especially in professional settings, but that just, you know, so that part of Leonard comes really easy for me.
• 16:30
  And it's also something that's been kind of enjoyable, but.
• 16:34
  because you don't really get to oh behave that way with language, so to speak.
• 16:41
  And that's another thing about Leonard is his use of language um in the script, like the character, the kind of words he uses, the way things are spoken.
• 16:55
  That might be so much the writer, but it's the way the character is.
• 16:59
  It's been challenging at times because...
• 17:02
  I think it was, uh who was it?
• 17:05
  Harrison Ford said something to George Lucas, you can write this stuff, but you can't speak it.
• 17:11
  And so sometimes it's been like, it's kind of hard to say this, but it just comes back down to muscle memory and just repetition, get it down, get it down and try not to
• 17:21
  improvise.
• 17:21
  I'm trying not to paraphrase around the words.
• 17:25
  I'm trying to be really...
• 17:27
  uh
• 17:28
  as close and true to the written page as I possibly can.
• 17:31
  You know, when you're talking about your character, even earlier, I kept getting like flashes in my head of almost like House from the show House, MD, you know, where it's just
• 17:39
  like a little bit of like super intelligent, but there's that side of him that's maybe a little bit snarky and stuff and that can easily, you can kind of lose yourself in.
• 17:46
  Like in the real world, you're like, wait, I can't say that that way or I can't talk that way.
• 17:51
  Like as he, as Leonard kind of develops as a character.
• 17:54
  I've certainly gotten into trouble over the years by being a little too honest with people.
• 18:00
  ah So that part, not so much a stretch.
• 18:05
  ah So Kevin, there's a lot of themes that sounds like that are in this show, but which one is currently resonating with you the most as you're developing seminar?
• 18:12
  You know what I think it's, you know what I love about the show that it kind of has like that biting kind of humor and like unflinching honesty.
• 18:20
  And I think it's just the the idea of craving validation.
• 18:24
  And that is something that each one of these four young writers do throughout the show is, you know, they hand Leonard a piece of paper and says, I want you to critique this.
• 18:34
  And they think it's it's really good.
• 18:36
  And they want to hear that it's really good.
• 18:39
  And then he breaks them all down.
• 18:41
  And even when one of them is brave enough to say, he said a bunch of good stuff.
• 18:45
  Can you tell me something bad?
• 18:47
  And he goes, oh, you want the bad stuff?
• 18:49
  Well, buckle up.
• 18:51
  And here it is.
• 18:52
  And those are those are the moments he kind of relished.
• 18:54
  But it's also the same thing where I think I could see myself in all four of those writers where I'm like, I would be terrified to hand Leonard a paper that I've written.
• 19:03
  I mean, I remember writing some essays in college and I had other professors
• 19:09
  look at it.
• 19:09
  And I handed one into a history professor and I said, you know, please read this and tell me.
• 19:14
  And he said, well, as an English paper, I give you an A as a history paper, I give you a B and here's why.
• 19:19
  And I thought, man, he's like, yeah, you're solid in your fundamentals, but you know, try thinking about this, this and this point.
• 19:25
  I've kind of that invoked memories of that, you know, for me kind of directing this.
• 19:30
  So that's what it is.
• 19:31
  It's about kind of craving, you know, validation in.
• 19:34
  when you receive it, you receive it in a manner in which you don't expect it.
• 19:38
  but it's almost like you need to hear it the way it's being told, not the way you need it, not the way you want it to be told.
• 19:45
  And that's what happens to each of these four writers.
• 19:46
  They hear the truth in a brutally honest way.
• 19:51
  at the end of the show, Leonard does help them.
• 19:54
  And they just have the realization of this is not easy.
• 19:58
  And you know, I think that we all just, I think we all sometimes need brutal honesty, you know, where it's just like the, this is exactly how it is and we don't have to sugar coat
• 20:06
  it.
• 20:06
  I know as good Midwestern boys as we are, we like to sugar coat things quite a bit, cause that's what we're taught.
• 20:12
  Like, to be nice, to be polite.
• 20:13
  ah But sometimes that brutal honesty is necessary and it does help you grow pretty quickly, cause it hurts you at first.
• 20:19
  And then, you know, on the other side, you have more of that growth.
• 20:23
  Chris, how about for you?
• 20:24
  What themes really stood out to you about the show?
• 20:26
  You know, I was just thinking about what Fitz said and the craving validation.
• 20:30
  ah That really resonates with me ah because I...
• 20:38
  It might be a part of me that wants to be on stage, that wants to do these kind of shows, that wants to uh almost sort of be the center of attention, right?
• 20:49
  You're craving validation ah and you want to do really well.
• 20:54
  Like I really want to succeed in this role and present the best possible Leonard that I can present to the audience.
• 21:02
  And a part of that is wanting that feedback saying, yeah, that was really good.
• 21:08
  And so I will sometimes go to fits and be like, yeah, what do you think?
• 21:12
  What do you think?
• 21:12
  Because I want to hear it.
• 21:14
  I want to hear that, yeah, you're doing great.
• 21:16
  At the same time at work, I hear, oh, you're doing great.
• 21:19
  You're doing great from my leadership all the time.
• 21:22
  And I go to them.
• 21:23
  I'm like, yeah, but I really want to hear some criticism because I want to grow.
• 21:29
  Right?
• 21:29
  And so
• 21:31
  what you just said, it's really just resonated with me.
• 21:35
  And the more I think about it, I'm like, my gosh, yeah, that is so true.
• 21:39
  And yeah, it is.
• 21:41
  We all crave that validation.
• 21:43
  We all want to grow.
• 21:44
  We want honesty from people.
• 21:47
  We don't necessarily want to be, know, yeah, you're just great.
• 21:50
  You're awesome.
• 21:51
  But like behind your back, they're like, oh, he's not so great.
• 21:55
  He's like terrible.
• 21:56
  my God, I can't believe they let him on stage.
• 21:58
  What is wrong with these people?
• 22:01
  So it's just, yeah, that resonates with me.
• 22:05
  uh
• 22:06
  I what you're talking about there too, it kind of connects with trust, how can you trust somebody if you don't trust what they're saying is honest?
• 22:13
  And Leonard makes a great point about that in the show.
• 22:16
  If you're not being honest, who cares what you're writing, you know.
• 22:21
  Wonderful.
• 22:21
  ah I want to thank you both for your time tonight and I know it's late, but I appreciate you being here and talking with me and we are very excited for seminar to arrive at St.
• 22:30
  Dustan's Theatre.
• 22:31
  So thank you.
• 22:33
  Thank you very much.
• 22:34
  We look forward to seeing you at the opening night.
• 22:37
  Absolutely.
• 22:37
  So uh seminar arrives at St.
• 22:39
  Dunstan's Theater on October 10th and runs for two weekends closing on the 18th.
• 22:43
  So get your tickets now and we'll see you there.