This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:01] Michael Ritchie: Welcome to 30 to Curtain, a Center Theatre Group podcast. I'm Michael Ritchie, Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group.

[0:11] Michael Ritchie: For each episode of this podcast, we talk with some of the talented artists working across our three stages, the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and Kirk Douglas Theatre.

[0:22] Michael Ritchie: Our guest on this episode of 30 to Curtain is Bill Irwin, who joins us at the Douglas with his tour de force and deeply personal play, On Beckett. Bill is regularly called a virtuoso, a master of his craft, and he has been officially designated a genius by the MacArthur Foundation.

[0:42] Michael Ritchie: You've seen him in everything from TV shows like CSI and Sesame Street, to his Tony Award-winning turns in plays like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Fool Moon, roles he reprised here with Center Theatre Group. Bill is a multi-hyphenate artist and creator and also exactly the right guide into the world and work of Samuel Beckett. I hope you enjoy this conversation and I look forward to seeing you at the theater.

[1:11] Michael Ritchie: I was thinking as I was coming over here, I first met you more than 30 years ago.

[1:16] Bill Irwin: Yes. Right. I know. And we first worked together more than 20 years ago.

[1:21] Michael Ritchie: So I know you as the man you are, but I don't know at all you as the child that you were. So given that we're in this place now with not our relationship, but your relationship in the theater, what was it in your childhood? Tell me where it was in your childhood. What happened?

[1:47] Bill Irwin: Michael, you know, as childhood gets more distant, these are harder questions to even address. I mean, I thank you for that question. I was born in Santa Monica, California, but didn't live there very long in that iteration anyway. We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was a year and a half and very Samuel Beckett-like. I love to think I have some memories from before we made that move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, but they may or may not be real.

[2:18] Bill Irwin: So Tulsa, Oklahoma was quite a place to grow up in the 1950s. I haven't been back there since 1959. Wow. Yeah. But it's a huge place in my psychic memory. And it was a place I saw very little live performance. It was mostly early TV and the workings of my imagination. So sometimes when I stop and think that's where I grew up. And yet I am a theater worker creature now. It's striking.

[2:52] Bill Irwin: But those memories from then, very segregated society. Kind of free kids roaming the neighborhood. Separate neighborhoods. And in some ways, it may be a terrible place to grow up in some ways, a really good place to grow up and percolate. We moved when I was 10 or 11 years old to L.A., but we lived out in the San Fernando Valley. And I'm saying now I'm thinking, thankfully, in that day, especially it was distant enough and culturally distant enough from the entertainment industry that my relationship to popular culture was kind of the same in the San Fernando Valley as it had been in Tulsa.

[3:48] Bill Irwin: What I received via television and radio. But I did start to see things where live performers were doing things. And like I said, it's still kind of striking that this is my life is live performance. So I was always asking, you know, the self-interested kid questions. What can I do? Is there anything that I do that is special enough to be like those people I see on this medium?

[4:25] Bill Irwin: And yet, for whatever lucky reason, my folks' sensibility and whatever other lucky reasons, good teachers, I did, I guess, start to have some feelings of something like discernment between what was garbage and what was really interesting because early television as a man named Fred Friendly. Does that name mean anything to you?

[4:50] Michael Ritchie: Of course, sure. I'm old enough.

[4:52] Bill Irwin: Yeah, yeah. I'm with you. Yes, brother. He famously said television was a vast wasteland and that's what we spent most of our time relating to was that medium. And it was a lot of waste, although in the waste, there's a lot of human behavior that you can soak up early television commercials. And I'm just wondering here, Michael, you've set me off, but Southern California being the place of my birth and place partly of my growing up, my mother had before I was born taught school.

[5:27] Bill Irwin: So, the TV is on, droning on endlessly and there's a guy selling Chevrolet and she said, I taught him.

[5:34] Michael Ritchie: No kidding.

[5:35] Bill Irwin: He was not a great kid. So, the beginnings of seeing what's on that screen is actual people as opposed to just a field, which maybe the Internet can be for kids today. I don't know. I'm too old to be able to address that question, really. It started up and, Lord help me, I got in school plays and began to think about the connection between somebody standing in a room and the contract between the person standing doing something and the people watching.

[6:14] Bill Irwin: And that's been much of my life, leading right here to Kirk Douglas with this On Beckett Evening, which I'm flattered you call a play. I don't know what to call it.

[6:27] Michael Ritchie: Well, it's a lot of different things, but I will say that I do think that it's a play and it's both about one of the great artists of our time and in some ways perhaps even timeless. I mean time will tell, but I think that there's that with Beckett, but also it is the interaction with another great artist, you, that both interprets his work for yourself and for the audience.

[7:00] Michael Ritchie: But through that also exposes a side of your creativity, your both intellectual and physical approach to his work in particular, but the art and craft of theater and clowning. So it is a fully realized evening that in some ways goes beyond even a play, but it is a mixture of your writing and your thoughts and his writing and his thoughts.

[7:28] Bill Irwin: Yes, as always, you are a very gracious man and I'm very flattered. It's both, as I look at the development of this thing, which I've been emailing you over a series of years about this notion and, oh, it's actually kind of halfway show now. It's both self-serving, almost cynical use of, oh, I've got all this stuff in my head. Can I make an evening out of it?

[7:54] Bill Irwin: And coping mechanism, like this stuff is in my head. What am I going to do with it? And one thing I have found with Beckett's writing, it's utterly captivating to me, but I can only take in small doses. So in some ways, the evening is an attempt to refine down to some small doses that I can handle sharing with people and that may be easier for audiences to handle is a little chunk at a time.

[8:27] Michael Ritchie: Right. I think it's fascinating. This wasn't an exercise in a career to say, what can I do next? Oh, I think I'll do a piece about Beckett because, you know, some people find him interesting. This is why I love the idea that it's a coping mechanism, that there are there's this particular voice in your head.

[8:46] Bill Irwin: I have multiple voices in my head.

[8:48] Michael Ritchie: Well, so, you know, I drive and I turn the radio up really loud to, you know, to quell those voices.

[8:55] Bill Irwin: Well, I'm curious how many are literary voices that we would know and how many are board members.

[9:00] Bill Irwin: It's the whole mix goes back to my childhood as well. It's I think it's but I do think that we all have some there is a voice, whether or not it's ours. There is a single voice in our head.

[9:14] Bill Irwin: Yeah. That speaks to us frequently. This is the Beckett question. What is a human consciousness? And is it an argument of many voices? And I've hope I've learned to kind of rein myself in in the evening, keep things going and concise as much as possible.

[9:33] Bill Irwin: But I used to blab on when I was first experimenting with this evening about how, even though I didn't know entirely what I was talking about, how Beckett's multiple voices and inner argument kind of mirrors some physical anthropologists and psychologists thinking about how human consciousness may have developed, like inner argument about safety.

[9:58] Michael Ritchie: Yeah. Go go for that.

[10:01] Bill Irwin: Go for that bison. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold back here behind the rocks where you're safe. Inner debate all the time.

[10:06] Bill Irwin: It may go way back to the beginnings of human development. I've been fascinated with Beckett for a long time. Had seen a lot of productions, including you in *Waiting for Godot* at Lincoln Center, where actually I remember going, I was working there at the time as a stage manager, and it was an impossible ticket to get that production at the Mitzi Newhouse.

[10:32] Michael Ritchie: Oh, God, yes, because it was the tiny theater, right?

[10:34] Bill Irwin: Yeah, it was down in the Mitzi, and I went in crowded theater, everybody was really excited. And the curtain was held just a little bit longer as a stage manager than I thought was appropriate. And there were two empty seats next to me. And in came Jon Bon Jovi, who sat down next to me. I watched the show through my own eyes, but partly through Jon Bon Jovi's as well. And in admission, he turned to me and said, pretty good, don't you think? I think it's pretty good. You know, that theater adventure, working with Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Murray Abraham, we would have Mr. Bon Jovi three rows back, and then there'd be in the front row, there'd be a subscriber who came in and say, what is it we're seeing?

It was the greatest mix. And when Robin, bless his soul and RIP, when he saw somebody nodding, as is inevitable in the theater, especially subscription, man, it set him off. Like, theater warrior. People don't, eyes don't close when we're doing something. God, yeah, that was some experience. I'm glad you saw that because, as I mentioned in the evening, critics weren't overly high on aspects of it. But I am so it was a great, a great gift in life to get to.

[11:57] I love that. I love that one. But I've always loved Beckett, and not on any kind of intellectual level at all.

[12:05] Michael Ritchie: Interesting.

[12:06] Bill Irwin: Yeah, no, not at all. I am a student of Beckett in a certain way, but in a very visceral way. So I have seen multiple productions, have read both the plays and the prose and biographies. And just there's something about him that sings to me in a way that I don't fully understand.

[12:31] Michael Ritchie: Right, right. It's not entirely understandable.

[12:34] Bill Irwin: But I gave up trying to understand everything long ago, and just experienced it, which for me has been a saving grace, because I can go back multiple times now to productions, and have them wash over me. And nothing new happens. But it's like putting on an old sweater for me. There's something about the language, the rhythm, the questioning that's in there, that I just hold dear. And I'm not fully aware why. But you have both, I think, at least from this play, I know that you have both an immediate connection to him. We also have an intellectual bent towards him of about the hows and whys, which you might need in order to perform it. You might need to find to unlock a couple of things for yourself.

[13:22] Michael Ritchie: Yes, I've found it necessary and joyful to take it on from that angle sometimes. But like you say, you can, if that becomes fruitless, which you can, you can always take it in like music, or like, I was gonna say ravings, somebody came the other night said, it's like the ravings of a madman. I don't think that's true. I mean, there's maybe a touch of madness there or a looking for madness and what madness is. But he was among the most erudite writers of the 20th century, every bit as much as his, some people call him his maestro, his mentor, James Joyce, they just did different things with the erudition.

[14:09] Bill Irwin: Yeah. What strikes you personally about the writing? Is there anything in your history and your background culturally?

[14:20] Michael Ritchie: Well, there's a thing I've found myself saying in the evening fairly dependably, I shouldn't tell the producer, but it's a little fluid this evening. It's a good kind of change. Oh, I know. I know, you know, it's structured, it's structured, structured play. But different things come out. But it is the voices that he first of all, he's just a great character writer. I mean, I may be better than Joyce was Joyce for all his towering achievements, many of which I can't really comprehend or apprehend entirely. But in some ways, Beckett may be a deeper character, man. And these voices sound to me something I say in the evening, like voices I've heard all my life from all over the world, like, oh my god, that sounds like Ireland, or that sounds like an older relative.

I remember from when I was very small, or did I just hear so many stories about him as I was growing up that I thought I heard him when I was very small. So there's a grounding in Irish voice there. But also, it sounds like people from Oklahoma. It's a great, it's a little hard to abstract or extract lines from these Beckett pieces, because they start to sound like one-liners as opposed to part of a tapestry. But there's a great section in text number one. Yeah, he's talking about the body and the head and the I should turn away from it all away from the body away from the head. Let them work it out between them. That sounds like people I grew up with in Oklahoma. I'll let them work that out between them on, you know, I can't I can't get into that. And so this writing, it hits me on all those levels.

[15:58] Bill Irwin: It's kind of grotesque to think of Samuel Beckett as a TV writer, although it's not entirely I think he would have been so good. He would have been David Milch like, you know, in his feeling for character voice.

[16:11] Michael Ritchie: Well, one of the things that I know when you when it's done well in this evening is done well. I've, I've always known that Beckett knew exactly what he was writing every single word. And when it's done, well, the performers know exactly what they're saying with every word. And yet what they're saying may not be the same thing that he wrote. And yet when it's done well, it makes absolute sense there is that if there's a commitment to and a knowledge of it, and an integrity to the performance, the audience can respond, I think on both on three different levels, whatever Beckett's level is, whatever the performances and whatever yours is as well.

[17:01] Bill Irwin: Well, that may be as thrilling to hear you say that. And it may be the definition of great writing is that it's going to last beyond in some ways, and I say this very carefully, but in some ways, the writing coming out from under Mr. Beckett's control of it, maybe just unleashing all kinds of things like what you're talking about, he had something in mind, but it triggers something that will mean something in decades long after I'm gone. And I compared in the evening to Shakespeare's language, should poor old Mr. Will Shakespeare come back, he might just spin shudder to know what we're doing with his language, but it really means something to us.

[18:07] Bill Irwin: Oh, boy, are you kind, because sometimes they are at war with each other. You feel like they clash. Sometimes you get it's like trying to play baseball on a football field or, or the other way. Sometimes your musculature isn't in tune. But I do think, essentially, and I thank you for this question, because essentially, they are the same thing. They're the same craft, just different sides of the same craft. And I don't know which came first, Michael, I would watch Jackie Gleason and work on or Art Carney, the two of them together and work on this or that, or I wasn't entirely clear about working or a little more de classe, soupy sales, you know, in LA television. And I wasn't aware of what I was doing.

But I was just emulating somebody. Both all three of those men I've just mentioned, actually, were pretty fine actors, right feeling along with their clown persona, stuff. And I don't know which came first. But I am glad I went to UC among the many colleges I went to because we all recall it was the Vietnam era. And I don't want to say that too lightly. But if you were in school, you tended to stay there, keep that deferment. And I did not. I'm not a veteran. And I salute my the people I grew up with who, who did serve the some of the first stuff class stuff I did at UCLA was just seen work training. And boy, am I grateful for that. It was pretty straightforward and almost prosaic. But man, what a grounding because I've met people over the years.

Like circus people who have skills developed since childhood that we can't even imagine. But they didn't get that gift of looking at a page of dialogue and just having your instincts click in. What do I want? I'm this voice and that's that voice. What do I want? And so without that basic stuff, you're left often thinking.

[18:38] Michael Ritchie: Yeah. I know you really well as an actor. In that I have seen you in just you know, straight plays, performances, roles, a number of times over the years. But I also know you and a lot of people know you as a clown as well. So what what came first for you? And what was and I'm, how do they always seem to fit together?

[20:12] Bill Irwin: Even we experienced actors, quote unquote, find ourselves sometimes saying, God, should I say this sad? Or should I say this angry? You know, instead of whoa, whoa, back up, what does this character want? And that'll, that'll tell you how to say a line. So I, but I really don't know which came first. But when I was working with the Pickle Family Circus in the 70s, I had had the benefit at UCLA a decade before that, or half a decade before, of basic scene work. And boy, was I lucky to have that. You know, I'm going to grasp this opportunity to, you said when we started talking here that we've known each other this long, we've worked together. There is an instance you may or may not remember of our working together. And I would have to work it out on my fingers to figure out which year. But this was when William Jefferson Clinton was, hadn't even gotten the nomination. Are you remembering?

[21:08] Michael Ritchie: No, now I'm starting to remember. Yes, yes.

[21:10] Bill Irwin: St. James Theatre.

[21:11] Michael Ritchie: Yep, of course.

[21:12] Bill Irwin: Fundraiser.

[21:13] Michael Ritchie: Yep.

[21:14] Bill Irwin: Greg Mosier produced for Bill Clinton.

[21:15] Michael Ritchie: Yes.

[21:16] Bill Irwin: Yep. And he was quite brilliant that evening. I must say he handled hecklers.

[21:19] Michael Ritchie: Oh, yes, that's right. He had a big heckling coming from, from the balcony and he just, he held the room and held, held a conversation.

[21:28] Bill Irwin: He did. I remember that.

[21:30] Michael Ritchie: He did. It was very impressive. I think it solidified a lot.

[21:32] Bill Irwin: Yes, now I'll drop a name. I was standing with Hillary offstage at the time. I stage managed that evening.

[21:38] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, where were you calling from?

[21:39] Bill Irwin: And Hillary was quite upset, but I was able to calm her down. God, these, these histories. You should write a book, Mr. Ritchie.

[21:46] Michael Ritchie: Were you calling that from offstage, not from a booth?

[21:49] Bill Irwin: Yeah, I was offstage.

[21:50] Michael Ritchie: Oh, interesting.

[21:51] Bill Irwin: I was off left. I remember it vividly.

[21:52] Michael Ritchie: God, I bet you would.

[21:54] Bill Irwin: Yeah, no, and I remember you. It was quite an evening of, of entertainment. So I was also the, the announcer of the acts.

[22:01] Michael Ritchie: Oh, my God, right.

[22:02] Bill Irwin: I do remember that, um, uh, Will Rogers Follies was playing on, on Broadway at the time. And I had to introduce Keith Carradine, who was playing Bill Rogers, as the poet lariat of Broadway. I don't know who wrote that line, but it just, it stuck with me for like 30 years. However long ago that was, it was during the election, so.

[22:27] Michael Ritchie: It would be like 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. Or a little more.

[22:30] Bill Irwin: Yeah, there you go. It was quite an evening because Savion Glover went on, and he didn't even tie his shoes in those days. And I suspect you may have said, how long will Savion do it? Well, yeah, it's up to him. It was a loose evening, but a fantastic evening. I would have sat in your chair for anything.

[22:46] Michael Ritchie: Oh, it was great. Yeah, I remember it so well. So well. Um, uh, did you ever meet Beckett?

[22:56] Bill Irwin: Very briefly. Toward the end of his life. Totally wasted opportunity, I realize now. But you know who I have to thank for it is the wonderful man of the theater, Mel Gussow.

[23:09] Michael Ritchie: No kid?

[23:10] Bill Irwin: Yeah. Gussow was a friend of Beckett's. Beckett was an incredibly dutiful correspondent. I got a couple of postcards from him. And, uh, the pre-internet, Mel was in touch with him all the time. Mel set up a meeting, and I met him across the street from his apartment. And again, this is within a year and a half of his passing away. He was, he was old, but mighty impressive. And I was so shy. I looked at the table most of the time. So my memory of that, which I've never sufficiently sat down to write memory notes of, but my vivid memory is of his hands. Samuel Beckett's hands were really gnarled. I'm doing it here. You can't perceive it on the radio.

[24:00] Michael Ritchie: That's radio. Yeah. Oh, that clown act you just did two minutes ago was wonderful. I'm sure the audience loves that as well.

[24:05] Bill Irwin: Yeah. His hands were so gnarled. Oh, the hat tricks are kind of wasted on the radio. And after the fact, I mean, again, my, my eyes were so dawned on his hands cause I couldn't look up at his face too much. But, um, and it wasn't necessarily because it wasn't just because he was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. It's just, he's an imposing guy. And, uh, it was amazing that he took some time to meet me. But later I found out from various sources that he was quite a pianist.

[24:29] Michael Ritchie: No kidding?

[24:30] Bill Irwin: Had been. Beckett. Yeah. Now, even having read biographies, I don't remember that coming up anywhere as a child or in his adulthood and must be in there somewhere. I missed it.

[24:39] Michael Ritchie: Yeah. I think it has to be in there.

[24:42] Bill Irwin: And, uh, one of the sources for me is Edward Beckett, the wonderful, his nephew, Samuel Beckett's nephew who runs or oversees the work of the estate. Yeah. There's this layer upon layer of things that'll whack you out on this guy. When I, in the evening, when I talk about his having served with the French resistance during the war, and again, to keep myself shorter in time, I don't mention that he was awarded by the French government pretty hefty medal, like the third or fourth, second, third or fourth level medal that you get for service to the Republic because of his work with the resistance. So he was both a guy who lived in his head, I mean, to his own distress often, but he was a man of action too.

[25:26] Michael Ritchie: No, I, uh, as much as I have always loved Beckett as an audience member, um, I had never stage managed nor produced any Beckett until I came here to Los Angeles. And it took me quite a few years and then I just couldn't, I couldn't help myself. So, uh, eventually started with Waiting for Godot and did the four major plays and then other evenings such as is this one. Uh, and at first I was, you know, dumbfounded by the incredible, um, um, pleasure that the audience took in Beckett here in Los Angeles. Now I can't compare it to anything else.

[26:07] Bill Irwin: No, but isn't it something?

[26:08] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[26:11] Bill Irwin: And it really surprised me. And, and I guess it's because I didn't know what to expect. So of course you expect the worst, no matter what the situation is, you know, as a human being or even more as an Irish Catholic, in fact, you know, even when you expect the best, you expect the worst it could be. But, but, so the reaction to me really surprised me and was reinforced every time we've done Beckett. And like I said, I can't compare it to anywhere else, but I do think that there is something here in Los Angeles in the soul of this city that has a sensibility of that existentialism that, that we are here. Why are we here? What can we do about this? What does it mean? Um, there may be more present here than, than elsewhere.

[27:00] Michael Ritchie: Well, I was emailing to friends who are coming through town from Ireland and they'll see the show. And I said, you're, you're coming to a desert. Don't think of this as a tropical place. Bring, bring layers and stuff because it's not like being in Hawaii with that kind of humidity and temperatures that you're going to feel the swings of temperature. You, it's the first thing I ever read of Beckett's. And I, again, I used to mention this in the evening, but there just isn't a place for it as a little play. It's not a great play actually, but it's the first thing I ever read called act without words one and it's a mind play. And he, his use of stage directions is so striking in that. But I think the first thing he says is desert, dazzling light. That's the setting. And so get off the airplane at LAX.

[27:46] Bill Irwin: Yeah, that's where you are.

[27:47] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, that's where you are.

[27:51] Bill Irwin: Uh, we're fairly well into the run here. A couple of weeks. We have a few weeks more. Um, let us know what your day is like leading up to this particular performance. Can you ever let this show go when you're performing it? Are there parts of the day or days off? And what do you do to prepare to walk onto that stage at night?

[28:04] Bill Irwin: You're, I'm always afraid of letting this show go. The more I get to do it in your beautiful theater. And let me just return to this, to, uh, the audiences that come to the Kirk Douglas, the, I don't know where the, how you've, how they filtered through your system or, uh, but they're just really great listeners discerning. You can tell when you're off and you can tell when you're on with them. And, um, I'm afraid of letting it get away. Now, the more I do it and the more I get to settle into this building, which is such a joy, I can relax a little bit more. I have tried to be in the ocean fairly consistently because I'm an old body surfer and it's a, it's a vision of childhood and relationship.

[29:05] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[29:06] Bill Irwin: Well, yes and no, because yesterday went to the chiropractor, walked out feeling pretty good. And maybe I don't have to go through every word during the day of the show. And I may, I got in the ocean with my new fins that I had bought, got so whacked around in that surf. Yeah. And I came out a little humbler, I hope. And, uh, back just a little sore. And, but knowing that the ocean is right there and it's the ocean that I was born within a half a mile of, it just means something to me.

[29:35] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[29:36] Bill Irwin: It's been a, you know, a real pleasure to have you here with this particular show. It's always a pleasure to be with you. Um, and I hope there's more to come for the two of us and maybe even with Beckett. So it's a true pleasure, Michael, and I can't tell you how grateful I am to be at your theater.

[29:53] Michael Ritchie: Right. More to come.

[29:54] Bill Irwin: Okay. Good. Thanks.

[29:59] Michael Ritchie: You've been listening to 30 to Curtain, a Center Theatre Group podcast. You can find out more about On Beckett, our organization and upcoming productions on our website at centertheatregroup.org.