In words reminiscent of Hamlet's "abstracts and brief chronicles of the times," actor Tim Hart sees theatre as a powerful social force - "a barometer of who we are, an important reflection of a society's state of mind. Since he died, Arthur Miller has gotten a lot of ink about the type of plays that reflect what was going on in his society. There's ALL MY SONS, about ordinary people trying to make the best decisions possible - but making decisions that are flawed. A good man's bad decision costs the lives of many other men. There’s THE CRUCIBLE, written against the backdrop of one of the blackest eras of modern American history. Theatre allows us to tell these stories - stories that make that terrible comparison between what's happening on stage and what's going on in the world we live in. That continues today in plays like ANGELS IN AMERICA and THE LARAMIE PROJECT."

eight years old

Tim Hart's love of theatre started early in life when his father, newly out of the Navy, became actively involved in community theatre in Reno, Nevada. "I'd go to rehearsals when I was four and five years old. . . When the local Bozo the Clown syndicate granted my father the gig of playing Bozo, I got to be part of the action along with him. In third grade, when other kids were going home from school to watch Bozo on TV, I was heading for the studio to dress up in a little ringmasters outfit and be with my father in the show."

When Tim was ten the family moved to San Francisco, and Tim linked up with a whole variety of Bay Area children's performing groups, notably the San

WHERE'S CHARLEY? Lamplighters Music Theatre

Francisco Children's Opera and the San Francisco Boys Chorus. "Till my voice began to change, I performed with the San Francisco Opera and sang with the San Francisco Symphony under Seiji Ozawa. He was a dynamic conductor who made a huge impression on a young performer."

After high school, Tim "couldn't make the money part work" as far as theatre was concerned. "I got away from it for a while, fell in love with a girl and married. Her parents were season ticket holders for the Lamplighters Gilbert and Sullivan Theatre, so my wife, Kathryn, and I were given our own season tickets for Christmas a couple of years running. I used to sit there thinking, Hey, I can do that. . . So I auditioned, and in 1985 I was accepted into the Lamplighters chorus and started working my way up. A couple of years later I was getting small parts and discovering the incredibly wide and diverse world of Bay Area community theatre. By about 1988 the flood gates had opened, and I was doing show after show after show."

A FLEA IN HER EAR PRT

The next step was another try at "making the money part work." Searching for paid theatre jobs, Tim spotted an ad from a Monterey theatre company who wanted a stage combat director and were ready to pay him. The theatre was Pacific Repertory; Tim applied for the job and was accepted. "I went on to play Mozart in AMADEUS, a role I'd done earlier at a community theatre in Richmond, then on to summer things like the Fairy Tale Theatre and the Human Chess Game and then FOREVER PLAID."

For that first year, Tim and Kathryn continued living in the Bay Area while he commuted to work at PRT. "I just flopped on couches, but felt proud to be making $75 a week - the first weekly salary of my career. I had done things like SWEENEY TODD at Theatre Works in Palo Alto, where you rehearsed six nights a week for four weeks, then did six weeks of performance - and finally collected your lavish $500 for the run.

"I used to enjoy auditioning. I never really felt intimidated. But by '99, when we decided to move to this area, I was regularly working at PRT, and I'd come ready to audition, but Steven or John would be directing, so they already knew what I could do. They'd seen me perform, and for a director that's always preferable to watching someone you don't know go through a pre-packaged audition piece. When PRT did CHERRY ORCHARD, Louis Zorich didn't know anybody, but fortunately he'd seen me just the night before in PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE, so he just said, "You're fine, you're fine," so I never had to do the special Chekhov piece I'd prepared. I had to audition for ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD at MPC, but I knew the play well - just as I knew I HATE HAMLET long before doing it at Magic Circle.

PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE PRT

"But, you know something? After five years of not having to audition - after playing 170 stage roles, I recently walked out on stage in San Francisco and had the worst case of stage fright I've ever felt in my life. It was one of these general auditions for member theatres from all over the Bay Area. They'll see 300 actors over a weekend. I think it was probably being part of the Actors Equity Day that did it. I'd put more pressure than usual on myself - pressure to be great - not just be myself, but great! I don't think I did all that well, but I wasn't awful, and I've received a phone call from a theatre wanting me to audition for a show they're doing, so I guess that's a nice bit of positive feedback after all the strain and agony."

Tim’s favorite roles are Mozart in AMADEUS and Smudge in FOREVER PLAID, which he says was "one of those times when I didn't care who was in the audience, how many or how few, whether it was night or afternoon, I just felt lucky to be able to go do it. . .

FOREVER PLAID - PRT

"The hardest times I've had preparing for roles are probably in pieces like RICHARD III or AMADEUS. Richard and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - both historical characters but they’re not being presented with historical accuracy. The hard thing is to do the research and then accept the fact that the playwright's take on the character is not the same as a historian’s would be. Your job as an actor isn't to create a person who ever existed. You've got to disregard the research and history of it and present the playwright's point of view. You're not the real Mozart, you're Mozart as seen through Salieri's eyes - and that's a skewed and embittered view. It's the same with Richard. There's a whole society organized now to prove Richard's been given a bad press. It's what Josephine Tey does in her novel DAUGHTER OF TIME. At some point I'd like to see a drama about Richard interpreted from that perspective - the big bad English boogey man who wasn't all that bad after all. . . All the same, with Shakespeare's Richard, being really bad is very liberating! But at the same time, you've got to make him accessible. . . The best villains have that one shred of good character that makes you feel sorry they turned out the way they did. You need to try and find that moment in the action where you can say, 'This is where you make the flawed choice,' and then you make the audience see that point too."

HENRY IV - PART 2 PRT

While Tim acts, Kathryn Hart, after several seasons as costumer at PRT, is Management Development Associate at the Western Stage, busy with fund-raising, grant writing and the other business disciplines involved in running a local theatre. Meanwhile, five-year-old son Ben is learning to sign, since he is hearing impaired. It's a program called Signing Exact English, which Tim and Kathryn agree is more closely attuned to actual spoken English than the more widely known ASL, which ignores complexities and refinements such as verb tenses. Ben enjoys theatre events like the Human Chess Game that have a strong visual component - and he once broke up a TAMING OF THE SHREW dress rehearsal with a delighted guffaw from the back row as his father delivered a convincing stage slap to another actor.

"I've always been impressed," Tim says, "by the amount of talent and dedication we have in a geographic area that's as comparatively small as the Monterey Peninsula . . . The flip side of that is that people here tend to be kind of insulated within their own little arts communities. When Kathryn and I say we live in Salinas, the response has sometimes been, 'Oh, my God! You have to drive all the way from Salinas?' as though that were the other side of the world.

"And there's the resentment that sometimes builds up between different local theatre companies. That doesn't promote the kind of cross-pollination you need for a really creative atmosphere. Only a handful of actors at PRT work at other companies - and not many from those companies work at PRT. . . It's disappointing too to see how few of the people in charge of theatres in this area actually go to see the work of other theatres.

"That said, I thoroughly enjoy living and working here. It's the first time I've felt really committed to a local community. When we decided to move here in '99, I tied my horse to one theatre company, where I'd previously bounced around from one to another. It's been a wonderful experience, and it's gotten me my Equity card. Thanks to Pacific Rep I am now a full-time professional actor."

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
Montery Peninsula College Theatre Company