Anyone who attends the theatre on the Monterey Peninsula with any regularity has seen John Newkirk perform. Rather than list his credits, John prefers to talk about the path that brought him to where he is today.

John was born in Detroit, Michigan. When he was one year old his family moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, so that his father could work for IBM. He began acting in kindergarten playing Captain Hook in PETER PAN. He still has the costume that his grandmother made for the role. Then, when he was in the first grade, his family moved to Ibadan in Nigeria (his father was working for the World Trade Division of IBM). One of the great things about the move was that they took the Queen Elizabeth I from New York to London. In Nigeria he attended a British school; he remembers singing "God Save The Queen" every morning. He also studied acting, taking a class for young people with a famous author/story-teller who lived nearby.

John and his family lived in Nigeria for two years and then returned to the United States. They settled in a small town, Chappaqua, in Westchester County, New York. He lived there until he was 24 years old. He continued doing some acting in school. Then, in the summer between the 8th and 9th grade, John began working with The Saw Mill Summer Theatre in Chappaqua. His first performance for them was playing the xylophone in the orchestra, in a play called CELEBRATION. He worked for The Saw Mill Summer Theatre for ten summers - through the summer of 1981. The last part he played was as Charlemagne in PIPPIN. John describes it, "In those ten years I did everything you could think of in theatre. I was in charge of box office one summer, in charge of costumes one summer. We all did everything. I lived for it." During that same period, John attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He graduated in 1979 with a BA in philosophy. While in college he took a lot of theatre classes. It was the late '70s and the classes were traditional for that period - a lot of Stanislavsky and Meisner. John talks about the period after his graduation from college, in the years between 1979 and 1981 - "All I did was do theatre and go to Yankee games (at least once a week). One acting role that stands out was doing Billy Bigelow in CAROUSEL."

JOHN NEWKIRK

In 1981 John moved to Monterey to attend the Monterey Institute of International Studies. His plan was to give up theatre; he'd had enough. He wanted to get a serious de-gree. He was going to work for the State Department and be-come a diplomat. In 1983 he got an MA in International Policy Studies. One day, in the summer between his first and second year at MIIS, he de-cided to play tourist. While wandering around on Fisherman's Wharf he saw a sign at The Wharf Theatre - "Auditions Today." He describes what happened, "The last thing I was thinking about was doing theatre. But I wandered into the theatre, auditioned, and got the lead - in THE MUSIC MAN. It was directed by Gina Welch. My co-stars were Kevin Hanstick and Eleanor Wylde."

During his second year at MIIS his desire for a career as a diplomat waned. As he says "I never became a diplomat, never wore a three-piece suit." When he graduated he stayed with MIIS. The school created a position for him - as recruiter for students. He did this for six years, then continued for two more years as Director of Admissions. Part of the reason he gave up the idea of being a diplomat was because he fell in love with the Monterey area. He couldn't picture himself pursuing an international career while still making Monterey his home. During this entire period at MIIS he continued doing theatre. Eventually he developed a different prospective; he stopped seeing acting as an avocation and began to see it as a vocation. Then, in 1991, he quit his job at MIIS. He considers this a turning point in his life. Instead of doing 1 or 2 plays a year he was now doing 5 or 6.

John did this until 1993, and then decided he had to go to a bigger theatre market. His plan was to stop over to visit his mother in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on his way to New York. He ended up staying a year, becoming an Actor In Residence at the Hilton Head Playhouse. He describes the experience, "It turned out great. The theatre had a very professional atmosphere, my pay quadrupled, I got free housing - a 2-bedroom condo with hot tub on the beach. And I got to do one of the roles I'd longed to do - Fred Graham in KISS ME KATE." Then he was off to New York. He describes this, "I got a great temp job (I mean it paid well), got an apartment, got good head shots, a good resume, beeper and voice mail. I spent a year there. I auditioned for 27 different things and never got one call-back... It's just a matter of the odds; you've just got to keep rolling the dice until you hit a winner. I was prepared for that."

John probably would have continued this way a while longer but "fate stepped in." In March of 1995 Tom McKenzie called him - told him about MPC's upcoming production of SWEENEY TODD. So after "24 hours of indecision and 300,000 second thoughts" he quit his job, packed his bag, and drove cross-country to Monterey. The irony is that on that very same day the company he worked for as a temp offered him a permanent full-time job. About his return to the Monterey Peninsula he says, "I'd been back here about three days before I realized this was my home. I clicked my heels three times - 'There's no place like home. There's no place like home'. This wonderful realization made other choices in my life easier to make."

Theatrically, where is John now? In the upcoming summer he will direct OKLAHOMA and perform in THE FANTASTICKS - both for The Forest Theater Guild. After that, who knows? John leaves us with the following quote from the contemporary playwright John Patrick Shanley: "Theatre is a safe place to do the unsafe things that need to be done. When it's not a safe place, it's abusive to actors and audiences alike. When its safety is used to protect cowards masquerading as heroes, it's a boring travesty. An actor who is truly heroic reveals the divine that passes through him, that aspect of himself that he does not own and cannot control. The control and the artistry of the heroic actor are in service to his soul."