George Olesky on Playing 'Shakespeare in Love'

Though George Olesky grew up in Newton, he's never had a professional role on the Boston stage -- until now, that is. Olesky is about to take on the lead role in SpeakEasy Stage Company's production of "Shakespeare in Love," the stage play based onto 1998 Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard-written film of the same title that starred Joseph Fiennes as the Bard and Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola.

Paltrow's Viola dons a disguise to pass herself off as a man in hopes of winning a role and appearing in a play; Shakespeare, intrigued by the new actor, figures out her secret and falls head over heels for her; there's a balcony scene. If all of this sounds familiar, it's by design. The film has a merry time finding ways to use recurrent devices from Shakespeare's own canon of 36 plays and mirroring events from his most popular love story, "Romeo and Juliet."

The play follows the story of the film, although -- as Olesky points out in his chat with EDGE -- it also has contributions of its own to make. Jennifer Ellis co-stars in the SpeakEasy Stage Company production, which runs Jan. 12 - Feb. 10, under the direction of Scott Edmiston; what's more, the play showcases a virtual honor roll of Boston theatrical talent, boasting Nancy E. Carroll, Remo Airaldi, Omar Robinson, and a whole host of other stage faves.

Olesky spoke with EDGE about the show, his illustrious cast mates, his time as an assistant to a top Hollywood scribe, his own ambitions as a writer, and that time he got advice from an Oscar-winning friend.

EDGE: George, you grew up in Newton. You're a local boy!

George Olesky: I did, that's right.

EDGE: How does it feel to be coming back to the hometown and appearing on the Boston stage?

George Olesky: It's awesome! I've never acted in a professional show here so I'm very excited. It feels like an origin story in itself. The theater scene here over the last ten or fifteen years has really expanded. And the community is just phenomenal - very welcoming

EDGE: It's a rich and diverse theater town, that's for sure.

George Olesky: Yeah! I've been able to catch some things on my trips back home between living the West Coast and being in school in Providence.

EDGE: But that's not to say you don't have any sort of regional experience -- you went to grad school at Brown and as part of that were in Trinity Rep's program in Providence.

George Olesky That's right.

EDGE: I understand that as you were preparing audition monologues for Brown and Trinity Rep, you got some helpful tips from Lupita Nyong'o, who won the Oscar for "Twelve Years A Slave."

George Olesky: So, you're asked to prepare two to three monologues and it was in particular a Shakespeare monologue we were working on. She had finished Yale at that point and had wrapped "Twelve Years A Slave," and was staying in L.A. for a bit. God, at the time I didn't know anything about acting. She had such a wonderful way of [helping me] make that character closer to myself and of finding myself within that character, opening up ways to access the language better, and trick myself into owning that language. And she raised the dramaturgical stakes for me, suggesting that if this character, this guy, didn't get this girl, this love of his life, that he would... die. And I still consider that: It's life or death. Finding a way to play a life or death situation in any role - of course it's about other things, such as the actual stakes of the play, but at the end of the day, you have to play urgency no matter what.

EDGE Did she give you any advice you still use today?

George Olesky: She warned me about school. She said that it's extraordinarily difficult, that drama school will open up parts of yourself that you don't like and parts of yourself you don't want to delve into, but at the same time, it's extraordinarily rewarding.

EDGE: You've done some Shakespeare, but what's it like now to portray the Bard himself? Did you feel having acted in his plays helped you approach him as a character?

George Olesky: Definitely! I think in this play he means what he says, for the most part. At the time, irony and sarcasm didn't quite exist in the same way they do now, if at all. Having had classical training and working on several of Shakespeare's plays myself, it's a similar process to this play in that it's all in the language. Will is obsessed with language, and the text of the play takes care of guiding you into a character who is passionate about bringing words to life. It's tricky, because you always have to start from a place of, like, "Here's this guy." When you begin working on a role, it has to be relatable for yourself; you can't jump in with, "Here's this genius of Western canon."

What's really interesting about [director] Scott [Edmiston]'s take is he's having us approach this as kind of an origin myth of a western heavyweight, the moment Shakespeare went from great to colossal. A lot of it may not be close to fact; there's only so much we know [about Shakespeare]. But it's a fictionalized riff of a biopic, or even comparable to the origin stories of fictional characters from say, "X-Men" or "Star Wars." The point of this is to elevate this away from our academic way of thinking about Shakespeare into something thats fun and relatable.

What's also exciting is you actually get to jump into the imagination of what it was at that time to make a play. A lot of it was in the room at rehearsal a collaborative effort at that; this play is about a company of people who are making "Romeo and Juliet" happen, and the folks in his life enabling his genius, even as obstacles to him-as opposed to a guy sitting alone at a desk drumming up genius.

EDGE: That love of language and passion for language must also have offered you a way to interface with the character since you are also a playwright, yourself.

George Olesky: Yeah, exactly. I do write, and it's funny - when you do both, [the two disciplines are] fairly separate. I think he knows what's going to fly [for the actors] and he's a total perfectionist, like myself, for better or worse. The whole first part of this play is [built on the notion that] "there's something better than a bit with the dog." [Laughter]

At the beginning of the play he's done a few great works, he's a known playwright, poet and actor, but [theater owner] Burbage has stolen "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and is performing it for the queen. It's the initiating event of the play. Everybody loves the bit with [Proteus] and the dog [Crab, whose antics Proteus describes in a comic monologue]. It's humiliating, spiritually rendering Will into a dog himself. But he knows theater can be better than this, more truthful; and both he and Viola, as parallel dreamers, uniquely believe even love can be represented truthfully on stage.

He does achieve this - but not on his own, which I think is key, because there is a team of people who are helping him in that way. Particularly Viola: The project of their love and the project of the play become one and the same, planting the seed of genius and eternal inspiration.

EDGE: Sticking with the subject of writing, I understand you were a writer's assistant to Jonathan Roberts, who has worked on a number of animated films - "Lion King," "Monsters Inc.," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." What does that mean, to be a writer's assistant?

George Olesky: What was great about that was we'd be working in a room and bouncing ideas off each other. I didn't know writing could be that, basically just sitting down with note cards and a note pad and coming up with a story in conversation. That's what we did for a couple projects -- he would basically run ideas for the story and dialogue by me, out loud, and we would discuss it. It opened up a new way of working for me and of making material that I never thought was possible.

It's almost like there are three brains in the room: There's yours, and your co-writer's, and then the third that you come up with between you. I learned a great deal about structure from Jonathan. He was also a terrific friend, and introduced me to L.A. and what it had to offer culturally beyond "the biz." He went to the same high school, The Cambridge School of Weston, and I initially met him at an alumni event. He has such an innate sense of what works - of story and structure, and he believes there is an innate sense of structure that we respond to, as an audience. He has an ear for that, and of course he has a tremendous ear for humor and wit - while at the same time keeping that the comedy germane to the story. As we were working, something would remind him of a scene from a classic film, and we would take a look at that, for instance. So you're always welcome to take in material related to (or even unrelated to) what you're working toward - not to copy, but to draw on, get inspired by, when you're stuck. It was an informal masters in screenwriting and I'm forever grateful for it!

EDGE: Shakespeare's plays are pretty darn bawdy when you pay attention to the text. Does any of that inform how you're portraying him as a young man in love with the play's romantic interest, Viola?

George Olesky: He's quite polite and courtly around Viola, or, rather, when he's aware Viola is Viola, and yet there's a scene on a boat, the fever pitch of the play's dramatic irony, where he's talking about Viola to Thomas Kent and it gets bawdy. it's an interesting point because I feel like people consider Shakespeare as kind of dry, bloodless, academic...

EDGE: Highfalutin'.

George Olesky: Yeah, and ought not to be. It definitely wasn't at the time! I think that's what great about these characters. They are bawdy; they're human, they're working people, they're working class. I keep coming back to that because the play [version] is so much more about making a play than the movie is, which involved itself so much with Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes.

EDGE: Speaking of matters of the heart... Shakespeare is lionized in the LGBT community for his love poems that seem to have been written to other men. As a self-described ally of our community, how do you read or interpret those tender sonnets?

[Laughter]

George Olesky: It's funny, because in this play, at least at this point in time, he's straight, if that existed. I mean, there was very little taxonomy for sexuality at the time. To my knowledge, it wasn't until Victorian England that we started to see people medically classified according to their sexuality.

I've been focusing on the world of the play and having him be, at this point in his life, interested in Viola, and / or whoever else fate brings his way. But of course she's disguised as a man and Will is undeniably drawn to this mysteriously innocent, pretty guy and struck by his acting ability. So go figure!

There's also the theory that Marlowe might have written Shakespeare's sonnets, as well as his plays. That's another thing: The relationship between Shakespare and Marlow in the play is wonderful. Marlow is apparently gay, and they have a kind of friendship that you don't really see too often in media, of straight guys and gays guys being friends, just bro-ing it down. Of course there's the trope of the gay character in love with the straight character, the cliche of unrequited love, which i think is one less interesting, less progressive interpretation. But I don't think that's what's happening here. But yes, it's sort of refreshing to portray a straight guy and and gay guy having a profound friendship and helping each other in their art as contemporaries.

EDGE: This production of "Shakespeare in Love" is being directed by Scott Edmiston, who you made reference to a few minutes ago. How's your experience been working with him?

George Olesky: It's just fantastic. He has a great ear for how to make language happen and how that language makes a story. This is an 18-person cast, and it's a large room to run, and he's doing it with such generosity and love. It's a disciplined room, and at the same time it's warm and open. It's tricky -- after directing myself, a couple of times, [I know how] you have to be able to create a specific kind of space, a playground, for people to respond the way you need them to respond, and he's done that from day one. He really knows how process works. We're not going to nail it the first day, but we're going to get as far as we need to in that time, it's a series of drafts. It's been a pleasure - I have never worked with him before, but we know how to talk to each other about what's going on and what we can try. What kind of story do we want to tell? We only did a little bit of table work because we only have a few weeks [of rehearsal time], but even that day or two we all got on the same page, I think, in terms of where we want to move. This play is also about a love of the theater and Scott's own love of the theater shines through each day.

EDGE: In terms of that large cast you were just talking about, you get to work with some of Boston's favorite stage actors - Jennifer Ellis, Nancy E. Carroll, Ken Baltin, Remo Airaldi, Damon Singletary, Omar Robinson, Jade Guerra, Lewis Wheeler... I mean, it's a Who's Who! What are they teaching you?

George Olesky: First of all, Nancy - coming from her dance background, she has this ability to do make language happen effortlessly, and have it ring with such poise and status. Her role of the queen is wonderfully calculated and sharp, it's really interesting watching her make choices

I remember Remo from productions I would see at A.R.T. growing up. I recall his work very clearly, and when I learned he was in the show I was so excited. His acting is so specific and so committed. There's a clarity and depth to his acting that I've always loved, and being with him in the room is a joy.

EDGE: What else have you got coming up in the new year?

George Olesky: I'm in a movie called "The Moon, The Stars, and Everything." We expect to shoot in Virginia. I play a DJ in that. It'll be cool.

EDGE: Plus, you're writing a pilot for - what is it, a web series?

George Olesky: Yeah, it's in a very early stage, but my friend from grad school, we're working this pilot. We have this idea of writing a pilot called "Drama." it's a comedy about the artsy drama school on the East Coast. It's coming together piecemeal.

"Shakespeare in Love" runs Jan. 12 - Feb. 10 at the Boston Center for the Arts. For tickets and more information, please go to http://www.speakeasystage.com/shakespeare-in-love/