Two actors, 15 roles

By Cindy Landrum  

DECEMBER 1, 2011 6:16 p.m. (0)

Thomas Azar, one of the cast members in The Warehouse Theatre’s production of “Stones in His Pocket,” calls the play an actor’s play.

Two actors – Azar and Jason Shipman – play 15 roles, ranging from an 8-year-old kid to a 70-something senior.

Sometimes, the actors play different roles in the same scene, changing gender and nationalities in a moment’s notice, even playing both parties in the same conversation.

“It’s like mental gymnastics,” Azar said.

It’s all done with minimal props and costume changes.

“It’s a fine actor’s playground,” said Paul Savas, the Warehouse’s executive and artistic director.

“Stones in His Pockets,” a play written by Marie Jones that has enjoyed success on Broadway and London’s West End, tells the story about what happens when Hollywood film overruns a small town in County Kerry, Ireland.

Most of the townspeople are used as extras, something Savas said Greenville could relate to since area residents were used as extras in the George Clooney film, “Leatherheads.”

The story is told through the eyes of the two main characters, locals Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn.

They are on the older side of young and are looking for direction in their lives. They find it at the end of the play, after the audience is introduced to a host of funny characters and situations along with a dose of pathos.

Savas said an actor in the play must be technically gifted.

“Both of these actors have that and they both have inner talent,” he said. “You can train technical, you can’t train talent.”

Shipman said the actors went through all of the characters and discussed what a movie would be like if it was based on that person’s life. They assigned physical characteristics to all.

“We got to know these characters,” he said. “They are all looking at life and their situation through their own point of view. Coping with the suppression and the hordes of everything else they’ve been through hits each generation differently.”

Azar, who moved to Greenville about a year ago when his wife, Maegen, got a job as a professor of acting and directing at Furman University, said he played in a one-man show on “Apollo 11” years ago. While he played multiple characters in the play, it was limited to one character per scene.

“‘Stones’ is like mental gymnastics,” he said.

“You’ve got to remember who’s saying what to whom and where that person was physically on stage when the audience last saw him,” he said. “It’s a mental workout and a physical workout. But it is so much fun to do.”

The actors must assume many accents – from many Irish dialects to British to Scottish and American.

Ironically, Azar said, the American accent has given him the most trouble.

“When I speak with my normal voice, my brain is so far removed from America, I have to remember how to speak normally again,” he said.

Jayce Tromsness, a dialect coach and husband of the show’s director Anne Tromsness, helped the actors with characterization.

“You’ve got to get the dialogue at a pace where the audience can still follow the conversation,” Azar said.

Azar said once he gives a character a physical characteristic – such as always rolling his sleeves up or always scratching his head like he has forgotten something – that action triggers the right voice.

“The voice follows suit,” he said.

Or, at least most of the time.

“It’s 99 percent foolproof, although there have been a couple times when I started speaking with the wrong voice in rehearsal,” he said.

Shipman said the actors have worked with the characters so much that they “now know what the characters want.”

Working on seven or eight characters instead of just one is a challenge, Azar said.

“But it feels so rewarding coming home at the end of the night,” he said.

During the performances of “Stones” through Dec. 12, the theater is collecting presents for Mental Health America: Greenville Operation Santa Claus. The project aims to collect items for residents of community care homes.

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