THE COMPANY WAY
Raúl Esparza can be as open in an interview as his Tony-nominated Bobby from Company is closed-off from truly being alive. He's candid enough to admit he is ego-driven and self-deprecating enough to laugh at himself for it. Admittedly over-intellectual at times, he credits his Company experience with helping him get "outside his head" for a change. I got him back in there long enough to talk about what motivates him and to look back at his earliest thoughts of Broadway.

Question: Congrats on the nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. You have to wear black throughout Company. Will you be wearing black to the Tonys as well?
Raúl Esparza: I suppose so. I'm trying to be Mr. Classic these days. I should come out in bright silver or something. Gold! I just bought a new suit this week. You gotta do the tuxedo. I try not to think about it. This is the best part of the whole thing. . . . These few weeks where you get to sort of sit and enjoy it. I really like that. There's still the possibility you might win, the possibility of all kinds of stuff — people still say, "Congratulations." Later on they say, "Oh well, maybe next year." [Laughs.] And [afterwards] you miss this [time]. But I'm really looking forward to the ceremony.

Q: Are you someone who has been more inspired by positive encouragement or people who've told you you weren't going to make it as a performer?
Esparza: I've had a little bit of both. My parents were real supportive, which was cool. . . . They've been great and quite encouraging. I also really responded to . . . the first time I didn't get something I wanted. I remember back in high school, I was a presidential scholar in the arts. Out of 6,000 students, they choose 20 to compete for the Presidential Scholarship in the Arts. I was told . . . that I would never be an actor, that I would never be accepted to any theatre schools, that I might be a director, but I just didn't have what it took. To this day I am still grumpy about it. But that was the first time I wasn't treated like the golden boy, even though I had won this wonderful thing, and it did influence me. I ended up going to theatre school because I was told I couldn't go to theatre school. I tend to be one of those people who cuts off his nose to spite his face that way. It's funny because this season at the Drama League Luncheon, Michael Mayer was given the Julia Hansen directing award, and Michael was my acting teacher in college, and we fought like cats and dogs, and I love him to death. I learned in spite of myself with him. He always said I was talented and I had what it takes, but he didn't think I was dedicated enough. And it's amazing to be standing in a position where we're colleagues now. That really blows me away. He was a teacher, and there was something about the fighting that made me want to prove him wrong.

Q: Was he right about your dedication at that time?
Esparza: About the discipline, I didn't really have it back in college when I was at NYU. I wanted to prove I could get in, but then I thought I could coast because I was talented. It's a strange thing about being a young actor. If you're not rebellious, and you don't have a bad attitude and skip classes, then you're probably not going to make it as an actor, but if you do all that crap, you're probably not going to amount to anything either. [Laughs.] So you gotta split the difference somehow. Hold on to the fighting, and yet learn something at the same time. A little bit of support is good, but sometimes it's good to get kicked in the guts a bit because it makes you want to prove people wrong.

Q: You tend to inspire strong reactions to your performances. Rarely do you read, "Raúl was okay in this." Why, do you suppose?
Esparza: That's a hard one, isn't it? I don't know. I like to make big choices. I like to kind of go for it, go for some extremes. What I love about theatre acting is that you can make gigantic choices. I like balancing being someone who is trying to find behavior that you recognize in life while at the same time doing that little extra something that knocks it over the edge into Liza Minnelli territory, where you're kind of reaching for the audience, where you're making a really big choice that's really idiosyncratic — sometimes I really blow it, and sometimes I manage to tap into something that even I didn't quite understand had some power to it. . . . I've heard critics that like me, and I've also heard critics who said I gave them a rash. Better that than a critic who walks away and goes, "So what?" Not that you do it for the critics. Just, they happen to write things and people read them.

Q: Is it more difficult making big physical choices in a stripped-down show like Company?
Esparza: A lot more difficult, and it's entirely because of [director] John Doyle and the way he works. He's really one of the best directors I've ever worked with. Sondheim asked me this question, he said, "How does he do it? How does he get these performances out of Michael Cerveris or Patti LuPone [in Sweeney Todd]? How did this happen?" I tried to describe, "Well, we repeat things a lot, we do scenes 40 to 50 different ways, and we never really plan anything, and he really makes you feel safe." And he said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not it. Patti and Michael couldn't explain it either."

Q: Are you still unable to explain?
Esparza:My theory of the month right now is that [Doyle] makes you feel good as a person, and you come to a point where who you are, and what you have to offer is enough, and you really don't need to impress anybody. He gave me a note one time after "Marry Me a Little" where he said, "That was pretty good. It was 5% there, and the other 95% was thoroughly self-indulgent and self-pitying, so don't do that again." [Laughs.] He's not interested in somebody being onstage and trying to show off. It made me challenge him. I remember there was a day I said, "What do you want me to do? Stand here?" He said, "I don't know. Maybe. What would that do?" So I said, "Fine, I'm just going to stand here through the whole number of 'Company.' I won't move." And, wow, it really kind of worked! . . . I think that his great gift is he helps you get to that place where you go, "I'm enough. I can just be quiet, and I can say my lines, and it's going to be like a real person, and the audience will respond to that."

Q: And you are still discovering new things as the run continues?
Esparza: That's another thing about the way John works. We do the scene so many different ways, that even as an actor, there's going to be so many ways to play something, and he allows you to do that, but because we're doing Sondheim, it's material that you can never quite get to the bottom of. It's great, great writing, and it is challenging to find the right way to say something that'll convey the 30 different meanings he has written into a lyric. They're just incredible. I look at the lyrics and go, "Oh my God! How did he rhyme that?" or, "That's the perfect way to say that." There's the other little kid side of me that remembers looking at the big book, "Broadway Musicals" by, I think it was Martin Gottfried, a big picture book, and it had A Chorus Line on the cover. My parents gave it to me when I was 12. There was a chapter on Sondheim, and some of the lyrics quoted in it are from Company. The other night [the cast was] singing, and I was like, "Oh my God! They're singing about me!" Who would have ever told that kid that I'd be up there, and they'd be singing that song, and I'd be the guy they're singing about? I could see myself on the living room floor some Christmas morning going, "What is this book?" And nobody could have told me that I would be doing this. It makes this Tony nomination feel incredibly special. This is a childhood dream come true.

Q: Were you thinking about Tony nominations as a child?
Esparza: I never had any experience of New York theatre other than what I saw on the Tony broadcast, so it wasn't about winning an award but that I would be associated with the people I was reading about or seeing on TV. That's what the dream is. It's not really about the Tony. The nomination is a stamp: "You belong in this world." And I'm working with people that I watched on television and that I admired and whose plays I came to see, books I read, and it was very far away. I was in Miami in the suburbs and we were listening to our rock 'n' roll and our Cuban music, and all of us spoke Spanish, and were eating Cuban food. My school didn't have a theatre of any real consequence. We did little plays and things, but we did little Spanish plays, and it was fun, but we never did a musical, and we couldn't have been more removed from Broadway, and what came to town at the time seemed impossible — like little visiting circuses from outer-space. Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan or I remember Les Miz. I saw the national tour, and it was really good. I didn't think, "I'm going to be up there." I just thought, "These are like visitors from another planet, up in New York." I didn't see a show on Broadway until I was coming here for college, and it happened to be Into the Woods.

Q: How did the reality compare to how you had envisioned Broadway?
Esparza: It seemed slightly smaller than I imagined what Broadway was, but all those marquees along 44th Street, it was like a fantasy world. I thought it was a huge place, and it turned out to be a small series of blocks, and I thought, "What would it ever take for me to get here?" I remember thinking, "Someday I'll walk to work here." I didn't know how it would happen, and I used to go to classes at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd Street, and I'd go to TKTS and get tickets to all the plays I could see. I saw a lot of great plays and musicals. That season was Grand Hotel and City of Angels. It was my first year at NYU. There were so many good things, and Playwrights Horizons was doing Assassins — we couldn't get tickets for that. But I remember walking down 42nd Street and the skyline of midtown, you know the way the sky goes kind of purple-y and the buildings make sort of a bright yellow and orange at night. I associate that sky and those buildings with Sondheim's music — the music I was hearing in class for the first time. People singing "Marry Me a Little" in class, or "Everyday a Little Death." I had never heard those songs before. And seeing that midtown sky and going to see a Broadway show . . . . I kept thinking someday I'd be up there, and what does it take to get there? It's a longer journey than just a physical journey of a few blocks, it's a big thing. In the meantime I went to Chicago or I lived in another city or I went through whatever I've gone through in my own life to be back at this, 18 years later.

Q: Prior to Company, you said your favorite roles were in tick, tick…BOOM! and The Normal Heart. Where does Company now fit in?
Esparza: I would say this is the best work I've ever done because I think I am a better actor through this process than I've been before, and I'm also learning to sing better than I've ever sung and taking it really seriously. I've applied myself to learning stuff. tick, tick…BOOM! and The Normal Heart were such immediate experiences that nothing is going to take the place of that. That's because they were plays for and about the people we were performing them for. Company is similar. It does fall in the same line, and when you're performing it for New Yorkers it's really thrilling. But personally, it is really challenging, and I feel like I am getting better, and that's really rewarding to me. Nothing's ever going to take the place of the experience of the Public Theater and Normal Heart, where it felt like the audience was joining in with the play, like I thought they were going to get up and start screaming at the Mayor's deputy or something. And in this case, when I hear people crying at the end or laughing — there's a moment of laughter after "Being Alive" that happens every night. It's a relief and it releases something in the audience where you hear everyone kind of happy for Bobby and happy for themselves. I think it's really hopeful, and I love telling that story. I keep having moments every night where I go, "I can't believe I'm doing this." So I would say that so far I feel like this is the top of something. Now, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do [next]! [Laughs.]

(Company plays the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street; call (212) 239-6200 for tickets.) Continued...