By Robert Simonson
Maybe your locker combination from high school, and every other phone number you've ever had. As you perform it, do different passage strike you more strongly at different performances?
When you do the show, do you basically sleep, eat and perform? There's not much room for anything else?
Do Fitzgerald nuts ever wait for you after the show?
10 Mar 2012
Scott Shepherd in Gatz Photo by Joan Marcus
SS: In general, certain passages have a slow, pulsing life. They come into focus over the course of a few shows. And then for a while they won't become as prominent again, and I really don't know why. Then a passage further down the page will start to feel like the centerpiece of that scene. It has a bit of a life of its own that I'm not in control of. I do remember when we finished the show in New York the last time, and we thought this might be the last time we do this — at that point the show was almost ten years old; the first time we did it was in 2005 — there was a section at the end of chapter eight that was in danger of becoming too sentimental. It's all about this goodbye between Gatsby and Nick. I kept a tight rein on it.
SS: Yeah. I try to do a little exercise before I get to the theatre. After the show, I'm not exhausted yet. I don't feel it until a half hour later, when I go out with the cast for a drink. Then the exhaustion hits.
SS: I've been approached by a few professors. And we've been fortunate to have some of the descendants come. A couple of Fitzgerald's grandchildren have come. We usually know they're coming.
SS: I already don't need to read it! For me, it's not really a book to read anymore. I can't really compare it to other books. I can't regard it in the same way. But I do sometimes, when I read a contemporary writer of some kind, I recognize who is down a branch from Fitzgerald, more than, say, Joyce or Faulkner. I was just reading Jonathan Franzen and he really feels like he comes from the Fitzgerald stock.
PLAYBILL BRIEF ENCOUNTER With Gatz and Blood Knot Actor Scott Shepherd
When this is all done, I guess you'll never feel the need to read this book again.
