A Steady Rain: Q&A with the Actors

A Steady Rain cast members Michael James Reed and Joey Collins sat down with us and answered a few questions about their characters, the intensity of this powerful and engaging show and what it’s like to play to St. Louis audiences. Enjoy.

Michael James Reed - Joey

A Steady Rain is a powerful and provocative play, with serious subject matter. What specifically attracted you to this role? What attracted me initially was just the challenge of the piece. It’s not often you get to do two-character plays, especially ones with this intensity. I was attracted and excited about the muscles it would exercise in me.

Is it daunting to have so much dialogue? Is it hard to be one of only two characters in a show? Yeah! At first I thought, “Well, how on earth will I learn all this?!” I mean, there’s only two of us up there and if he ain’t talking, I am! I wanted to be as confident as I could with the dialogue so I started early committing it to memory. It’s slow going when you do it that way, but it pays off.

Your character, Joey, has a thick Chicago accent – but you do not! What was your process for learning the accent? Do you find yourself using the accent in everyday conversations now? Well, I did a few things. First of all, I’m lucky that my uber talented wife, Nancy Bell, is a voice and speech specialist and professor at SLU and was hired to work with us on this show! She helped me locate initially the basic shifts in vowel sounds you need to make. I then watched a lot of internet content, particularly Mayor Daley. I’d never done the accent so I was pretty daunted at first. I took a trip to Chicago about a month before rehearsal and spent time on the south side and, amazingly, people do have that thick, thick accent! I recorded a lot of folks and even met with the dialect coach at Steppenwolf. Nancy was present for some of the rehearsals and made sure things sounded authentic and not cartoon-ish. And yeah, I hear it slipping in to my general speech more and more – which probably isn’t the best thing in the world! Better work on getting rid of it before my next show.

How would you describe the character of Joey? Hmm. Well, Joey takes a great journey in this show. He goes from passive bystander in his life, to an active leading participant. It’s a great change to go through as a character. He spent so much of his life letting everything dominate and overwhelm him, and now he is confronted with the chance at a better and new life. I admire his eventual courage to rise to the occasion. He’s an honest man torn by his dishonest feelings.

You’re a Rep veteran, having acted in several plays on The Rep’s stages. What is your favorite part about playing to audiences at The Rep? Audiences at The Rep have always been attractive because they are so appreciative. They seem to, whether upstairs in the Mainstage or down in the Studio, really enjoy being at the theatre and know and understand its importance. You feel that from them. It’s a smart crowd. They’ve worked hard here building and maintaining an audience base, and it shows and elevates the process as a result.

Joey Collins - Denny

A Steady Rain is a powerful and provocative play, with serious subject matter. What specifically attracted you to this role? I really was tired of being “Joey” and I thought I’d give someone else a shot this whole “Joey” phenomenon, ya know? No, seriously, Michael James Reed was already cast in the part of Joey, so when Steven Woolf came to New York he was only looking for a Denny.  When preparing for the audition I was attracted to how Denny was not only living on the edge, but how he seemed to live on the ledge. Denny’s ledge is high up in this world and before this story starts he appears to have been a trapeze-artist-type-of-cop and had never really fallen. At the story’s end we know “trapeze artist” wouldn’t suffice in describing Denny. He’s not a circus act or keystone cop. He lives much more dangerously than that.  But the living “high” metaphor sticks. His ledge is skyscraper high. No one knows how wide that ledge is or how high it may be. Denny doesn’t know either. But Denny seems comfortable up there, sure of himself, to the point where there is no way down–no ladder, no parachute, no elevator button to push. And when the rain comes, he’s still on that ledge, navigating his logic as the ledge gets narrower and more slippery.  My attraction to Denny, and why I love him so much, is directly related to that ledge. I know that ledge. And like Denny, on that ledge I get to shake hands with my own demons, you know? But unlike Denny, in my life now, it makes me saner. I get to share that ledge with people. And then I go away, they go away and I get to Skype with my kids afterwards.

Is it daunting to have so much dialogue? Is it hard to be one of only two characters in a show? The most difficult aspect of learning this part was getting inside Denny’s rhythms. Keith Huff (playwright) has written this guy with a very concise bit of gab. He’s this walking jazz instrument is how I see it. He’s a trumpet. But the jazz he blows is not hard bop Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Freddie Hubbard (my favorite). No, he is this acid-Jazz-virtuoso-like instrument. His dissonance he believes is beautiful in this Major key. But it’s not. It’s dissonance and improvisational. Denny thinks fast and blows hard and loud. What others in his world might call vulgarity in his “music” or language, he has mastered. He can turn a phrase that is just as elegant and poetic as the great framers of rhythm, and after a while you (the listener) understand on an intuitive level where he gets his mojo… But finding that mojo, his essence, was difficult. He mixes metaphors, tenses, his grammar is off, he omits words where most of us do not, he has malapropisms. I keep aspiring to do Denny justice. He has great virtuosity and technique in being this “Denny instrument”, if you will allow me to stretch this analogy any farther. However, the play as a whole is this masterful duet. Keith Huff has written these characters with a masterly bit of proficiency. The two can only co-exist. Otherwise the composition he wrote wouldn’t work. So I wouldn’t say it was nearly as daunting as it is an exercise in aspiring to play every note until the lights go down. It’s a thrill.

Denny says in the play that he has a problem with his mouth, meaning explicit language. Is it difficult at all to portray a character who uses harsh language? F*** no. I have a five-year-old and a 2 1/2 year old at home. It’s f***ing liberating! I haven’t said Drats, Zippety, or my favorite “uncuss” Jon Hamm! since I arrived. The difficulty, I’m afraid, will be going back to New York.

How would you describe the character of Denny? The character of Joey describes me quite well when he says: “Denny was his family. He needed them to need him.”  That’s true. He wants the best for his family. He has a TV in every room. He lives in a beautiful house (probably out of the price range of most cops). He aspires to being in the “privileged ranks” and believes at the start of the play that he has made it there. He finds it valuable to be a Nielsen Ratings family. It gives him status. He wants, desperately, to be the head of this model family. He believes he’ll make detective some day. He doesn’t see himself as the obstacle in the way of getting promoted to detective. It doesn’t fit into his scheme of logic. He believes the law has “testosterone” in it and that it shouldn’t be taken away. Almost like the use of power is an entitlement if you have a badge. He would have been a great (if you will) torturer I’m guessing. His identity is comfortably molded around the old neighborhood, his Italian immigrant parents, the “them and us” mentality. He’s partial to trusting other Italians and white folks and Catholics. It’s almost like he comes from a few generations before ours. And he truly believes he’s a good cop. He “knows” he’s a good cop. From his perspective he’s a great cop. He believes in his method of policing. The people he polices aren’t exactly model citizens. He justifies his use of power through this logic of his. However, he has his enemies confused with his compatriots. And as he gets farther away on that ledge his footing has less grip. So does his logic. He is a man of principles and he sticks to those principles–no matter how dated they are. To him they are “the ways things are.” Denny is a soldier fighting for these principles. But Denny is a man who I’m not sure would have the skills to cope with the world’s perception of him. He’s not really a “talk it out” kind of guy–which is ironic because he can f***ing talk, ya know?

You’re a Rep veteran, having played to Rep audiences before. What is your favorite part about playing to audiences here? First of all, there is a thirst for plays here. And in the studio Mr. Woolf (director) feeds that need. He should be championed for it. It is rewarding to perform here because the people that come to the Studio Theatre series really want to be there. And they want plays! The studio audience likes plays that are a little farther away from the art-meets-commerce-model…edgier stories and plays which contain suspect language or all of the above. I love the audiences here. They are smart. And as a performer you know they are smart because of their reactions to the writing. Keith Huff’s play is biting and witty and concise. You can always sense an audience’s EQ and IQ with a play like this because of it’s depth. Thus far we’ve been impressed with the depth at which they have their fingers on the nervous system of this play. Some may credit us, or Mr. Huff’s play, or Steve’s directing, but we must also accept the fact that the audiences here are sophisticated and they don’t mind sharing their intellectual wealth with us. It is very rewarding as an actor to work here and experience that.

Hurry! Show closes February 5 and there is LIMITED AVAILABILITY. Click here to learn more about A Steady Rain.

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