God of Carnage Cast Q&A

A few of the God of Carnage cast members sat down with us and answered a few questions about their characters and this hilarious and thrilling 2009 Tony Award-winning play by Yasmina Reza. Enjoy!

Eva Kaminsky

What intrigued you about God of Carnage? Why did you want to be a part of this play? It’s a challenging piece. Particularly, for me, the language. I had seen the show twice - once with a replacement cast on Broadway, and once at a theatre I was working at out of town. I thought the language was somewhat stilted, probably due to the translation factor. I was interested on how to make it sound human. I think we’ve done a good job with that, as people have commented on how naturalistic the dialogue is. It’s also a bear of a play to perform, and being up to the task of that is usually interesting to me.

Veronica’s character has a lot of physical comedy in God of Carnage – how did you prepare yourself for a role like this? Once we got into rehearsals and performance - sleeping, eating, and sleeping again. Oh, and a lot of stretching and vocal warm-ups before the show. Other than that preparation wise all you can really do is jump in head first and not be scared to take risks. I’d like to say I took up running or something, but really the play has become my workout for the day.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned so far throughout this process? Have you been particularly surprised by anything? It’s always interesting to me what things wind up making the audience laugh. The things I thought were hilarious often aren’t, and the things I think are tragic get huge reactions. I’m constantly surprised by how exhausted I am after each performance. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it somehow catches me off-guard.

If you could use only one word to describe this play, what would it be and why? Messy. But then, so is life.

Susan Louise O’Connor

What intrigued you about God of Carnage? Why did you want to be a part of this play? It’s an actor’s dream project. The amazing dialogue, the hot circumstances, the constant engaging and rejecting of alliances - it’s an acting adventure.

Annette’s character has quite a range in God of Carnage, going from sweet to salty in some hilarious scenes. How did you prepare yourself for a role like this? One of my acting teachers says, “Don’t work on the similarities between you and the character.” I took that to heart preparing for this role. The way that Annette negotiates the circumstances of this play makes a lot of sense to me, the trajectory is one that feels very organic to my emotional core. And when that is the case, I find the most useful work I can do is to trust myself and my fellow actors and the audience. Just be there and trust.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned so far throughout this process? Have you been particularly surprised by anything? The wide range of audience responses to this play is very interesting. You never know what to expect.

If you could use only one word to describe this play, what would it be and why? Revealing.

Triney Sandoval

What intrigued you about God of Carnage? Why did you want to be a part of this play? I’m so glad to be asked this question. I’ve been asked this before about other plays and I’ve never been satisfied with my answers. I always speak to the specifics of the play and end up sounding like if one or more of the elements of the play had not been in place I wouldn’t have done the project. Which is the farthest thing from the truth. What intrigues me about God of Carnage is exactly what intrigues me about every play I do, the discovery of humanity in a work of theatre. This is what keeps me going as an actor, to interpret works by great (and sometimes not so great) writers and find the humanity in in those works that audiences can see and recognize themselves in.

There is a very small percentage of actors who have the luxury of waiting for the perfect role to come their way. Most of us look for parts where we fall into the general type and then seek out an audition. This was my case when I was told that there was going to be a co-production of God of Carnage between Cincinnati Playhouse and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. I fit the general description of the character and so my agents submitted me for an audition. The director, based on my headshot, resume, and past experiences auditioning me decided he would see me as well as a number of other people for the role of Michael. Why he chose me would be a question for him, but I’m glad he did.

Michael’s character has a lot of physical comedy in God of Carnage – how did you prepare yourself for a role like this? There’s actually not that much physical comedy from Michael’s character in the script. It was something I wanted to play with and that our director Ed Stern seemed to encourage. I don’t really do anything in the show I’m not already primed for so there’s no physical prep that I need before a performance with the exception of the fight call where Eva beats me up. What does take some extra focus is the amount of shouting I do in the show. If I’m not careful I won’t have a voice by the end of the week. Even with being careful, when Sunday comes around, and we’ve done 7 or 8 shows, my voice is a bit ragged and tired.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned so far throughout this process? Have you been particularly surprised by anything? I’ve always been a little slow on the uptake, so I don’t tend to figure out what I’ve learned until after a production closes. Usually the way it works for me is the next production is where the lessons of this one will come into focus. As for surprises, nothing surprises me more than Tony Marble’s capacity for eating THAT MUCH clafoutis!

If you could use only one word to describe this play, what would it be and why?I keep going back and forth on this one. I like both “brutal” and “funny.” The problem is neither one alone quite does the trick. So let’s go with “brunny”? OR “frutal”?. While there are some moments of compassion, the fact of the matter is that these characters can be petty, small and downright hateful at times and the “funny” is the spoon full of sugar that helps the bitter pill of how “brutal” human beings can be go down. If the show were merely “funny” it would simply be a sit-com. If it were just “brutal” nobody would want to watch—or if they did they would simply write the characters off as “those people” and never have moments of connection, where they feel “I see myself in that person.” So: “Brunny”.

Hurry! Show closes November 6. Click here to learn more about God of Carnage!

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