I am not an actor. I don’t understand them, yet, one way or another, I’ve been around them my whole life. My older sister, Jami, threw Rocky Horror Picture Show parties in junior high. Pubescent girls and boys trouncing around in fishnets and gold Speedos was absolutely shocking to a 10-year-old boy. I recovered, and Jami went on to major in theater at Yale. My sister-in-law majored in theater at Rhodes College in Memphis. A good handful of my friends in high school, too, went on to major in theater. I know most of the soundtrack to Rent, Grease and Chicago through nothing other than so-called “musical osmosis.” It’s a disease that has followed me for years.
I ventured into this piece searching for answers. By looking in-depth at a couple of Northwestern actors I know, I hoped to finally figure out what makes them tick. I want to get them, comprehend them, or, for once, at least pretend to understand them.
I am at a rehearsal for Mee-Ow, an NU sketch comedy group. I must admit: I’m confused. Students are rolling around on a classroom floor pretending to be earthworms. The skit started with two worms getting into a fight, but other earthworms find them and mistake their duel for lovemaking. Before you know it, there is an earthworm orgy at Parkes Hall. The skit’s only about halfway humorous until a blond girl with a baby face pops out of the pile and screams, “I think I’m pregnant.”
That’s Kelly O’Sullivan. Her quick one-liner seems to come out of thin air, sucker-punching a hefty laugh out of the entire room. But I know better.
I’ve known Kelly O’Sullivan since she began acting at age 6. My older sister dragged me along to auditions at the Arkansas Arts Center where a little starlet named Kelly O was stealing the show. “I got into acting only because my kindergarten teacher told my mom I needed an outlet for my energy,” says the Communication senior. “But I felt at home on stage right away.”
The Arts Center became a second home for O’Sullivan. She shined there for nearly a decade, always getting the parts reserved for girls a few years older. As a freshman in high school, O’Sullivan was cast as the lead in the musical How to Succeed. “I didn’t really understand how rare it was for a freshman to get the lead until I got some negative attention from upperclassmen,” O’Sullivan says.
Though the negative attention cooled down, her success continued to heat up. As an NU freshman, she told herself to try out for “all of it.” O’Sullivan was cast in nearly everything she auditioned for. Throughout her tenure at NU, Kelly has been cast in four ensemble groups: Mee-Ow, Titanic Players, Boomshaka and Northwestern Student Television (NSTV).
In the summer of 2004, she was accepted to a prestigious 10-week acting conservatory at the School at Steppenwolf. “Steppenwolf was definitely the best thing I’ve ever done as an actor,” O’Sullivan says. “The program either definitely convinces you acting’s the only thing you could do, or it convinces you otherwise,” O’Sullivan says. “To me, it was the final indication that I wanted to act for the rest of my life.”
The connections she made that summer helped her get an audition last fall for The Glory of Living, a play at Chicago’s Profiles Theater. Though a little too young and professionally inexperienced, Kelly scored the lead role. Her protrayal of 15-year-old Lisa, a girl who kills others for the sexual pleasure of her boyfriend, earned critical acclaim from both the Chicago Tribune and Time Out Chicago.
Now Kelly O’Sullivan’s sitting at a desk 10 feet away from me, 1,000 miles from where we first met. In a black shirt, blue jeans and red sneakers, she’s watching the other members of Mee-Ow work out a sketch. Every now and then, one of the other girls turns to Kelly and whispers, “Is this funny?” Kelly shrugs and nods “yes” in a way that really means, “keep trying.” When it comes to being funny, Kelly is stone-cold serious.
“She expects perfection from herself and from others,” says NU professor Cindy Gold, who teaches Kelly’s acting class. “Sometimes I just want her to relax and trust herself, the material, her partners, the system and life. It is what it is.”
But it’s Kelly’s determination that’s gotten her this far this quickly. Gold calls it “hunger.” Kelly calls it “drive.” “It’s why I’m a working actor already, it’s why I’m making connections,” O’Sullivan says. “I worry I’ve missed out on campus life. I’m afraid I should’ve messed around, been lazier, had the typical college life. But I don’t think I could’ve been satisfied.”
Gold worries Kelly’s “drive” may never leave her satisfied. “The goal in life is to be happy, not necessarily rich and famous,” Gold says. “I suspect that could all happen for Kelly if she wants it. But I just hope she’ll keep calling me so I can remind her of what’s really important.”
On this evening, Kelly admits to being tired. Not the “I need a good night’s rest” tired, but the “I need a good week’s hibernation” tired. After graduation, though, Kelly will hit the ground running, performing in 100 Saints You Should Know at Steppenwolf. This is how she wants to spend the rest of her life: not back in Arkansas, but “at home” in Chicago. Or London. Or New York. It’s not the city, it’s the stage. Any stage.
I am at Chipotle with my freshman year roommate. Communication senior Matt Sax is slouched in a faded pink button-up shirt, pinstriped brown pants and stark white shoes, and he admits an urge to stand outside with a cigarette. He’s speaking to me between hurried bites of a burrito the size of his forearm. “They want to promote me as the major emerging voice of my generation,” Sax says. “Which is pretty fucked up, don’t you think?” I can’t tell if he really finds it ridiculous or if he’s just selling me on the idea that he’s somehow been able to maintain his humility. I can never tell.
Sax began acting at a young age. Since he moved to Mamaroneck, N.Y., at age 6, he’s been classically trained at Julliard, the Stella Adler Conservatory, the Lee Strausburg Institute and finally here at NU.
Sax started performing in campus productions when he came to NU in fall 2002, but got bored with standard shows, so he decided to create his own. It began with Sax and Dixon, a two-man, long-form sketch comedy show he co-wrote with fellow Communication freshman John Dixon. They found that “one in a million” chemistry: Sax nailed the straight face while Dixon played up the big laughs.
Sax and Dixon, which performs its swansong at 7 and 11 p.m. Friday night in the Louis Room in Norris (see page 8), brought in sell-out crowds, thrusting the two freshmen into a campus spotlight. The show became an annual event, always going up the night before Dillo Day. The two will even take it on the road to New York’s Fringe Festival this summer.
“In my perfect world, I would do this show forever,” Dixon says. “But Matt has so many options. I have to do comedy. Matt can do anything.”
Nearly every night during freshman year, Sax would settle down at his computer after a day of scrambling from one rehearsal to another. He’d put on headphones the size of large earmuffs and work out hip-hop beats on a small keyboard. After a while, he’d plop into bed, rambling about writing something “huge, totally original, completely my own.” He’d soon trail off like a boy praying out loud, falling asleep dreaming about his dream. He decided to dedicate his sophomore year to writing Clay, a one-man, hip-hop musical.
“When the process began, there wasn’t even anything I really wanted to be in, nothing that interested me in the theater world,” Sax says. “So I decided to invent something that would showcase what I love and what I’m good at and what I really wanted others to see.”
Clay is the story of a white rapper named Clifford “Clay” Keyes. Sax performs each song of the concert-musical from the first-person account of different characters. He says his lyrics address Clay’s parents’ divorce, the suicide of his mother and an affair between Keyes and his s
tepmother. “I know it all sounds intense and painful and crazy,” Sax says. “But ask enough people and you’ll get different responses. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s just good music. I wanted to have it all.”
Sax spent the summer before his junior year rehearsing the show in Brooklyn. With his closest friends as his crew, he took Clay to the prestigious Fringe Festival in Scotland. Rave reviews and offers to take his piece around the world tempted Sax to drop out of school. But his parents urged him to return for his final two years. Instead of performing in Sydney, Sax put up Clay in Shanley Pavilion. Sax’s acting professor, Frank Galati, urged his friends and colleagues – many from the Lookingglass Theater ensemble – to see Sax’s show. The invitations paid off.
After a year of discussions with Lookingglass Theater, Sax received a message on his answering machine. “I couldn’t really make out a damn thing,” Sax says. “It was obviously a conference call and there were all these people screaming and yelling ‘Congratulations!’ It wasn’t until it was over that I realized it was the Lookingglass ensemble and they were picking up my show.”
Lookingglass Theater wants Sax and Clay to open their 2006 fall season. They want him to reach a new wave of young theater-goers. “I’m aiming this show at my generation,” Matt says. “I’m going to get young people into theater like they’ve never been before. I want everybody interested.”
It’s a bold statement, but almost immediately, Matt says, “Bottom line, I have a job that’ll pay me when I get out of school. That is a blessing.” How do you balance those statements back-to-back? How can you claim to do something that’s never been done before and then act as if you are just happy to be a working actor? Once again, he’s got me wondering if he’s selling me something. I ask him to clear it up. “I want to change the face of American theater,” he says. “But there’s a kid in me that just wants to be a star.”
I am in Sax’s bedroom, lying on a couch made from about four weeks worth of laundry, watching Sax rap songs from Clay.
“Look into my eyes you can see where I stand/ the power of words connects a man to a man/ but when words aren’t enough, they are likely just to fail/ but when words speak truth, hip-hop will prevail, hip hop will prevail, hip-hop will prevail…”
I no longer really know when Sax’s words “speak truth” – especially as he tells me, “My agent says I have to always sell what I’m doing, what I’m wearing. Man, it’s like I even have to sell myself nowadays.” Matt Sax the salesman. Maybe that sums it up. Maybe all along he’s been selling and the theater world’s been buying. Now he’s hoping the rest of the world buys, too.
Walk into a journalism classroom before it begins and you’ll see kids like me staring bleary-eyed into a computer screen. Walk into a theater class and you’ll see 20-something 20-somethings playing around like kids at recess: boys fighting with wooden swords, girls dancing like dervishes. They get a grade for this? This isn’t school.
I called my sister to straighten out the Rocky Horror mess from my memory. After apologizing, she told me, “It was really the only place we could just be weird and not worry about it. That, and we liked to draw attention to ourselves.”
Another contradiction. My sister and her friends were worried about what others thought, so the Rocky Horror parties served as a solace. But they also really enjoyed the extra attention those crazy parties brought. Kelly O was always too young, but still she fought to get the parts. Matt Sax was bold enough to want to change to the face of American theater, but he’s self-admittedly still just a boy with big dreams and a bigger heart. Maybe that’s it. Maybe actors are just walking contradictions.
Or, if you believe Billy Shakespeare’s idea that “all the world’s a stage,” maybe we’re all actors. We all want to do our own play, but we’re slightly worried what our audience will think. We’re all a little too old or young, but we can all fight for a little opening. We all want to want to change the world, but we still want to stand for some sort of humility.
Maybe we’re all walking, talking, breathing, living contradictions. And maybe actors are the only ones brave enough to stand on a stage and shout it. Maybe I do get them, comprehend them, or, for once, at least I can pretend to understand them.4
Medill senior Bobby Harrison is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
