Some of you may or may not know that I'm also an actor. It's been a while since I was last on stage, but I'm back and that's how I've been spending my nights and weekends (when I'm not finishing up some rush design projects, that is!)
It's been a pretty grueling schedule--design work and installations during the day, rehearsing and performing at night--but things have finally settled down. Now I'm down to just five shows a week (!!)
In a new production of Greek tragedy Antigone, I play the big bad king, Kreon. I've played some smarmy characters before, but I don't think I've ever played a villain. Not that I see him in that way, of course. I've learned to see some other sides of the king.
So far one of my favorite reviews has said the following about my performance:
"Jason W. Wong (who also designed the costumes) is both a fantastic Kreon and a disastrous one. He is fantastic in that he's charming when he wants to be, smarmy when the scene demands he be and just human enough for his priggishness to seem genuine rather than affected. He's very good, but in a way that actually hurts the show in the long run, because we end up siding with Antigone not because she's right and he's wrong but because he's so good at being unlikable"
Yes--I'll take that as a compliment!
One of my former co-stars (in Shotgun Player's production of Quills many years ago) used to quote The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" to me in the dressing room before our shows:
"No one knows what it's like to be the bad man, to be the sad man..."
How true...now I understand ;-)
Photos by Chase Ramsey (top) and JC Myers (bottom).
