John Hawkes Returns to L'Homme Dieu Before Sharing the Big Screen with Keanu Reeves.
Words and pictures by Rebecca Webb for the September 2001 issue of SENIOR PERSPECTIVE, published in Glenwood, Minnesota by Jeanne Olson (editor and publisher).
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| Lightning quick and a bit thin (for a Minnesotan), Hawkes manages to get back to Alexandria a couple of times a year to visit family. |
John Hawkes, the actor formerly known as John Perkins, has impeccable timing. His large role as Bugsy in The Perfect Storm added a thrill to his return home in July to star in Harvey at Theatre L'Homme Dieu. But his co-starring role with Keanu Reeves in Hardball won't reach audiences until September 14, making it clear he did not come home to bask in his fame. In fact, a customer at the octagon fruit stand on Nokomis who remembers "little John Perkins running around Alexandria as a kid" draws a blank about John Hawkes. The man with dozens of films to his credit and a hugely popular guest appearance on The X-Files is a well-guarded secret in his home town. "My joke," Hawkes grins, "is that I can get hired in Los Angeles or around the world but I can't get a job at L'Homme Dieu."
Lots of television and movie stars do summer stock, but Hawkes has loved Theatre L'Homme Dieu (TLD) since long before his move to Hollywood and not just because he was raised on the shores of its namesake lake. "I did a small part here in a play called The Front Page when I was in high school. I've been wanting to come here and perform for a long time," he explains. But first Hawkes wasn't famous enough, and then he was too famous. "I'd call the theater and either people didn't know who I was, or later they wouldn't believe I wanted to work here. Maybe I wasn't talking to the right people," the actor shrugs.
Theatre L'Homme Dieu has a ten-week season during which the student
company and guest professionals like Hawkes stage six productions. One
show is rehearsed while another is performed for the public. The company
practices from 9 am to noon, 1pm to 5pm, and 7pm to 10pm every day. Those
not appearing on stage work on set or costume crews, park cars, and staff
the box office. Since time before and after rehearsals is spent learning
lines, professionals and student company members generally work a 13-hour
day or longer.
"It's an intense working environment," says Jason Bisping,
a student company member and St. Cloud State University graduate from
Rochester. "A professional lead like John has a lot to worry about,
more responsibility. He's on stage more, has more lines, he carries the
show in a many ways. When he's not working with us, he's off working on
his lines and his character."
The process begins on Tuesday with a read-through of the script. On Wednesday
and Thursday, the actors learn their blocking (where they move on stage).
On Friday they begin working 'off-book' (without having the script in
their hands) but are allowed to 'call for lines' (ask to be prompted)
through Sunday morning. Bisping says the actors who don't have two big
parts in a row often have their lines memorized by Saturday morning. By
Sunday evening, they must have the play and their blocking memorized.
There are run-throughs and dress rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday and
the show opens on a Wednesday night.
It's a grueling schedule," admits associate artistic director Amy
Rohrberg Wilson. "But it's a great experience for students who are
used to working on a show in a college for six weeks. Suddenly they have
to put a show together in one week! It changes how you learn your lines,
how you work with other people, how you master your blocking."
The students learn many of those new techniques from the visiting professionals.
"The best part is seeing their method, how they work," says
Bisping. "You learn about the nature of theater and the nature of
people. John and all the other professionals who have been here this year
are amazing. It's good to see a working actor who knows what he's doing
and isn't tired of it after so many years."
Hawkes has an additional tie to Alexandria's summer stock theater; he attended St. Cloud State University for a year after graduating from Jefferson High School in 1977. St Cloud State has long supplied much of TLD's personnel and equipment; students receive up to 6 hours of academic credit for working at TLD. But in the future, TLD will be severing some of its ties to SCSU. The demands of summer stock have caused burn-out among some of the faculty, and TLD is trying to buy its own equipment to ease the financial burden on the state-funded school. Rohrberg Wilson, a professor from the University of Northern Iowa who will be TLD's artistic director next year, understands how draining the season can be and encourages faculty to consider short-term involvement with specific productions.
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| John Hawkes and Jason Bisping. Bisping was the Prop Master in addition to playing the role of Duane Wilson in Harvey. |
The students seem unconcerned about the change, too. "Know-how is the biggest thing," says Bisping. "Theatre L'Homme Dieu be fine as long as they have a working relationship with a school with an active theater department so they have access to someone who knows how the equipment works. I suspect students from St. Cloud will still be a large part of the student company; they just won't be able to roll out of bed and go across the street to audition. They'll have to attend one of the conferences instead."
The conferences he is referring to are national and regional theater conclaves held at varying locations throughout the country, attended by representatives from many of the nation's professional summer theaters. Centralizing the casting process, the conferences reduce the need for hundreds of local auditions across the country. "They're a great resource for college students or anybody who wants to appear on stage," says Rohrberg Wilson. But will students from outside Minnesota really want to travel all the way to Alexandria when there are summer stock companies in most states? "One of the advantages of coming to L'Homme Dieu is networking with professionals from the Twin Cities," explains Rohrberg Wilson, who had students from the University of Northern Iowa in the TLD company this summer.
Many of those professionals stay at the theater compound while in residence at TLD, often bringing family with them. "The student company members have always been great about entertaining offspring if necessary," says Rohrberg Wilson. Though he has family in the area, Hawkes rented a high school acquaintance's cabin closer to the theater to minimize commuting time while securing some seclusion for reflection and meditation vital to his method of character development. But he took several meals with the other cast members. The students are grateful, Bisping says, for the opportunity to chow down with people like Hawkes at lunch and supper between rehearsals. "It's good to sit down and talk about things they've done, to learn interesting things about the business."
"They really set a different kind of example for the students,"
says Rohrberg Wilson of the visiting professionals. "They have a
whole different way of working as far as focus and concentration and discipline
are concerned."
Hawkes will receive about $1,000 for his work at TLD, which he plans to
donate to the theater. The students receive $100 per week for their ten-week
internship plus room and board. "This was a resort at one time,"
Rohrberg Wilson explains. "There's a large kitchen in the lodge which
also has an upstairs rehearsal space. Several cabins were divided into
smaller units that house the student company. Artistic staff, costume
and lighting designers, administrators and family members can all stay
here, but no one has a lake view!"
But working at TLD offers other benefits compared to, say, film. "When you do a play, you have audience response, which is great to play off," explains Hawkes. "Also, your audience is in a fixed position. In film, the audience might be two feet from you or fifty feet from you, which effects how loud you need to be, or how subtle."
Hawkes has extensive theatrical experience, having made a living as a theater actor in Austin, Texas before moving to Hollywood. He wrote Nimrod Soul, a one-man show that enjoyed its first and only run on two dark nights (Monday and Tuesday) at TLD a half dozen years ago. As Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, he rolls his hat nimbly down his arm, immensely likeable but quietly keen-eyed and judgmental at the same time. He shares the stage generously with his fellow actors, yielding gracefully to Kim Schultz as Veta, who gets the only spontaneous burst of applause during one performance. "I don't think of one audience as needing a play more than another," Hawkes says of Harvey's lesson about embracing non-conformity. "You choose something and people either get it or they don't."
He takes the production very seriously, nonetheless. "On some level, I have a lot to lose. This is my town, this production is being publicized, skeptics might come and say that I'm no better than anybody else. That's fine, but I want the play to be great. I want to shine in front of my family and friends even more than when I'm in New York and there's a professional theater critic sitting in the audience. On some level, this is more precious and important to me."
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| Sports-minded Minnesotans may not be familiar with Alexandria's John Hawkes (formerly John Perkins), star of the upcoming Keanu Reeves movie Hardball. But two of his favorite Twins players, Brad Radke and Eric Milton, loved his movie, The Perfect Storm. |
If it sounds like working at TLD is a slightly nerve-wracking dream come true for the actor, it's not his first. Hawkes appeared in the famous live episode of E.R. "I always wanted to do live television," he admits. "I love Marty and Requiem for a Heavyweight and all those old Playhouse 90 productions. So it was a great twist of fate to be able to do the live episode of E.R." Did he notice anything about the E.R. regulars during the experience? "Fear! It was live, anything could have happened. It was like theater for twenty million people. When you're doing regular television or a movie, there's an editor who takes what you hope is your best work and puts it together. In a live broadcast, the pressure is on to have everything be perfect. It was exciting, being with Julianna Margulies in the very first scene that came up, knees knocking, watching the countdown, five, four, three, two..."
His guest appearance on The X-Files may be his best-known. "What's different about that show is, they really take their time," Hawkes marvels. "People on the crew all seemed relaxed, knowing they were part of something really good. They had a lot of pride in their work and knew each department was going to be given the time and money to do the job right."
In Hardball, due out September 14, he plays Ticky, a "ticket-scalping, gambling, urban Chicago wild guy" whose best friend, played by Keanu Reeves, gets stuck coaching an inner-city little league baseball team to pay off a gambling debt. "Like any good friend, I give him bad advice and discourage him at every turn," Hawkes grins. "It's a really good script in that it's not overly sentimental; hopefully the music won't make it that way." Music is something else Hawkes knows a little about. He and his cousin, Mike Lutgen, formed a band several years ago along with Hawkes' girlfriend at the time. "We were super low profile, playing parties, stuff like that," he remembers. Eventually, the girlfriend moved to New York and the band changed names, to 'Gangster Folk.' "We've recorded some things and we're trying to put out a CD. But it takes time to get everything mixed and do the art work, and Mike, who is an amazing musician, has moved back to Minnesota; his future may lie outside Gangster Folk. It would be great to be able to tour, but being gone eight months out of twelve, it's difficult to do that kind of thing."
Hawkes says paying rent for an apartment he only occupies four months out of the year is fairly typical for him. "In the last few months I've worked in England, Canada, and L.A. You end up all over.
"When I started out in Hollywood, I did just about anything I was
fortunate enough to be asked to do," he says of the process of building
a career. "I failed in things that weren't too high profile and learned
from it. But you get to a point where, if you want to earn a better living
and be offered better parts, or have more choices about how you do your
work, you have to start saying no to things. Otherwise you'll be viewed
as someone who will do any job for a small amount of money. I still don't
get all the jobs I want but I'm comfortable enough that I don't have to
do things I don't want to anymore. My goal is to support my parents and
myself and whoever else, if I get married or have kids, that kind of thing."
Hawkes' parents separated when he was young. His mother resides in Alexandria,
his father in Austin, Texas. Hawkes tries to visit both cities a couple
of times each year. He also has a brother, Scott, and two sisters (Teri
and Lori), all of whom have made him an uncle. "I'm not from money,
by any means. My mom did office work and my father was a farmer, among
other things. Farming is not lucrative. So I'd like to help out, because
I want them to be comfortable." As for the potential negative impact
his movie stardom could have on his family, Hawkes isn't worried. "My
favorite actor is Robert Duvall, and he's able to have dinner without
anybody bothering him. I never see him in the headlines of the National
Enquirer."
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| Harvey participated in a rare publicity campaign. |
One place Hawkes has achieved notoriety is the internet, where he has
two fan pages created by admiring private citizens. "I'm flattered
that two people have chosen to make fan sites about me," he admits.
"It's a little creepy in a way but through the slight communication
I've had with the two people who made them, I've found that they seem
like normal people who are respectable and who are trying to tell the
world about an artist that they admire and want people to know about.
That's wonderful! But I don't really like the idea of technology that
creates more of a homebound or cocoon culture. It replaces people being
together in groups and that makes me sad. I don't think computers are
making our lives better, just faster."
Inaccuracy also bothers him. "There are tons of falsehoods on the internet that people take as true, and that really bothers me. High profile, supposedly accurate sites like IMDB [www.imdb.com, the internet movie database, which provides extensive filmographies on professional actors] have things about me that are completely wrong. They list things I wasn't in, then casting directors or executives see them and think, 'He was in that cheesy movie of the week last year?'"
So what's it like for the Hollywood actor, treading the boards with the
student thespians after years in front of the camera? While Hawkes is
thrilled to be in a traditional theatrical production for the first time
in more than a dozen years, he does not share the attitude that theater
is superior to film and television. "Sometimes there's a stigma that
film and television are less legitimate art forms. It's like San Francisco
and New York hating Los Angeles while Los Angeles loves both places."
Nor does he see himself as the experienced star brought in to educate
the student performers. "I learn a lot from whoever I work with on
any level. I just relate to them as human beings and fellow actors and
I think they relate to me the same way. The student company here works
unbelievably hard. Amazingly hard."
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