Jonathan Kindness as Rowan Loring

Last night I had the honor of having morethings5* over to record his part for Tailor of Riddling Way. Kindness is one of those actors that I will go out of my way to work with. Having cast him in Hamlet, To Think of Nothing, and now Tailor, I have included Kindness in more of my dramatic projects than any actor excepting only Jared and Steph. I like his style, and I like the way we click as actor and director. He's very receptive to ideas, but also inventive and able to extrapolate; when he is so inspired he springs off of what you told him in a way that makes the character more real to him, and thus gets a better portrayal from him. He has a way of GETTING characters, of absorbing all their complexities and blending them into a cohesive whole that takes them all in account and balances them. While most actors that I've worked with tend to shoot for a particular performance, he is more experimental, trying this and that to see what effect it has and how he feels about it before settling on his ultimate approach.

I wanted him for the part of Rowan Loring for two major reasons. First, the sound of his voice; he has a cultured, even-toned voice that I thought would convey a man of manners, breeding, and integrity. Secondly, it was different than anything I'd cast him before, which as you all know I love to do sometimes. His previous roles with me were Rosencrantz and Palamon, the first one played totally for laughs and the second one a humorous voice of satire. I liked the idea of having him play someone who made his point straightforwardly, but still felt bound by his personal code; Palamon, by contrast, is a truth speaker who uses jokes and irony to express himself, and does not feel obligated by convention. Rowan is my Honorable Man in this story whose only fault was that he stuck so closely to his code that had to place the needs of those he loved in the secondary position.

Jonathan did a fantastic job last night; I was incredibly pleased with the performance he gave. I found it interesting that he would mark his script to give himself cues as he read, delineating beats, transitions, and extremes. I'm always interested in process-of-the-artist stuff, so I thought that was cool. Also, best of all, he is an unusually good self-editor. He would record the piece, listen to it, and hear the places where he wasn't satisfied or where he wasn't feeling like he was giving me what I wanted. He would then use his observations  to improve himself on the second pass through. I've rarely worked with actors with that capability to critique their own performance. And of course, he is wonderful to work with, which makes me enjoy having him in my projects even more.

This is him at my fancy party, but he's kind of Rowanish here, I think. :-)