Interview: Robbie Collier Sublett Chats About HER REQUIEM, the Rehearsal Room and So Much More!

By: Feb. 01, 2016
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Before HER REQUIM begins performances Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater, Robbie Collier Sublett sat down with Broadway World to chat about the new play, his work the amazing cast and comparing it to other parts he's played!

When Caitlin takes her senior year off from high school to compose a full-scale requiem, her dedication inspires her father and concerns her mother. But as their home becomes a nexus for lost souls, her parents must deal with her project's effect on the family, HER REQUIEM is a beautiful new play that perfectly intertwines music and beautifully written dialogue.

Check out the full interview with Robbie Collier Sublett below!

Tell me a little bit about HER REQUIEM?

It's about a high school senior in Vermont. She is 17 and she decides, with her parents blessing, to take a year off of high school, her senior year. So she can compose a requiem. She's gotten permission from the school and has to do a website and post notes and bullets with sound clips of her progress. So, it kind of starts there and the parents have varying levels of trepidation and excitement about what she's doing.

My character is her mentor and used to be her violin teacher. Now that her interest for composing music has grown, he's coming over to help her out and she runs stuff by him. So, he's just a sounding voice for her while she's composing this epic piece of music.

The cast for this show is incredible! How has it been working with them and bringing it to life?

Oh man! Every rehearsal with them is just amazing. I look around and I just have to remember to say my lines because I'm sitting there going 'Wow! This person is really good!' So I just have to remember to talk. Everyone is amazing, even the younger actors. Keilly [McQuail] I saw in this wonderful play downtown called You Got Older and she was fantastic in that. She's from NYU. Naian [Gonzalez Norvid], I think this is her first stage show, but she's done other stuff like TV and film. She's so open and wonderful and everyone is just amazing.

Obviously Peter [Friedman], Joyce [Van Patten] and Mare [Winningham], they are just pros. Just watching them work and being in their presence is incredible. They are all so open and lovely and really sweet. There is not a shred of pretentiousness. They really do love what they do and it shows. They're just incredible. It's a good sign for us to see them because it shows us what it takes to have longevity in this business. They obviously care and work really hard. They care so much about what they do and work incredibly hard. There is a real joy there and I feel like if you are going to make a long go of it in this business, you really have to have that.

It sounds like a learning environment overall. How have rehearsals been going?

Just great! Kate Whoriskey, who is the director and Greg Pierce, the author, wrote a smart, funny and multi-dimensional script. He's got all these clearly defined characters that you like in some ways. You like them a lot and you dislike them in some scenes. Everyone is 3-dimensional. That's the fun thing to explore. Sometimes when the material is too thin, you have to come up with a lot. We really have the opportunity to say, 'What about this? Can we do this?' We come at the material a bunch of different ways and pull from each. It's smart and so open, so any idea we can try. Most likely 90% of it we don't use, but the other 10% is perfect and we will use that! It's super encouraging. Kate comes to the rehearsal and she has these ideas, but she isn't waiting for all of us to catch up to her. We are all working together and finding it together. Even Greg, who wrote it, is so open to what is happening in the rehearsal process. It's just what happens in the rehearsal room and it's an awesome environment.

How does this role differ from other roles you've played? Have you been able to pull from other experiences?

I would say the specifics of this role are kind of unlike anything I've ever played. The one thing it kind of reminds me of, just because it's in the same ballpark, is that I played Mozart in Amadeus. It's not like Tommy is a tortured genius cause he's not, he's kind of the mentor, the coach. If anything he's the one who is trying to coax the music out of her and help her along. Tommy has this line where he says, "My first love is music." Sometimes some of the mistakes of the music that Greg has written and in requiems in general, because it's funeral music, it goes all the way back to catholicism. People would compose the music because it would be played at people's funerals. Historically and musically that sort of shifted to a format that composers attempted to become more performative and have a great piece of music that every heavy hitter would take a go at and it became less of a religious music.

That is to say, I think Tommy has really deep, strong feelings about music and he's Catholic so it has something there. Tommy is standing up and making a point in the show that inherently this music does have a religious component. He cares so much about the music, similar to what I imagine Mozart was like. Mozart at times had seven symphonies and composing them in his head. He just heard music all the time. So, Tommy isn't up to that level, but I think he wishes he could be. He wishes he could be a great composer and he's not. Tommy is so inspired by Caitlin and I think it reminds me of in Amadeus when his wife is kind of the caretaker of the genius and you see the toll that it takes on her. In this way, I think it flips.

ROBBIE COLLIER SUBLETT LCT: Other Desert Cities (Broadway). Off-Broadway/NY: writer/creator of You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents' divorce (The Flea & Williamstown, published by Dramatists Play Services); The Wii Plays (Ars Nova); Perfect Harmony (Theatre Row); Zayd Dohrn's Long Way Go Down (Clurman Lab); Gone Missing (Barrow Street). Regional: Amadeus (Chicago Shakespeare Theater); The Cherry Orchard and Life of Galileo (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey). Film: I Don't Know How She Does It; White Irish Drinkers; Hachi: A Dog's Tale; Mystery Team; Lifelines. TV: HBO's upcoming "Codes of Conduct" (directed by Steve McQueen), "Forever," "Blue Bloods," "Person of Interest," "The Good Wife," "Perception," "Golden Boy," "Welcome to the Wayne," "Camp WWE," "Speed Racer: The Next Generation," "Casper's Scare School," "Team Umizoomi," "Leashes," "The Magic Hour," "Ziptronik Megablast." The Civilians: Associate Artist-2014/15 Artists in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NYU: BFA-Stella Adler.



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