BWW Interviews: Denver Center's Mike Hartman and Lauren Klein on Happiness, Marriage, and Death (of a Salesman)...

Mike and Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with me and Broadwayworld.com. Are you based in Denver, or where do you consider home?

M: We have an apartment in New York City. I work here a lot.

L: And I work here when they hire me (laughs).

Which it's great that we're utilizing you more because you're so wonderful onstage.

L: Oh, thank you very much.

Absolutely. So do you have a company you work with in New York more?

L: No, I just take jobs...sometimes I audition, still. And sometimes they hire me. And at this time in both Mike and my careers, a lot of the work that comes, comes because of people that we know or getting a call or something like that. But I rely heavily, still, on auditions and meeting new people and doing new projects that way. Mike is much more solid and secure. I think we would say...

M: Solid and secure?

L: I think you solidified, let's say, to use a phrase from the play.

M: I'm a member of the company here.

How long have you been a member?

M: I think I've been a member now 14 seasons...I've done over 50 plays here, and they keep asking me back. What can I say?

Well, for good reason.

M: Thank you.

I want to talk about Other Desert Cities. I noticed that there was a comfortability onstage when you were performing in Other Desert Cities that made me ponder "Is there something going on there?". So do you enjoy getting cast together?

M: Yeah, we've done it ...this is our 8th or 9th play together. We met doing a play at the Cleveland Playhouse around 2000/1999.

What play was it?

M: It was Last Night in Ballyhoo.

L: We were not cast as a couple that time. We were brother-in-law and sister-in-law. But we added a little extra dimension to the relationship.

M: We blushed when we saw each other.

That's so funny. So I have to ask. I added in my review of Other Desert Cities the relationship to the bombings in Boston because I felt it was important and it tied in with the pertinence of the play. So how was that, especially since you were doing the run during that event. How did that affect you?

L: For me, it made it very immediate. It really brought it right up to the very top, the front, and I knew when we were doing those monologues at the end - I don't want to give it away to anyone that hasn't seen it and might still be seeing the play - it made it very pertinent and very clear that the issues involved in the play never go away. I thought that was really interesting when that happened. As it is any time that you're doing a play that is about big issues and then something happens in real life while you're working on it, or while it's being performed, that reverberate and it just shows how really what we do in theatre is not irrelevant. It's extremely relevant and very topical and very live.

I couldn't agree more. When I saw that happen, I immediately thought of the show. I just went through these issues through live experience, and I was like, wow, this is extraordinary.

L: Oh, good. There is actually this other fellow that's playing our son Bif and is also our son in Other Desert Cities and every time we'd go to the 7-11 on the way to the Brooks Towers, there are very marginal types that seem to congregate there. They seem to use that area, that entrance we have into Brooks as an -

M: They're homeless people.

L: They're homeless people and every time we're walking with him he says "Every time I think of this, I think of Henry. I think of Henry." He thinks of the son, and it's something that if you touch it and if you make it real for yourself, it stays with you. I mean, walk on the 16th Street Mall, and it's in front of you It's right there. The problem has not really gone away.

So with your new show, Death of a Salesman, what do you hope people take away from this?

M: Jeez. It's such a wonderfully written play. It was first done in 1949, I believe, and they still want to do this play, which is kind of an odd thing. That classic plays keep wanting to be done. And it's a play about a family. It's a play that, to use Lauren's word, reverberates. Here's a guy who's getting outsourced. He's losing his job, and he's also a little delusional, probably because of it. Not being able to reach his dreams and leave his son with a business. The Great American Dream, you know, to leave your kids better than what you were left with. To always improve. And that's becoming more and more difficult in our time now, I think but it's such a part of the culture then you know, in World War II. Things were just, you got a house and you got a job and you stayed with that job and you got a pension, and these things that we grew up thinking were gonna happen are now changing and different.

L: And, you were rewarded. I think part of the American Dream, is that one is rewarded for hard work and rewarded for effort and that isn't always the case in real life. And so there's a heartbreaking quality there that I think a lot of people in 2013 are walking around with in their heart or in your gut and not talking about because they don't have the luxury of doing a piece of work that explores that, so it has to be kept under wraps. And one has to act as if everything is okay. I feel very honored to be working on this material. It's such an iconic piece and it's such an important piece in American literature, and that sounds very heady, but really -

It's true.

L: But it is true and those that know it know it. But a lot of people aren't really interested - they hear American classic or something and they think "Oh no, it's going to be boring," but I don't think it will be boring because it's so much about the common man.

And the family dynamic and the struggle.

L: Yes. And a friend of mine asked Miller - she happened to be lucky enough to have lunch with him - and she asked him what he thought Death of A Salesman was about and he stopped in his tracks (they were on his property in Connecticut), and he said "It's about a family." And that's all the pontificating and the discussion and the theorizing about all the other esoteric things that it's about. It isn't, really, and when you really boil it down it's just about a family and what happens within that family. And it's a small family. And it's not a dynasty family. It's a common family.

Well, actually, that kind of answered the second question I was going to ask you about how the roles spoke to you personally. That resounded from you, so thank you.

L: I would just like to add that playing a mother - it's the second time in Other Desert Cities - and I was thinking about it this morning, I'm playing a mother in this, also. And mothers are very misunderstood. (laughs) Being a mother is a really interesting journey. Started being very excited about motherhood - oh, I'm going to have a baby, I'm making a baby - and it transforms through the years. And it's really not until we get older that we begin to really see it from that vantage point. Years ago, I saw a Christian statue in The Integral Yoga Institute Bookshop, and it was a Mary figure, and she was holding open her robes and revealing her heart, and there was a knife in it. And it was, in a way, that's part of what motherhood is. There's an enormous amount of sacrifice and pain in letting your children go, and in what children do to parents. So that's just another aspect of it.

Thank you.

L: Something to think about.

So these are a couple of questions from the readers of BroadwayWorld. We already talked about how you met, which everyone was dying to know. What's your favorite production that you've done together? I know you've done a couple together...

L: I think this one, for me. For me, this one is.

M: I would agree that this one has been a really challenging and exciting piece that, to be chosen to do this piece together, to look at Willy and Linda, the Lomans, and to really try to figure out who these people are and their relationship, and their relationship with their kids and all the stuff that goes with this play. I mean, you know every male actor wants to do Willy Loman, and then you finally get chosen to do it and you go "Oh my God. What did I ask for?" (laughs) But I think it's gonna be a piece that's gonna stay with us for a long time, even after we're done performing this piece at the end of October, that it's gonna stay with us a long time.

L: I also read that Miller said somewhere that he never really understood anything that happened to him until a year after it happened. That it takes a period of time to process what you're doing, and I have a feeling that a year from now Mike and I will still be talking about this and saying, "You know, that 's how we should've played that scene." Or "that's the other colors of that."

I do the same thing with writing.

L: Oh yeah? I think it's also interesting for me playing Linda to Mike's Willy because Linda is A VERY OLD fashioned wife. She's an accommodating woman. And I'm not a very accommodating woman. (laughs) I mean, I'm not terrible, but I'm a modern woman who has a great sense of individuality and what my rights are as a person. And I think, in playing that kind of woman with Mike, it's interesting for me because I feel like, it's a little bit what every man's dream is. To have a wife that says "Yes, dear," "No, dear," "Whatever you say, dear."

M: And she has to say it every night.

L: I have to do it! (laughs)

M: That's the way it's written. (laughs)

No ad libbing in Arthur Miller.

M: No, no, you don't wanna do that. You probably can't say it better if you make it up.

So, here's a couple interesting questions I always ask. If you weren't doing theatre, in a different parallel universe, what would you be doing? If there wasn't theatre, what would your job be?

L: If there wasn't theatre? Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I dream.... Life as an actor, in show business, is very sporadic, and very insecure because one never really knows what's coming next and how you have to change your life. Sometimes I think I should have left my dream and become a lawyer. I should have been a veterinarian. I should have done something that was more regular. But I don't know that I actually could. I think maybe we're addicted, even, to the change, the transforming of our lives from time to time, with each project or with each city that we go to.

I call it "the itch."

L: The itch. Uh-huh. Well it's an itch.

M: I think, for me, as I've gotten older - we have a cottage up in the Catskills in the forest, and I've gotten to spend more and more time up there, by myself sometimes, and with our dog up there, walking in the forest, I think I would've been well suited to maybe be something like a forest ranger or something like that. I really kind of like nature and being in it and being surrounded with it and taking care of it and being mindful of it. I find it very spiritual and very rewarding.

Interesting. I always love the responses I get because they're always so varied. One of the actors was actually training to be an Olympic athlete before he really wanted to go into theatre - very interesting. Is there a play or a character that you would be in and play over and over again? Besides this one.

M: I think the play that probably affected my career the most, and a project I was most into, was Grapes of Wrath, when I did it with Steppenwolf in New York on Broadway, and then I did it with two other subsequent productions in regional theatre, one in Cleveland and one here. I just found the journey of the Jodes heading to California and - we were talking about homeless people and that kind of thing - the quality of life that they went through...I could live in that play because I think it really speaks to us, even today.

L: One of my favorite productions that I've ever done was something called Big Love by Charles Mee. And we did it at Actors Theatre of Louisville and then we toured it to several places. We ended it at BAM in New York in the Harvey Theatre. I played dual roles in that, of an old Italian lady who smashed tomatoes on the stage talking about her different sons; each son was a different tomato. And then the other character that I transformed into very quickly was a socialite that talked about the benefits and methods of sex. And I thought that was a brilliant play. I still think it is. It's a hard play to do, but it was just a wonderful piece and I think I could be an aged person and still be doing that because of those two characters. I don't know that that will ever be done again, because it's a very physical play for some of the other actors, and it takes a lot of doing. So that's one of my favorites. And the other that I'd like to have another go at - years ago, on Broadway, I was in the original cast of Lost in Yonkers, and I played the aunt with the speech impediment, and someday - this was back in, I think '91, something like that - I'd like to play Grandma someday. I'd like to play the part that I watched Irene Worth do. And maybe another few years from now - not yet, but almost - that would be another one that I would love to revisit.

Okay, interesting. So I have one last question for you. Actually, a couple. What's next for you after this? Is there another project or anything coming up in the works at all?

M: I'm gonna stay here and be involved in the production of Jackie and Me - the story about Jackie Robinson. It's right after this.

L: Rehearsals even start while we're finishing this.

M: They overlap a little.

L: I'm gonna be very interested to see you do that. I'm going to fly away home back to New York and probably rearrange some furniture in the apartment that we just moved into this past summer. And then a month and a half after that, I'm going to go to Sarasota Florida, to the Asolo Theatre, and I'm going to reprise Polly one more time.

Oh!

L: I figured after learning all those lines, I might as well get a little more out of it. So I'm gonna wring it til it's dry this time.

Will we see you both together onstage again anytime?

M: Who knows?

L: It remains to be seen.

Well, I'm really looking forward to Death of A Salesman, but if Other Desert Cities is any indication, then I'm really excited. It was just wonderful. Thank you so much for answering my questions.

M/L: Thank you.

Arthur Miller's Pulitzer- and Tony-winning drama, DEATH OF A SALESMAN is playing now until October 20th at the Space Theatre of the Denver Center. For tickets or more information, contact the Denver Center box office by calling 303-893-4100 or online at www.denvercenter.org.

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