Interview: Jonathan Cake Discusses Upcoming Performance as Thomas Jefferson in MORE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

This Sunday, January 18th, Salon Sanctuary Concerts will present MORE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH at the site-specific historical banquet room at Fraunces Tavern in New York. This will be the third year in a row that the piece, written and directed by Erica Gould, will be performed. Royal Shakespeare Company's Jonathan Cake will assume the role of Thomas Jefferson, and Melissa Errico will reprise her role as Maria Cosway.

Mr. Cake took the time out of his busy schedule to chat about the production and what it's like to portray Thomas Jefferson with BroadwayWorld, just before his first rehearsal. Check out the full interview below!

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How did you first get involved in this project?

Erica Gould just emailed me out of the blue. It's so funny about the world these days that people can somehow get your email and look you up. But I have to say I'm so, so happy she did. I didn't know Erica, but she knew of my work and though I would be a good fit for this project and I'm thrilled.

What can you tell me about the performance itself?

To be honest, you probably know as much as I do. I feel like New York, even more than London, specializes in this kind of performance piece where it's extremely difficult to categorize what it is. It's the readings of these incredibly intimate letters between these two extraordinary people. But it's also an evening with music. There's an orchestra, and they play these songs that Maria Cosway wrote for Jefferson. It's an evening of letters with music coming inside a corner of a great man's life that I think very few people, even some of Jefferson's scholars, knew a lot about.

It's this ravishing, sensual experience because this is like the ultimate love affair...conducted entirely by distance and the shy, tentative medium of the letter. There's something so sexy and heartbreaking about the intimacy you get when you write to someone on a page and the intimacy you get when you know it won't be delivered for weeks or months at a time, unlike modern communications. It's so intimate, but something so straightjacketed about their feelings. I'm so new to it myself, but it seems like such an intoxicating mixture of the intimate and the withheld which as I said is very romantic and sexy.

You're playing Thomas Jefferson. What has that been like?

No one tell you this at theatre school, but if things go okay for you, then people will take you by the hand by locked doors of life and history and show you things you have no idea about. I knew a little bit, but to my shame not nearly enough. But then suddenly you get a chance to work on a piece like this, where obviously, no only do you get to approach his biography again and wonder all over again at his extraordinary, extraordinary achievements and the breadths and depths of his understanding...but you get to peer into these amazingly private recesses and corners of a great man's life.

There's nothing more intimate than these letters...it's a great man submitting everything he did to the world and the scrutiny of history. So I suppose this is entirely understandable that we should be interested in his private life. But there's something about looking over his shoulder while he writes these letters it feels like you're really in a private corner of an unbelievably crowded mind and heart. To have the feelings that he had, when he has so much ranging in his life is sort of extraordinary.

Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a book about Jefferson, said that you could write a short book about Washington and a short book about Lincoln...and it would be difficult to do it, but you could do it. But you just couldn't do it for Jefferson. His life is too crowded. So to find these little moments of space that are devoted entirely to someone else...for example when I sit down to write a long email to friends or loved ones to try and catch up, I always think to myself, this is going to cost me valuable time that I could be spending, you know, watching TV or something. [laughs] So I can't imagine what Jefferson must have put aside in the day to dedicate himself to these enormously long, beautifully written letters. It's very moving.

What has it been like joining this cast, especially because some of the cast members are reprising their roles?

Well, I'll find out in about ten or fifteen minutes because we're about to go to our first rehearsal. I've had the script for a while, but I haven't actually met Melissa yet. But it all feels like speed dating, but that's okay. There's something about this performance because we're only doing it once...maybe I'll get to do it more in the future, I don't really know. There's something about that moment where you're working on something and you don't quite know what it is and it feels new but you haven't grasped it. I actually think that's the most exciting time to do something.

There's this thing called the 24 Hour Plays, and the writers stay up all night and write, and the company comes in the next morning and they rehearse in a day and perform it that evening. It's crazily over-caffeinated and trying just to remember your words is terrifying, but there's something so un-mediated and so instant and so completely present about what happens at the end of it. I have a feeling this might be a little bit like that. But that's good, that feels fun to me.

What does the rest of the weekend look like as far as your rehearsal schedule goes?

I think, because it's such a complicated production with all this music in it, I think we will just be working on the text today, and staging it. Then we'll integrate it with music tomorrow and Sunday, and then we do it.

What do you think the greatest challenge of the abbreviated rehearsal process will be for you?

In a strange way, it feels to me a little bit like a poetry reading. You want to do full justice to the text, but I don't think people are going to sit there, closing their eyes and thinking they're in the presence of Thomas Jefferson. And I think that's okay. When you go to a poetry reading, you want to make people hear the words clearly and with a sense of real freshness. But if you characterize everything too much, you risk forcing the actor between the audience and the text. I think that's a little bit the same here. And I think it's important for people to be able to hear this incredibly private part of Jefferson's mind and heart and not have someone try to do an uncanny impression of him in the meantime. I think we want to present the words and get out of the way.

Have you been in the venue before?

No, I never have! To my shame, I've never been there before. I never knew it even existed. I'm thrilled at the idea of being in there and performing in there and being in the place where Jefferson wrote those actual letters. It's an extraordinary idea. The place must be so full of ghosts. This is what happens to an actor if they get lucky. You can walk through these walked doors and get to experience these things up close, which otherwise you might have completely missed in your life.

Is there anything else you want perspective audiences to know about the performance?

I just feel terribly lucky. This is one of the great Americans, obviously. As a tourist, I feel really privileged to get a chance to say his words. That's a big and wonderful thing that I'll remember for a long time. It's an extraordinary thing to step into those shoes, even if for a very brief time.

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Igniting in Revolutionary Paris and unfolding over a 40-year epistolary relationship, the Jefferson/Cosway correspondence brims with exquisite music and eloquent prose, as the romance between two polymaths, the Statesman-Architect and the Musician-Painter, renders a vivid picture of musical life in 18th century France and America.

The Jefferson/Cosway letters reveal his evolving views on the Separation of Church and State intermingled with her account of a stifling marriage and the limited options open to a woman of brilliance. With an original script composed entirely of selections from their writings, this play with music features repertoire that they heard, composed, played, and sent to each other, including works of Corelli, Hewitt, Sacchini, and Cosway herself.

For tickets, visit: http://www.showclix.com/event/MoreBetweenHeavenandEarth