Talking about Talk Radio: Stephanie March & Peter Hermann

In Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, much of the story– and the audience's attention– is focused downstage on Liev Schreiber playing shock jock Barry Champlain as he criticizes, analyzes, and inspires his listeners. But upstage, behind the large glass windows of the radio station's sound booth, there is just as much drama as there is on the air. A full station crew listens to the intense broadcast that dominates the show, and their reactions to what they hear provide an emotional backdrop to Champlain's diatribes. Two members of that staff are played by Stephanie March and Peter Hermann, both late of Law and Order: SVU and other New York and regional theatre. The two actors create their characters with very little of Bogosian's dialogue, instead using one of the most challenging aspects of acting: reacting.

"The play is like a fast-moving train," March says after a matinee performance. "The minute it leaves the station, it just goes, and you have to really pay attention to where it is, or you lose your thread. So at all moments, if I'm not paying attention to who's calling or what's going on, then I'm not doing my job. If my job is to be one of the producers of the show, then I have to be really active in that."

Hermann echoes her sentiment, and muses that much of their work comes down to basic dramatic training. "You know the character, you know the circumstances, you know what's at stake, and you watch to see how what this person is doing– and in this case, this coked-up, drunk, egotistical, megalomaniacal, incredibly intelligent, profoundly damaged, very frightened, dysfunctional person is doing– to affect what you have at stake." He acknowledges, however, that there is a certain amount of freedom in performing a semi-pantomime upstage. "If you took the windows away and heard us, we're all back there playing the scene," he says, but adds that much of the upstage work is improvised. "It's loosely set so we know where it's going, but it all just rises out of the circumstances."

A play about a radio broadcast is somewhat ironic: the radio audience cannot see Barry Champlain, and can only focus on his voice. The theatre audience cannot hear the upstage staff in the sound booth, and can only focus on their faces and gestures. In the middle, balancing the worlds, is Schreiber as Champlain, pushing the drama for both the real and imagined audiences, and his staff behind the glass. "Here we have some thousand-odd people watching to see how it's going to turn out, and we're standing [upstage] looking at the same event, wondering how it's going to turn out," Hermann muses. "So the way it's physically arranged is an interesting dynamic, that from the back, you have people watching, and from the front, you have people watching. It seems so observed in a medium in which this character is never seen [by his audience]! And here he is, totally on display."

Both March and Hermann give high credit to Liev Schreiber for being the focal point and fulcrum of the play. Hermann describes Talk Radio as an ensemble piece but acknowledging that Schreiber carries the show. "His work is a combination of very intelligent and incredibly instinctual," he says, and praises his co-worker for being "not only incredibly committed to his own performance but also to the way that all the instruments play together." March agrees: "Liev is such a machine; he puts out such a great show every night, and it's our job to listen and pay attention. Otherwise, what we do doesn't make sense."

Like Schreiber, March is returning to the stage after earning fame on screen– in her case, as ADA Alexandra Cabot on Law and Order and the short-lived Conviction. She first came to attention a year after graduating from Northwestern University, in the 1999 revival of Death of a Salesman with Brian Dennehy. Talk Radio is her first Broadway show since then. "It's been a long time since I've been on stage," she admits. "I thought I would be really, really, really wildly out of practice, that there'd be muscles I hadn't used in a long time. And there are: certain things with the voice, obviously, are different, and being aware at all times that it's a large house that's looking at you, not a small camera... But I think I'm a much more conscientious performer than I used to be; you get better as you get older, hopefully." She is glad for the opportunity to return to the stage after making her name on television. "Film and television is a camera's medium, and stage is an actor's medium," she says. "I feel like I have interactions with all the people onstage. To me, it's a more fully realized experience."

Likewise, Hermann expresses great affection for his craft, and the work that goes into bringing an exciting evening of drama to audiences night after night. "I think that's one of the most exciting things about being an actor, because you get to have really fun problems," he says, and goes on to describe working out the small details of stagework as a banker solving financial puzzles. "I love those problems!" he says happily "You solve them as best as you can for the good of the show under the given circumstances, and you might solve them one night and say, 'Aha! That's it!' And the next night, it totally falls flat, and you have to go back to the drawing board. It's a wonderful place to endeavor not to live in solutions, and it's a fun place to be, in that you are in this communal endeavor to do that. You're out on the ice with other people whose hearts are invested in the same thing."

Ultimately, in solving the puzzles of Talk Radio, March and Hermann play a major part in connecting the audience to the human drama onstage. "We get it in front of the house," Hermann says, "and all of a sudden, the audience is with it, they're alive, they're on the ride with you. It's been a real gift to hear that."