Interview: Jomar Tagatac of PETER PAN GOES WRONG at San Francisco Playhouse

If you’re a regular Bay Area theatergoer, chances are you’ve seen Jomar Tagatac onstage. A lot. Over the past decade or so, he’s seemed to work constantly and enjoys longstanding relationships with companies throughout the region, including A.C.T. where he currently teaches acting and serves on its Board of Trustees. Initially viewing himself as more of a new play kind of guy, he’s recently been branching out to established classics such as The Glass Menagerie and My Fair Lady at San Francisco Playhouse, and The Cherry Orchard at Marin Theatre. His latest show with San Francisco Playhouse, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, sort of splits the difference since it’s a cockeyed take on a well-known story. It’s also a knockabout comedy that presents its own challenges.

I talked to Tagatac by phone a few days ago while he was in the midst of intensive tech rehearsals, fine-tuning the split-second timing required for slapsick comedy, with the added difficulty of doing that on a turntable set. If that was driving him nuts, he never let on, sounding cheerful and calm throughout our chat. We talked about the play’s unique take on the classic story, what it’s like to be directed by his former co-star Susi Damilano, his pride in forging a thriving career in the theater without decamping to LA or New York, his specific approach to playing classic roles and what he describes as the miracle of theater in these challenging times. I found him to be incredibly warm and thoughtful throughout. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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This show seems not to be your mother’s Peter Pan. How would you describe it?

It definitely is trying to be your mother’s Peter Pan, for sure. That’s the cool part about it. In the simplest terms, it’s about the Cornley Drama Society trying to put together their best version of Peter Pan. That’s the one-sentence version. Of course, with The Play That Goes Wrong series, there’s different things that go wrong, physical things and personality things, but this company of actors does their best to see it through to the end.

What character do you play?

I play Chris, the director of the play, of Peter Pan, and he also plays Hook and Mr. Darling in the actual Peter Pan show. So he’s got a twofer job, both director and an actor in the play. I’m not too familiar with The Play That Goes Wrong, the first play in the series, but it’s mostly the same characters who drop into the Peter Pan Goes Wrong. So they’ve already developed their relationships, and those relationships kind of grow in this play.

The last time I saw you at San Francisco Playhouse, you were playing Tom in The Glass Menagerie. Is it fun to do a flat-out comedy for a change?

Yeah. I’ve done comedies before, but this has an element of farce in there and lots of physical, slapsticky type comedy. Timing is so important for the rhythm of the comedy. This is my first experience in that genre, so it definitely feels like a new experience. But you know at the end of the day, I draw on the same kinds of skills as I did in The Glass Menagerie - like listening skills, communication skills - it’s just the style is a little bit different. [laughs] Or vastly different than Glass Menagerie!

Your director is Susi Damilano, who was your co-star in that play. Audiences are very familiar with her as an actor, but how would you describe her as a director?

My first experience with Susi [as an actor] was Tiny Beautiful Things. That was in 2020, just before we went into stay-at-home COVID mode. But she’s great as a director. She really tries to hone in on the story, and if we identify funny moments she really tries to amp it up as much as possible while still keeping the story intact. But it is a different sort of perspective. Sometimes I’m talking to Susi as if we’re like actor buddies, and we are actor buddies, and then I think “Oh, wait, she’s the director!” There isn’t a shift, but there’s this added layer now, where I ask her like, “What do you think about this?” There’s this different sort of collaboration when you have that actor-director relationship, which is cool.

Earlier this year, you played Yepikhodov in Carrie Perloff’s production of Cherry Orchard, which is a whole different beast. Had you done Chekhov before?

You know, these past couple plays I’ve been in have been firsts for me. My Fair Lady was my first time doing a musical as a professional actor, and then Yepikhodov with Carrie that’s my first time doing Chekhov. I got my MFA at A.C.T. when Carrie was the artistic director, and we studied Chekhov, we studied a whole bunch of the classics. But since graduating in 2005, I had never been part of a Chekhov piece until then, and I had a wonderful time. Carrie loves loves loves Chekhov, she loves that play and really understands it well, she’s kind of a genius that way. I leaned on her to really get the style, the feeling, get as much out of the text as possible, which was great. There was a little bit of physical comedy with Yepikhodov, with the squeaky shoes and falling down the stairs, so maybe that was a bit of a precursor to this play.

You’re one of the actors I think of as part of the Bay Area’s unofficial rep company, in that you seem to work constantly at companies throughout the area. Are you a Bay Area native?

I was born in the Philippines. My dad was military so we came to California when I was 5, but ever since I can remember we had ties to the Bay. My extended family lives in Daly City, so we were always coming up to the Bay to visit them. I grew up in Marysville, which was close to Beale Air Force base, but the Bay always felt familiar to me.

I’m really kind of honored that you said that I’m working around the Bay Area pretty frequently because I love the City so much. I love being a local actor here. I never thought I would be able to make a career in theater in the Bay because back when I was coming out of grad school, the focus was “Are you going to go to LA or are you going to go to New York?” There was no in-between. I just decided to stay in the City, and I feel like I kind of like lucked out. I’ve been here long enough where I’ve developed relationships with a lot of the theater companies and I love it, I just love it.

It seems to me like you work all the time. Does it feel that way to you? Is it ever enough?

[laughs uproariously] You know, that’s why I feel so lucky is that I do have relationships with all these theaters around the Bay and I am working pretty frequently with them, like Playhouse and A.C.T. and when CalShakes was around and all that. At the same time, I feel like it’s a constant hustle. Like I’m constantly chasing it, constantly trying to find the work.

Do you still have to audition every time?

There are times where I will get a direct offer, but also there are times where absolutely I have to audition for roles. So it’s a mix. If it’s a director or a theater company that I’ve worked with pretty frequently, especially if it’s a director, then maybe it’ll be a direct offer or maybe it’ll be a conversation or maybe it’ll be a “come in and read just to make sure” kind of thing.

The Glass Menagerie is maybe my all-time favorite play –

Ah, my first Tennessee Williams piece!

Was that a dream role for you?

You know, it turned out to be. It was one of those things where it’s like we studied the play in school, it’s an obvious classic, and I never thought that I would get the opportunity to play that role. I … never thought it would come my way – I’ll just say it like that. And then when it did come my way, I was like “Oh! That’s interesting. I’ll give it a shot.” The more we rehearsed it, the more we talked about it, the more I got deeper into the language and Tennessee Williams’ story, the more I was like “I’m in love with this play, I’m in love with the writer, I’m in love with the language that he put on the page.”

And now that’s kind of fired me up. Because there are times where I’d thought “Oh, I’m a new play kind of guy.” I like doing new plays, maybe some Shakespeare here and there (I love Shakespeare!) and that’s where I thought I fit into the theater world. But doing that, it fired me up in terms of “I want to look at all these classics and bring my point of view on maybe how the character can be portrayed, a different way on how the character can move through the piece.”

That’s the thing that sort of is rattling in my brain, in terms of classic pieces. I teach acting classes over at A.C.T., and I tell those students pretty frequently that I’m not interested in developing them as the perfect cookie-cutter kind of actor, who knows their beats, knows their objectives. I mean, that’s important, but I’m interested in developing actors who are sort of new to the journey of who they are and how they can bring their own authenticity to a character.

Because more often than not, the fun thing is to be like “I want to get into a character and disappear behind this mask, and be so transformative that you don’t see any part of me.” I think there’s some merit to that, but there’s also something really exciting in an artist being “This is who I am, authentically, and this is how my authenticity fits into the body of this character.”

I do feel like critics and audiences are sometimes too much in thrall to actors who disappear into their roles. For me, that can be thrilling but it’s not the only kind of good acting. When I’ve seen you onstage, you’re able to play very different characters, but your essence always shines through. It’s never like “Wait, that’s Jomar?! I never would have recognized him.”

I think it really has to do with dipping into the storytelling of it all. More and more it becomes clearer to me that whatever size part you have, everyone is an integral part of the storytelling. Like at the end of the day, the storytelling is the most important thing. I want the audience to think about not just the acting and not just the actor playing the character, but also the story and why it resonates with them now, in this particular moment, in this point in time.

You serve on the Board of Trustees at A.C.T. which I would  imagine gives you a different kind of lens into the challenges faced by regional theaters these days. Do you have any thoughts on the current state of things from your perspective as a board member?

Yeah, especially after COVID and trying to bounce back from that, it’s definitely a different landscape. Being on the board, when people ask me about it, I say the thing that is clear to me is that, gosh, it’s almost impossible to make theater. So anytime theater gets made, it’s a miracle. And it takes a whole village to make one production happen, just happen.  Whether it’s a success or not, with the audiences and critically and all that stuff, just getting to opening night is a miracle. With the theater struggling right now, it is really important that we engage more people, engage the city more, and I think theaters here in the Bay Area are trying really hard to do that. There are people smarter than me who are trying to do that.

Circling back to Peter Pan Goes Wrong – the thing that I sort of landed on the first day of rehearsal after reading the play all the way through and getting to know these characters more, is The Play That Goes Wrong series (cause there’s The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong) - you can look at it like “Oh, it’s this slapsticky kind of farce, a comedy of different fails in the theater.” That’s one level to see it at, and that’s great. Buth then there’s also this other level – I might be reaching, but whatever – it’s like this hommage to actors and artists. Because this fictional Drama Society is doing the best that they can. At the end of the day, they want to bring an audience the best version of Peter Pan as possible. And things go wrong, things fail. And even if things fail, they do their best to make it work.

That’s what we as artists are doing all the time. We have a certain set of circumstances, they might not be the best, but we’re gonna make it work. Yeah, this happened, yeah this moment failed but we’re just gonna keep moving forward. And that’s what I hang my hat on. I like to ask this question the first day of rehearsal, “Why do this play now?” and answer that for myself. I think this play is maybe what we need right now, as a collective. You know, things might feel bleak, feel like there’s no hope. But we keep moving forward, we keep striving for the best possible thing, we keep hoping for better, moment to moment to moment.

(production cast photos by Jessica Palopoli)

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