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Video: Jeremy Pope & Paul Bettany Explain What THE COLLABORATION Is All About
May 17, 2024
Rehearsals are underway for the American premiere of The Collaboration, which will begin previews on Tuesday, November 29 ahead of a Tuesday, December 20 opening at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The company just met the press and they are telling us what the new play is all about in this video!
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Up next at MTC Theater is Anthony McCarton's new play, The Collaboration
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which explores the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michelle Basquiat. Under the direction of Kwame Quay Armour, it begins performances on November 29th
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and will open on December 20th at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, and we drop by the rehearsal room to meet the company, led by Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope
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Well, you're about to make your Broadway debut. How excited are you
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really excited. I'm so excited to bring... It was great doing this in London. I loved it
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and it was well received and the audiences were great but it feels like a
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homecoming for this play. It feels like it's natural habitat. It's a New York story
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about two New York icons and it feels I'm excited to bring it for a bunch of
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New Yorkers to to see it. You're about to return to Broadway
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in the collaboration. How excited are you, Jeremy? I'm so excited. I could
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shout and scream and take this jacket off and do laps. I have been itching to get back to Broadway
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but I knew it had to be the right thing. I will say I was exhausted doing the Ain't Too Proud and Choir Boy
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and it was a blessing, but I was like, my God, that was a marathon of my life. So
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to be back on Broadway with the collaboration, and more importantly, back at MTC
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Samuel J. Freeman, which is where I had my Broadway debut, It just is life affirming and that I'm right where I'm supposed to be
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And I'm so excited to bring it back to, you know, bring this to New York
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Bring it back home, if you will. You were about to come to Broadway with this glorious new play
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How excited are you Scale of 1 to 10 25 I like I so excited It beautiful to be looked after in the way that we are by MTC It really exciting to come to Broadway
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And probably most of all, it's really exciting that Paul and Jeremy will be able to show New York
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what they showed London. What fascinated you the most about these two gentlemen
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When you're writing any kind of work, and certainly when you're, you're doing a biographical portrait, you have to really dream yourself into the lives of these
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people, otherwise you're not doing them justice, you know. So I think I was more aligned with John's
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idea of what art is and what it should be, because he kind of makes almost a quasi-spiritual claim for art
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an almost religious claim for what it can do. And Andy's comparatively seems superficial. He seemed
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to be interested in only surfaces. He had a kind of fatalistic idea about society and where we were at
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and that somehow art should reflect just the surface nature of art
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But I increasingly saw a genius in Andy's method as well, that in reflecting life, it gives another level of commentary
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a more ironic level of commentary. So, yeah, John, who's a visceral artist
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and Andy, who's more of a sort of, aesthetic, intellectual, and putting those two in contrast and having them argue the hell out of
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their positions was what it's about. You know, I think the thing that's made this special for me
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so far is Kwame Kuehama our director is really caring and brilliant and gives us a lot of room to explore and that made it special Some directors aren like that and we a real privilege to be working with somebody like Kwame So when you first read the play what made you say yes I have to do this
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Well, honestly, we did a Zoom reading of it, and I got to watch Paul and Jeremy
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And just on that Zoom reading, I was even, I was in Portugal, I wasn't even in the country
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and I was riveted by their performances. And I thought, if this is what they can do over Zoom, I need to be up close and personal about
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this. I love the role that I'm playing as well. It's a much smaller, more kind of concentrated role
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than I, especially what I'm doing right now in Woods, which is a big, long arc. This is sort of a
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concentrated pow. And I thought that would be an interesting challenge. And I liked the idea of
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being a bit of a palette change for the show. And just being able to work with these icons. So
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icons playing icons. So it just felt like a right fit. Let's talk about these two gentlemen, these incredible actors, or share
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in the stage together. Oh yeah, they're stunning. I mean, the most you can ask of an actor
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is that they get lost in a character and they completely, I think
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bring these two artists, these two much mourned artists. I mean, they're the hippest
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A couple of artists, artistic names in the world today. And they are brought back to life by these two actors
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It's pretty amazing. Sharing the stage with Jeremy Pope is like flying in the dreams
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and sometimes you're tired and sometimes you're doing eight shows a week and
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every moment he walks onto the stage I it all begins in you and it feels like it has its own
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volition and and drive and and every night we play and every night he surprises me and he do some quite outside from him
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playing Baskia up and me playing Warhol he'll just do something as an actor that I go
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God that's so clever and it's thrilling and I want to play back
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you know and so it's a really joyous experience working with him
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What have you enjoyed the most about working on this play? Learning
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Learning about the hearts, the minds, and the spirits of these men
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I won't say that I know them. But what I feel closer to what I think is, their essence
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And we've been on this now for nearly a year. And to think about two characters, almost exclusively for that period of time
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you either begin to loathe them, or you love them more, and I love them more
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Well, I have kind of been away from theatre for about 20 years
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I sort of got delayed and writing novels and working in film
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You don't really have rehearsal rooms in the same way. Some directors do a couple of days rehearsal, but nothing like this
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Because it's a really open-hearted exploration of the material. And for me, I love to find that extra 20% in a work
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And when you've got great actors and great dramaturgical minds, which we do in this case
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we're finding things. We find them every day. And it's just thrilling
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You know, after the pandemic or post-pandemic times now, I was thinking a lot about how badly people need art and music and theater
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And this play provides all of those things. And, you know, it provides it for me too
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And audiences, hopefully
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