Wily West Productions
Visit our Facebook page!
  • Home
  • Tickets
  • About Us
  • The Company
  • Submissions
  • Press Room
  • Auditions
  • Mailing List
  • Gallery
  • Past Productions
    • Season 2017
    • Season 2015
    • I Saw It 2015
    • Season 2014
    • Zero Hour 2015
    • Un-Hinged 2014
    • Drowning Kate 2014
    • 2013 Productions
    • 2012 Productions
    • 2011 Productions
    • 2010 Productions
    • 2009 Productions
    • 2008 Productions
  • Wily Westings Blog

Rick Homan - Playing a House Painter...

9/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Buy Tickets!
Picture
I have a personal history with house painting.

One summer, when I was in high school, my father saved me the trouble of getting a summer job by offering to pay me to paint the exterior of the family home. Of course, he had to teach me things like how to move a ladder, prepare a surface, apply caulking, which brush to use, and so on. So, I got both pocket money and an education.

The latter came in handy when I was finishing graduate school, and needed some income until my first teaching job started in the fall. I got hired by an outfit called College Painters, and spent the summer painting big, old houses in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

These experiences have served me well in rehearsing the role of the house painter, because he paints the house on stage during some scenes. It would be difficult to make all those physical actions believable if one had not actually done them. 

I had to smile when I read the speech in which Glen, the painter, explains why his wife will not let him paint their own house. My wife and I have owned four houses in our forty years together, and I have not painted any of them. However, that was my decision. I thought that if we had the money to buy a house, I would gladly pay professionals to do the difficult and demanding work of exterior painting.

Rick Homan will be creating the role of Glenn in our world premiere production of Krista Knight's play UN-HINGED.   In 2006, Rick and his wife Ann moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia where they lived for twenty-one years. There he acted with the Arden Theater Company, Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival among other companies. He was a professor of theater arts for thirty years.

Rick's Thoughts on Glenn 

When I first looked at the role of Glen in Un­Hinged by Krista Knight, it reminded me of the time I understudied Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Both roles are demanding: always on stage, lots of lines to learn, etc. But, as I have studied the Glen and Un­Hinged, I have come to see there are more profound similarities between this new play and Arthur Miller’s masterpiece.

Miller calls “Salesman” a “memory play.” Similarly, Un­Hinged has three, parallel time­frames: scenes in the 1960’s, scenes in the 1980’s and Glen’s monologues which seem to occur in a never­ending present tense. So, it may seem to the audience that everything which happens is simultaneously being remembered by Glen. Since this is the first production of this play, we are about to find out!

Miller gives his characters everyday language, but he sometimes tricks the ear of the audience with an unlikely word choice, as when Charley says, “A salesman is got to dream.” We would expect “has got to dream,” but for a moment we also marvel at what a salesman at is. Krista Knight sprinkles the same sort of vernacular poetry throughout Un­Hinged.

Willy Loman believes that if a man is “well­liked” he will be “loved and helped and remembered.” Of course, that is not true, and that is his downfall, but he makes us wish it were true. Glen also has a belief which guides everything he does, and which results in tragic failure. But, as Charley says of Willy Loman at the end of “Salesman,” “No one dast blame this man.”

The role of Glen looks better everytime I look at it; and I look at it every day. The playwright and Wily West have made me the first actor to play this amazing role in this great play. I am forever grateful to them. 


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Wily Westings
    Production Blog

    Our production blog features a dynamic blend of the the professional and the personal.  An original "web cocktail" infusing business and behind-the-scenes snap shots with first hand detail about the energy, commitment and perseverance to develop truly independent world premiere plays in San Francisco!

    Archives

    March 2019
    July 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    31 Years Of Marriage
    Actors
    Alina Trowbridge
    Arsenic And Old Lace
    Boa
    Brady Brophy Hilton
    Brian Martin
    Bridgette Dutta Portman
    Cast
    Celebration
    Chekov
    Director
    Ella Zalon
    Ellen Chesnut
    Ensemble
    Executive Producer
    Gay Community
    Ghosts
    Halloween
    Ignacio Zulueta
    Janice Wright
    Jeffrey Orth
    Jennifer Lynne Roberts
    Jim Norrena
    Joan Crawford
    Kat Bushnell
    Kat Kneisel
    Kcbs
    Kirk Shimano
    Laylah Muran
    Lighting Designer
    Morgan Ludlow
    New Plays
    Philip Goleman
    Playwright
    Producing Director
    Quinn Whitaker
    Rod Mcfadden
    Ryan Hayes
    Scott Ragle
    Sheherezade
    Sketches
    Stuart Bousel
    Susan Jackson
    The Exorcist
    Un-Hinged
    Vonn Scott Bair
    Wesley Cayabyab
    Willy Loman
    Writer

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.