News Round Up – Articles, Interviews & The Minutes
- on January 17th, 2018
- in Billy News , WPAP Site Updates •
Happy New Year everyone.
Below is a round up of William Petersen news for the last few weeks. Click on the links below to read the full articles.
Some very sad news, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Billy’s co-star from TO LIVE & DIE IN LA, Darlanne Fluegel sadly passed away on December 15th, 2017. Our thoughts are with her family during this sad time.
Source : The Chicago Tribune – My worst moment: William Petersen and a ‘legendary moment in Chicago theater history’
Pensive and firm, if begrudgingly patient, the small town mayor played by William Petersen in “The Minutes,” Tracy Letts’ new play at the Steppenwolf (through Jan. 7), keeps all the danger of the play’s final moments just under the surface. He presides over a city council meeting gone awry, as homespun inanities are eventually peeled back to reveal something ugly and sinister at America’s core.
“I live mostly in LA but I have a place here too,” Petersen said. “I try and come back and forth. My wife and I are both from here.” Though he wasn’t part of the original group that founded Steppenwolf, he said, “I’ve known everyone here forever. I met them when they were still up in Highland Park. I started a theater company called The Remains around the same time and we were like sister companies. We all came up together. So I’ve known them for 40 years.”
About 10 years ago he officially joined Steppenwolf as an ensemble member, around the same time he bowed out at the CBS series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” where had starred as Gil Grissom.
“There’s a whole lot of people who got a boost in their careers from ‘CSI’ because it spawned all these other shows that hired a whole lot of people. That’s what I’m proudest of, how many people got jobs over the course of 10 or 15 years. But I had been stuck on that TV show forever and I couldn’t do any theater,” Petersen said.
“In fact, one of the reasons I stopped doing the show is because I was afraid I wouldn’t do theater anymore — if you go away from something for that long, I knew a lot of guys that got frightened of going back. So when I made the decision to stop doing the TV show, (ensemble member) Amy Morton and (then-artistic director) Martha Lavey asked me if I wouldn’t just as soon join the company. Anyway, it’s been great. The majority of people that I care about and have worked with all my life are at Steppenwolf.”
Another old friend from Chicago is Joe Mantegna, who stars on “Criminal Minds,” yet another CBS procedural. “The guy’s never gonna get off that thing,” Petersen said, “and I tease him about it constantly: ‘Are you just going to die on that show? Literally?’”
Together they went through hell and back during an opening night performance of “Glengarry Glen Ross” at the Goodman Theatre. Or as Petersen put it: “I was a part of what is considered a legendary moment in Chicago theater history.”
My worst moment …
“It was the opening night of the American premiere of ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ at the old Goodman studio at the Art Institute. This was 1984 and it was on its way to New York, it was going to Broadway.
“My character’s name I believe was James Lingk, and he’s the guy who gets sold the bill of goods in the play. It’s all these salesmen with their real estate listings and I get suckered in and they take my money. So I’m with Joey Mantegna, who’s playing Ricky Roma (the slickest of the story’s salesmen). There’s three scenes in the first act and they all take place in a Chinese restaurant in different booths.
“Joey’s character and my character are sitting having a drink at this restaurant and he’s just telling me all these stories. And after he’s shooting (the breeze) for, I don’t know how long, he pulls out a map of Florida and says, ‘Listen, I got an opportunity that you might be really interested in,’ and that’s the end of the first act.
“So we start rehearsing the thing and David (Mamet) is there and (then-Goodman artistic director) Greg Mosher was directing it. And Joey’s off book the first day of rehearsal on this big scene. I have nothing in the scene; if you look at the text of the play, I have — in Mamet fashion — a couple of: ‘uh-huh,’ ‘yeah,’ ‘oh?’ Literally my responses to Ricky’s spiel. It’s basically a monologue for him. And Joey knows this thing really well, right from the beginning. And I think what happened was, we over-rehearsed it. Or over-rehearsed him in it. Because he didn’t need it. He didn’t need any rehearsal after the first day. It was like, ‘OK, just open — he’s ready.’
“Opening night comes — all the critics are in the audience, by the way — and we do the first two scenes. There are blackouts between each one as we switch booths. Lights come up for the last scene and Joey starts in and he gets about four sentences into this six-page monologue and — we call it ‘going up’ in the theater when an actor loses his lines, and I never really understood why we called it ‘going up’ until it happened.
“I mean, I’ve lost lines in plays too. Every night there’s a line dropped somewhere or stumbled over. But Joey actually — I saw it in his eyes. I saw him sort of do that little twitch in the eyes and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s checked out for a minute.’ And then he mumbled something and then I saw his eyes go back. And then I saw his eyes go up. They literally went up. And he left the theater — he was still sitting there, but his soul was, like, over Grant Park.
“It was the scariest. And I’m sitting there with a fake gimlet and I start looking around for the waiter, I might have even said, ‘Where’s the waiter?’ — there was no waiter — and I start throwing out a couple of, ‘And then …?’ But I couldn’t help him! I figured, he’ll get back to it, he knows this backwards and forwards. But then he just sort of left his body.
“And once I realized he was clearly lost, I sort of clutched the table going, ‘Oh, make this is a dream and not a reality.’
“The assistant stage manager was sent down and he was just off stage, saying the lines for Joey (trying to prompt him). The whole audience could hear the guy because it was a 125-seat theater!
“I knew exactly what line he needed to say. I probably just should have said it. But I think Joey wasn’t hearing anything at that point. So finally Joey just pulled out the map and skipped over the whole song-and-dance, so it was truncated, needless to say. But once he did that, we were OK: ‘Florida, let me tell you about Florida …’ It was the only prop we had and the only thing he could latch back onto. And he had to at least do that portion so we could end the scene.
“My heart was breaking. It was also pounding my throat because I was also watching this like, ‘Oh my God, what the hell?’ The scene ended, the act ended, and we had to walk to our dressing rooms and Joey’s just in shock. And I’m like, ‘Aw Joey, it’s all right, man. I don’t think anybody noticed.’ I had no idea what to say to him!”
The aftermath …
“We get up to our dressing room, which we shared, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, we just ruined David Mamet’s play!’ And Lindsay Crouse, David’s wife at the time, came bursting into the dressing room, grabbed Joey and said, ‘You are going to be so magnificent from here on! You’re going to be great in the second act, don’t worry about it. It’s the theater, go out there and have the time of your life. And know that you’re going to go to New York and win the Tony for best actor.’
“I was so impressed with her. She shook him out of it. I was worthless: ‘Joey, I think it’s fine!’ But Lindsay came in and literally put him back inside his body, which I will always credit her for that.
“And she was right. He ended up winning the Tony. But that night, he went back out in the second act and it was the quickest second act we ever had, because he was determined to get every line out as fast as he could.
“I kind of hate telling this story because poor Joey’s heard it a million times. But it’s legendary because of course the critics mentioned it, in the kindest possible way.
“Joey doesn’t like to talk about it and nobody likes to hear it — no actors want me to tell them the story. As soon as it’s brought up, if I say, ‘Do you want to hear about it?’ they say, ‘No, no, no.’ It’s superstition or something. It’s the nightmare that all actors have and it’s all happened to us at various times where you go, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know where I am.’
“But that’s easily, not only my worst night in the theater, but many other people’s worst night — including the poor audience that I think wanted to go up and give him a group hug!”
The takeaway …
“Stay in your body? Try not to go to another astral plane when you’re onstage?
“I know now what I would have done. I would have just started talking about the Cubs, that’s what I should have done: ‘How ’bout those Cubs?’ But I was a young actor then and I had never experienced this before.
“We haven’t talk about it much. I mean, I see Joey all the time. And it’s not like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about that night, shall we?’ It’s just bad karma. I hope Joey doesn’t care (pauses) — oh, he won’t care, and (shoot), we’re so old, it doesn’t matter. And it all worked out great. Joey did win the Tony in New York for Ricky Roma.
“It happened to me a couple weeks ago and you try and piece yourself back together, there’s no real trick. You just have to relax. When I have issues in this show it’s because the guys are doing stuff that’s very, very funny — and sometimes they do it in a different way than they did it before and it’s even funnier or more stupid or whatever. This play Tracy has written is a real test for an ensemble of actors, because there’s 10 of us onstage for 90 minutes — it’s like a 90-minute scene with 10 people in it. Nobody leaves.
“So you have to keep your mind so on and your ear so attuned to what people are saying, because there are times when you drop out for three or four or in some cases six pages, and then you come back with a line and it has to be right on cue.”
The Minutes Updates
The Minutes wrapped up at Steppenwolf Theatre on January 7th, and the show move to Broadway has been delayed, however it was never 100% confirmed if Billy would be appearing in the Broadway version.
Source : The Chicago Tribune – A Play About Politics For (But Not About) The Age Of Trump
William Petersen starred in the hit TV show CSI for over a decade. He’s also a Chicago-area native, and a Steppenwolf ensemble member. He first performed with the company more than 35 years ago. He plays the mayor in The Minutes.
“I felt that it had meaning and impact,” Petersen says. “And it was entertaining, and it allowed ourselves to look at ourselves in — in a different way than we have been over the last 12 months.”
It’s Petersen’s character, the mayor, who ultimately allows the truth to come out: What happened to the missing council member Mr. Carp, and why. The answer involves community complicity in a creation myth — one that hides how the town was really founded, and on whose backs.
Source : Playbill – Tracy Letts’ The Minutes Delays Arrival on Broadway
Tracy Letts’ new political comedy The Minutes, now playing Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has delayed its arrival on Broadway, according to a spokesperson for Steppenwolf. The play was set to transfer to a yet-to-be-announced theatre on Broadway in spring 2018 following its world premiere in Chicago.
The Steppenwolf Theatre production of The Minutes officially opened November 19. Performances began in Chicago November 9 and are currently selling through January 7, 2018. Broadway previews had been scheduled to begin February 6, 2018, with an opening night set for March 8.
No new dates have been announced.
Site Redesign
Thank you for all the positive comments we received from our Instagram stories showing some of our site redesign. The general layout is complete, but we continue to work behind the scenes consolidating pages and preparing other areas of the site. The main focus at the moment is focusing on a better way to display our video files.
A couple of changes we have already made, consolidating our CSI Screencaps so you can download an entire season in one zip file and incorporating our old archive pages into our existing archive setup. We have also managed to salvage our 2002 archives and will be adding these shortly.
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