CHICAGO — Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney has returned to the theater to direct a play called “Another Marriage,” opening later this month.
“At the outset, it could be interpreted as a play about meeting someone, getting married, having children and then a betrayal of that trust,” said Kinney. “But it takes a turn, and the turn is really about women being in the orbit of men in this world and how hard that is to escape. How gaining agency and status is something that a woman has to decide to do outside of the orbit of men. We think the second act is going to simply answer the questions of the first — what’s going to happen now? — but it actually takes another route and we watch this woman create her own universe.”
On-screen, Kinney’s career began with a guest role on “Miami Vice” and his credits since have included the HBO prison drama “Oz,” “Devil in a Blue Dress,” “Fly Away Home,” “The Mentalist,” and more recently “Billions” and “Inventing Anna.”
Though he started as a theater actor, Kinney works primarily in TV and film these days. There’s a reason for that. “My worst moment is the moment that took me off of the stage forever.”
My worst moment …
“I always was a nervous actor. Not nervous to perform so much as nearly OCD about being precise. The idea of making a mistake live, of saying the wrong word, of something happening is horrifying for most actors. And for me, it was untenable.
“The first time I was really scared about being an actor, I was working at Northlight Theatre in ‘81 or ‘82. The artistic director was doing a production of ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ We had done it previously at Steppenwolf and I played the gentleman caller, a role that I’m quite right for. Well, they wanted me to play Tom Wingfield (the play’s protagonist) in the Northlight production and I just couldn’t turn down that challenge. And, uh, we … I would say we were terrible (laughs).
“I remember (Tribune theater critic) Richard Christiansen giving me a great review and I said, how’s that possible? I was upset to get a great review because I thought: I am wrong for this and the direction of it is not good.
“About a week after we opened, Lenny Kleinfeld wrote a long and scathing review in the Chicago Reader, so I put it up on my mirror as a kind of self-immolation (laughs). And I remember it said: ‘Terry Kinney plays the role of Tom like Reggie Jackson at the plate, letting all the good lines go by and swinging wildly at the ones in the dirt.’ (Laughs) I just thought that was brilliant.
“So I was not happy doing the play.
“And something must have told my body: Stop. Because about two weeks into the run, I was on the balcony at the beginning of the second act and I got about one line out and my voice cracked and then disappeared. I mean, not a trace of it. It was as if I was struck by a higher power to shut the hell up (laughs).
“I tried to squeak out some words and people started laughing. I’m trying to get some level of voice out, but I cannot do it. Finally, I manage a harsh whisper, like an inaudible Tom Waits.
“I’m sweating through my clothes. And I don’t know whether it was fear or the flu that developed suddenly on this evening. Probably a combination. I just remember thinking: I’m sunk. The play is sunk. We probably should stop.
“I ended up that night in bed with a 103-degree fever. That flu felled me for the next two weeks.
“That, coupled with the 1997 production of ‘Buried Child’ — which is definitely the worst thing that ever happened, where I basically passed out and did a monologue lying down — is why I don’t act on stage anymore.
“Here’s the ‘Buried Child’ story: We were on Broadway and I played this guy who had a dead baby. And (in real life) I had a 6-month-old baby. My wife at the time was in San Francisco with the baby, so I was without them, but I had the dogs. On two-show days, I would ride my bike home furiously to walk and feed the dogs. So this was a two-show day. It was about 100 degrees outside. I get back and drank a venti Starbucks to get ready for the second show. No food. And I go on.
“First act, no problem. Second act starts, and on this particular night, with my blood sugar plummeting, what happened was, I had this grim, existential angst: What are we doing here? And all of a sudden my peripheral vision was gone.
“Have you ever blacked out and been fully awake? That’s what happened. Now I’m blind and I’m about to walk downstage to a pool of light to do a fairly lengthy monologue. Instead, I stand up and I know I’m going to fall and I just kind of find my way to the floor. I’m bathed in sweat. And I hear my cue! So I just did my monologue from the floor. And there’s a pool of light downstage with nobody in it (laughs).
“This is a Sam Shepard play, so the audience is probably thinking anything can happen. There’s a lot of weirdness in that play!
“Eventually, I finished the scene. And I come off and I’m like, ‘I should have eaten. My god, that was weird.’
“But there’s one more scene I have to do and that’s carry the dead baby on stage. And to do that, I get into a tub of mud backstage and I put it all over myself, as if I’ve been down in the mud digging. So I do that and I’m waiting backstage. And the stage manager points at me like ‘Go!’ and I took a step toward the stage and it was as if I was walking into the heat of a blazing fire and I just went: Nope. No. And I looked at her and she said, ‘Go!’ And I said, ‘No. I can’t.’ And she gently pushed me out on stage. And that was the most frightened I’ve ever been in my life. I thought I was going to die.
“We had about a week left in the run and every day I wasn’t sure if I could do it. The understudy would even get into costume. I did end up finishing the run but I was so happy when it was over. Shaved the beard off. Got out of the head space. Went to San Francisco where my wife and kid were.
“And I have never set foot on stage as an actor again.”
How is it different on a TV or film set?
“When you’re on a movie set, it’s as if a vacuum cleaner is pulling your art from you all day. The camera is sort of pulling it from you. And you go home and lay down exhausted. It’s a little bit like a factory.
Early in my career, I thought cameras were intimidating. They’re right in your face and there’s artifice to it. But that’s not true; a camera can read your mind if you think the right thoughts. So there’s an art to that, too.
“The upside of being in front of an audience on stage is it’s more like a party and it revitalizes something in you. And it did all that for me.
“But after a while, my introversion became a very big issue. I’m not a public speaker. I stuttered as a child. All of this stuff kind of accumulated to where I said: That’s enough. I’ve done so many intense things, I’ve done so much dark material, I’m done. And it was OK. I haven’t had the experience of watching my colleagues on stage be brilliant and felt some sort of envy. I only feel like: “I’m glad you’re the one doing it! (laughs)”
The takeaway …
“I think that fear is one thing that makes people go into acting. But I’ve found it is one of the most useless things to be plagued by. If you can rid yourself of fear, then you can accomplish a lot.
“I think knowing that the stage is not something that I crave, I didn’t want to poke that bear again. But in all other aspects, I’ve tried to shed it. And it was that experience in New York especially that led me to go to a therapist and talk about it and reveal it fully, so it wasn’t a shameful thing anymore.”
