VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE

Date of Run: February 1-11, 2018

ROLE: Spike

Photos by unknown

"Michael Hunter’s portrayal of Spike was an interesting mix of boyish charm and slyness that created a mysterious quality that was perfect for Spike. We are not sure what, (or if), he is thinking. His impromptu strip teases prior to exercising and posing his physique was hilarious."
Dan Monez, Napa Valley Register, February 7, 2018.

I went through all of 2017 without doing a single show. Part of it was my doing, part of it was my work commitments and part of it was due to forces beyond my control. I was ready to call it quits on acting for some time. I decided that I would stop, go off and do something else, like study at the junior college for an alternate career, and come back later. And then I got something.

This one was a role I never thought I’d play. The only other time that happened was when I played Bob Cratchit four years earlier, but for that role I at least had time to wait until I was the right age for the part. For this one I was at the end of the age range for the character and the role also had to be for someone physically fit and preferably muscular. While I do exercise and work out at the gym about five days a week, I hardly consider myself buff.

I saw a Facebook post for this show, but I did not think much of it, not wanting to do a long commute and the fact that there was only one weekend of performances didn’t help matters. Then a short while later they reposted saying they were looking to fill two of the roles, one of which was for the role of Spike, which was in my age range. While I never thought I'd play this role due to not quite being the right body type, I realized that the chance to play this role would probably never come again for me. So, after a little reflection, I decided to take a chance. I contacted them expressing my interest.

After sending in my resume and headshot, one of the two directors of the show, Carla Spindt, asked to meet me in Napa. Meeting at a coffee shop, we had a brief discussion after which, she offered me the role on the spot. I wonder now whether anyone else applied for the part when I did. Rehearsals began two days later.

I was familiar with the play, having heard of it, and it was one of those plays, out of hundreds in existence, that you could find in the small drama section of a Barnes and Noble store. However, I had never given much thought to this one since there were only two roles for men, one for a middle-aged man and one for a late twenties fit, muscular type. It never entered in my head to have a look at it. If it ever did, then certainly not for a long time anyway until I could plat the older male role.

Does that happen to any of you fellow actors reading this? The roles we think we’ll never play are sometimes the ones we do end up playing after all?

The other five people in the cast were Paul Cotton, June Reif, Randi Storm, Linda Howard and Courtney South.

Cast, left to right: Paul, June, Me, Linda, Randi and Courtney

Rehearsals took place at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, ten miles north of Napa. I had previously avoided doing shows in Napa mainly due to the cost of commuting from there to where I live, it being a 45-minute drive. The rehearsals alternated between a board room on the second floor or in the theater space itself. When I first walked onto that stage, I was completely in awe of it. The two largest theaters I had worked in before were the Napa Valley College and the Spreckels Theater in Rohnert Park, but neither were as big as this one. Or at least not as high up. However, since this play was not what you could call a big play, so the seating would be confined to the first seven rows of the middle orchestra section; that's what we started with anyway. As we inched closer to the run, the sales did very well, and they added more rows of seats for sale.

The schedule of rehearsals was roughly two or three rehearsals a week for two months for three performances. The long rehearsal schedule was due to the fact that we didn't have a rehearsal space, other than the theater and we had to share it with any event already scheduled to take place. The first month was devoted to staging the general blocking and then the second month was dedicated to fine tuning and polishing. We were given some free rein to do what we felt to be right, with some suggestions by the directors. A few rehearsals took place in a meeting room upstairs, but most of the rehearsals took place on the stage.

After the first week back from vacation, Carla left to do a show in San Francisco and Lu Kenmouth took over the responsibilities of directing.  However, Carla did return for Monday rehearsals.

At first, I was disappointed about the length of the run of the show. Only three performances after about a month and a half of rehearsal doesn't seem like a good deal. Then not long before we opened, we found that, thanks to some of the cast, we were able to do a second weekend of three shows at the Mira Theater in Vallejo. Whoo!

The script calls for my character to take his clothes off to his underwear. I had no problem with actually doing that, but I waited a while to go through with it for two reasons. The first was that it was cold in that theater. Not only was the show going to run in winter, but the heat was not turned on in the main stage area. It was warm everywhere else, like the hallway next to the stage and all the other rooms, the dressing room, the green room, you name it, but not the stage itself. During rehearsals I started planning on whether I should have a robe or a sweater or something waiting for me when I left the stage in my underwear. The other reason was that I was not too thrilled about my body right away. I was worried about how I'd look because my character is supposed to be toned and muscular, but while I have some muscle, there are some things I'll never have, like six pack abs. I did work out a lot prior to shows and did my best to bulk up.

My confidence did grow somewhat over my body after looking up photos of past productions. Some previous Spikes were body building types, but some I saw were thin with hardly any muscle tone at all. I thought if thin people lacking big muscles could do this role, then so could I.

Even onstage I did exercises since Spike is always active and moving, even when not speaking. I often did stretches, crunches, push-ups, a little yoga and some walking lunges (that one always got big laughs). Offstage I had a pair of twenty-pound weights that I used for biceps and triceps exercises before each show. I also had to do some poses to show off my physique. To do that I studied old Arnold Schwarzenegger photos for inspiration. I also had to do a reverse strip tease onstage, meaning a strip tease, but putting my clothes on instead of taking them off. For that I watched the movie Magic Mike for ideas.

The Reverse Strip Tease

I thought this show would be my first onstage kiss, but that didn't turn out to be the case. I was very nervous about any moment of passion I had onstage with Linda, who played Masha. The script calls for Masha and Spike to kiss passionately and in the original Broadway production in those moments, he grabbed her, lifted her up, she wrapped her legs around him, he fondled her boobs, etc. But with numerous sexual harassment allegations rising up in the country with the MeToo movement I was afraid if I made one wrong move then that would happen to me. If she and I had known each other before and if she were an actress who wasn’t afraid to be touchy feely, then it might have been different.

The biggest headache for me on the show (and it literally gave me a headache) was the costuming. I had to supply a few costume pieces myself. Not completely unreasonable because I had an idea of what to look for and how Spike would dress and I also had a couple things that might have worked, but the costume mistress was hopeless. I'm not sure she understood the characters or the script fully nor did I think she had an understanding of how certain kinds of people would dress. We had some shirts decided on, but then one Monday when Carla returned, and I had started wearing my costume pieces she said they were all wrong. Which meant I had to go out and look again. Looking back, I'm not sure either of them had a sense of how young men dress.

I searched every Target, Kohl's, Goodwill, thrift store, designer store (i.e. Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Old Navy and Gap), that I could find, sometimes twice, but it was hard, and I usually found nothing. You name it, I looked there. I was hesitant to spend any money on items, not because the company wouldn't reimburse me, but because I might end up with what they were asking for and it was not something I'd ever want to wear again. Eventually I found a pair of bright red running shorts in Goodwill and in a Tommy Hilfiger store I found the one pair of bright reddish pants my size on the clearance rack, about three days before we opened.

I did agree that bright colorful things that would pop were something that Spike would wear, but the problem was that men just don't wear bright colors. In most stores I went to the men's clothes were all rather muted colors. Anything I saw that was bright was either a pair of shorts (I needed long pants) or not my size. They were also vague on what exactly they wanted for a shirt. I had so many questions about what they wanted: What color(s) did they want for my shirts and pants? Did they want a polo shirt? T-Shirt? Collared, button down shirt? Couldn't I wear shorts in the final scene? (They allowed that one). I felt they were obsessing a lot over having the color red on me. They wanted red pants, red underwear, and red shorts. In the end I got to wear two of my own shirts, though I had to wear a hideous orange shirt for the last scene. I could probably forgive the color, but it was not a form fitting shirt like my character would have worn. I wasn't thrilled with the underwear they gave me. They wanted them to be red; the closest they got was maroon and boxer briefs. I would've preferred to wear my trunks from Calvin Klein since I feel an L.A. actor would wear designer brands, not to mention the trunks would've shown off my thighs much better, among other things (wink, wink).

It wasn't until long after the show ended, of course, that I finally began seeing clothing items that would've worked perfectly, especially pants that weren't bland or dark colors.

There was one thing I had to order online because no store had it. Though most of a fairy tale Prince Charming costume was provided, I also had to look for a pair of sky-blue tights for the prince costume. The first pair I ordered was cheap, but completely see through. None of us could have imagined what use anyone would have for a pair of see-through tights. The next pair I order were compression pants that came from Korea. They were a different shade of blue that how they looked on the internet, but they worked just fine. Thank goodness that was over with. When my coworkers came to the show, they weren't fooled into thinking they were tights and could clearly see they were compression pants.



Prince Charming costume

The other problem was my hair. By the time the show came I was in desperate need of a haircut. I really wanted the sides to be trimmed at the very least. However, as community actors know, you can't change your appearance during a show commitment. No one said anything to me about what they wanted. Two weeks before opening, Carla said she wished they could give me highlights or something. I said I really wanted to fix my hair. When Carla asked if Sandra said anything to me about my hair, I said that she said nothing. I wish she had said something a couple weeks earlier, but it was too late to do anything by then since the person who did my hair couldn't see me until toward the end of February. I tried to fix it by styling my hair, trying five different products so that my hair would have shape, but not become hard like a helmet. It looked fine, but it required a lot of maintenance during the show to keep it looking stylish.

After two months of waiting the run finally began. Everyone but me was all but begging for another week of rehearsals. Every performance the first weekend had a good, sizeable crowd. Saturday was the largest by far, but all three performances had at least one hundred in attendance. On the Friday show I had a large group of people from my work come. They all couldn't wait to see me in my underwear. Unfortunately, with the exception of the writer for the Napa newspaper, none of my friends in the theatre community came to see the show.



The production was not without mishaps like missed lines and sections and costume problems. For example, June's sequin dress in the second scene kept getting tangled in itself. At one performance, while I was taking off my shirt, I felt my earring come off. I heard it hit the floor, but there was nothing I could do about it since I had to leave the stage right then. When I come back on a few minutes later, I was supposed to end up in the proximity of where it came off. I did see the front part, but not the back. I worried it might have fallen off somewhere else. After the show I went onstage looking and, thankfully, I spotted it. The same thing happened again a week later at the same place in the show, though the back of the earring stayed on my ear, and I had to hold it in my fist since the shorts I was wearing had no pockets. June spotted the other part on the floor and grabbed it.

When the second weekend came, we went from the very nice big Lincoln Theater to the Mira Theater in Vallejo. It was much, much smaller (only 140 seats) and, I hate to say, had an air of neglect about it. It was a sad looking space that was freezing, both upstairs and even more so in the green room downstairs. It came complete with a musty smell. When we moved into the theater, we had to make adjustments to the set due to the tighter size and had one rehearsal on that day to figure out how we'd move on the stage.



The Two Theaters. Top: The Lincoln, Bottom: The Mira

The wing space in this theater was tight and the stage was much smaller. For entrances when people arrive at the house in the play, we first decided to have the entrances be from the audience instead, but we realized very quickly that that was not going to work. There was no way we could sneak around the audience unseen since all the doors backstage were boarded shut. We decided that we'd have to make the tight squeeze on stage right to use the front door, which also meant moving the stairs over a few inches and moving a giant ladder offstage right over to the other side. Thankfully no one ever got hurt in the tight space by tripping or bumping into the steps. Courtney, however, had to go up front and hang out in the lobby and try to be inconspicuous before each show since her first entrance was and had always been through the audience.

For each performance we had somewhere between thirty and fifty people and probably more than fifty for the final show. We all thought the final audience was the best because they all seemed to be laughing at the right moments. Previous audiences laughed (especially during the second act after they had something to drink), but they didn't laugh at all the funny parts.

In all, I felt this was a successful run. It was the first good theatre experience I had had in some time after a string of disappointments. I will say that Spike will be forever one of the best roles that I ever played. Now all I had to do was wait about two or three decades before I could play Vanya.

Seven months after the run ended, I found out I was nominated for an Arty Award, a theatre award for Napa and Solano counties. Mine was one of eight nominations for our show. The others were for June for Set Design, Courtney for Supporting Actress, June and Linda for Best Actress, Paul for Best Actor, Carla and Lu for Best Director and Best Comedy Production. I could not attend the ceremony since I was appearing in a show in Santa Rosa that day and the ceremony was over in Fairfield. It wasn't until the next day when I found that I won, as well as Paul for his category, Carla and Lu for directing and to top it off we got Best Production. I had never been nominated for any acting award prior to this, but this was definitely icing on the cake.