The Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey has been flying under the radar for the past two weeks, slipping into the UAE to coach 34 lucky students at the Sharjah Institute of Theatrical Arts culminating in a play that will be staged to a packed house Sunday night. The performance of Hassan Abdulrazzak's Dhow Under the Sun marked the end of the workshop in which the Kevin Spacey Foundation and META, the Middle East Theatre Academy, had collaborated. Over the weekend, before the curtain rose, the 55-year-old theatre veteran sat down for a rare interview, exclusive to The National, where he shared his passion for mentoring young actors – and explained why he isn't a fan of the softly-softly approach.
How did your friendship with Emirati entrepreneur Badr Jafar, the founder of META, come about?
We met many years ago and have had some incredible conversations, experiences and travels together. I think he’s an incredibly dedicated, generous person and great fun. I’ve always had a particular interest in this region - all the changes happening here - and I’ve done workshops and trips to Abu Dhabi, Dubai Qatar, Beirut and beyond. So Badr and I decided a number of years back to develop a way of ‘bringing work here’ and ‘inspiring work here’. This is the first big project we’ve done between META and the Kevin Spacey Foundation.
What have you made of the talent pool from your workshops?
Pretty impressive, the group is unique, exciting and diverse. With a lot of the workshops I’ve done – like in Doha – as the time for me to do the workshops drew closer I kept hearing from the organisers, “don’t expect any women”. And I kept asking “why?” When I walked into the workshop room, 13 out of 28 were women and I was like “hmmm”. So, when I was asked to do a workshop in Abu Dhabi, I said yes but the entire workshop had to be women or I wouldn’t come. It happened and it was a remarkable, extraordinary day with groups of women from two universities who presented Shakespeare in Arabic and English. We touched upon taboos and resistance to some degree, and one of the exciting things is that you can often say and do things artistically that you can’t politically.
You set up your foundation in 2010 with the mission statement of ‘sending the elevator back down’. How much further has it got to go and how will you keep ‘giving back’?
Well the great thing is that we’re beginning to encourage other people to set up their own elevators, because ours is very crowded. I’m a product of this kind of thing and when I began as an actor I was involved in lots of workshops. I got to work with professional actors and at 13 years of age – very much like the students here – I got to do a workshop with Jack Lemmon, my idol. He had this wonderful philosophy -which I only learned about when we later became colleagues and he became a mentor and father figure - he believed you should ‘always send the elevator back down’. I think to some degree because Jack Lemmon was also born in an elevator. It’s an extraordinary feeling to be able to look into the eyes of some kids I work with and see the nickel drop – see the moment when they make a recognition either about the piece they are working on or about themselves. Suddenly you see their self-esteem rise, they have a better sense of themselves and I think all that goes into making for a better society, whether the kids go into the arts or not.
Elizabeth Smith, your teacher at the Juilliard drama school once said to you: “I’m hard on you because I think you’re talented.” Do you have a similar tough-love approach with your students?
Yes, in rehearsals I was very tough on a bunch of them. Because in some cases, there may not be a clear understanding of what your behaviour should be like when you’re on stage and when you walk off stage. It’s the basics, understanding that you have to ‘own’ that space, that your voice must reach across and grab the audience’s attention – you must pull that focus. If all the work you’ve been doing has been very intimate and focused on ‘method’, it won’t work. So I was putting the students through their paces, teaching them not to apologise for being up on the stage and teaching them to carve out their words. I’m tough on people who can easily fall into habits because they don’t have the discipline of a four-year programme for example and I’m asking them to reach the pitch required of a professional. I was very tough on them but they all seemed to enjoy it very much and I try to do it with a certain degree of humour.
What have been some of the most memorable moments from the past two weeks?
There have been a couple of moments where some students have really just ‘popped out’. I’ve said to some of them “do it again and do it completely differently” then they’ll ask my how? I say “you decide!”. Then they’ll go behind a curtain and come out with something hilarious. That person has guts. When someone is unafraid it’s spectacular what they can come up with.
Will it be harder or easier for these students to break into the world acting that it was in your day?
I think it’s very exciting what’s happening at the moment. The entertainment business has been very successful at building walls around itself. It used to be that you couldn’t get in unless you had an agent or you were in New York or London and beating down doors. That’s not true anymore, the internet has removed the barriers to entry; you can create a Youtube following, create your own content, build a website. It’s incredibly important that the industry pay attention to that and it’s up to us to make these new emerging talents feel welcome.
We last saw you tread the boards in Doha as Richard III three years ago, any plans to perform in the region again soon?
No, not at the moment. I’m quite busy doing a television show (laughs).
Would you consider a stint with a theatre here, following more than 10 years as artistic director of the Old Vic in London?
Absolutely not. I’ll never run a theatre again. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but 11 years was enough. It’s a massive amount of work, not least in fundraising terms. We didn’t get any public subsidies so had to raise all the money on our own. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, but what I set out to do was to make sure it continues long after I’m gone and the fact that Mathew Warchus, who is a brilliant director, has signed on for 6 seasons is exactly what I hoped for.
You’re love of comedy is well-documented, any funny roles in the pipeline or one that’s evaded you thus far?
I’m not really the kind of actor who covets parts or dreams about roles. I generally find myself drawn towards things because a director wants me to do them or sees me in a role I’ve never seen myself in.
So which director are you keen to work with?
Martin Scorsese. Oh, and I actually wrote to Woody Allen and he wrote me back which was pretty cool. He’s now seriously considering me for some stuff, which is really cool. I just wrote to introduce myself, in case he didn’t know who I was, in case he’d never heard of me.
When might we see you again in the UAE?
I’m here quite often just not publicly. I’m in a lot of places where people don’t know I am. I don’t like to announce that I’m coming and I don’t do a lot of interviews, but I’m always about.
artslife@thenational.ae
