[I like to post
articles on Rick On Theater that
define, describe, or explain the efforts of theater workers about whom most
non-theater people (whom one of my teachers dubbed “civilians”) know little—or even
nothing at all. On 14 January 2014, I
posted “Stage Hands,” a description of the work of stage managers and dance
captains; in “Two (Back) Stage Pros” (30 June 2014), I ran articles that profiled set designer Eugene Lee and wig-designer
Paul Huntley; on 28 November 2015, I posted “Broadway’s Anonymous Stars,” an
article about actors who replace original stars on stage. How many
theatergoers know how an actor who waits in the wings to go for an actor who
has an accident or gets sick works? This
is the lot of the usually-unsung understudy or stand-by. Now you get the chance to meet one of these
theater pros and hear how he plies his trade.
[The interview
below originally aired on One on One with Steve Adubato on WNET (Ch. 13, PBS, New York City) on
4 June 2018 (and was rebroadcast on 17 August
2018). One-on-One, a news and public affairs program, discusses real-life stories and
features political leaders, CEO’s, television personalities, professors,
artists, and educational innovators who share their experiences and
accomplishments. (The program airs at
12:30 a.m. weekday mornings. One on
One also airs on WLIW on Long Island and
on WNJN and other New Jersey Public
Television stations.)]
Hi, I’m
Steve Adubato. This is One on One. And this gentleman you’re about to see on
camera is a very talented young man doing all kinds of things on Broadway, Tony
Carlin, veteran of Broadway, Professional Understudy. By the way, how many plays are we talking?
CARLIN: I . . . this is my 27th play that we
just opened . . . 27th Broadway play.
ADUBATO: And the name of it is?
CARLIN: Saint
Joan,
with Condola Rashad, by George Bernard Shaw, at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
ADUBATO: Has he done much?
CARLIN: [Laughter.] George Bernard . . .?
ADUBATO: I’m sorry! [Laughter.]
CARLIN: I worry about him.
ADUBATO: Really?
CARLIN: He doesn’t work enough. Yeah.
ADUBATO: That is part of the problem?
CARLIN: True, yeah.
ADUBATO: By the way, the whole understudy thing
. . . as I was getting ready for the show, I’m like, “Okay, so Tony
understudies. He’s an understudy for one actor, one role.” Not the case?
CARLIN: If only. In this play, I understudy three actors, who
themselves play six characters. So I’m a dead soldier . . . .
ADUBATO: What are you right there?
CARLIN: What am I . . .?
ADUBATO: What are you right there, on that
monitor?
CARLIN: Ha! That is my ensemble. I am a French soldier. Well, the janitor French soldier. That’s backstage.
ADUBATO: Oh, I just wanted to make . . . .
CARLIN: That’s me with a mop bucket!
ADUBATO: . . . sure that’s not a part of the
set! [Laughter.]
CARLIN: [Laughter.]
ADUBATO: [Laughter.] So that’s just a piece of a . . .? So I don’t understand . . . . I seriously . . . . I actually don’t . . . . I’m doing one show, one role, this is me. You’ve got six . . .? You have three actors? Six roles? How do you have that in your head?
CARLIN: Right.
Well, I have a head like that.
ADUBATO: [Laughter.]
CARLIN: Compartmentalization. I have to be in the play six different ways in
my head. I have to prepare that I am in that play. The thing is... and you know, I . . . there was a great thing in the news that may
explain the feeling of going on as an understudy. And it was the Chicago Blackhawks . . .
ADUBATO: Hmm.
CARLIN: . . . had their third-string . . . .
ADUBATO: Why are you going into hockey here?
CARLIN: Well they had their . . .
ADUBATO: Go ahead. Go ahead.
CARLIN: . . . third-string emergency goalie go
on . . . as an understudy, he’s an accountant, a guy named. . . I think it’s . .
. [Scott Foster, 36; he stepped on the ice in a 29 March 2018 game against
the Winnipeg Jets at Chicago’s United Center.]
ADUBATO: What do you mean he was an accountant?
[Laughter.]
CARLIN: He was an accountant. They got down to their third-string and he
went on, for a game, and he made, like, 27 saves. [Actually, Foster made 7 saves—every shot he
faced.]
ADUBATO: Because he had to?
CARLIN: Because he had to. That’s the thing.
ADUBATO: And is that your mindset?
CARLIN: Yes.
ADUBATO: I may have to?
CARLIN: Yeah.
ADUBATO: Do you . . . do you always know when
you are going to have to go on?
CARLIN: No. No. I
have had a week to prepare sometimes, but I’m kind of the one who doesn’t get
the call until, like, half an hour . . . 20 minutes before.
ADUBATO: And they say?
CARLIN: And they say, “You’re on.” And that’s the thing . . . is people say, “Don’t
you just get nervous?”
ADUBATO: Or scared?
CARLIN: And there is not enough time to get
nervous. Because I’m wearing the costume
for the first time. The costumers are messing with my costume for the first
time. They’re . . . if there’s a mic, the sound people are doing the mic. So there is no time.
ADUBATO: Where is your head?
CARLIN: My head is in the play, and going over
each of the lines. I have a particular way
of preparing to be able to be in the play without rehearsal. Like an actor . . . a show is prepared from
rehearsal hall and we get to have fake props and spend four weeks . . . . I don’t have that time so I have to create
that in my head. So I make a recording
of the play by myself doing the other people’s lines so that when I’m home,
wherever I am, I can do the play and so that those lines will come out regardless
of where I am . . .
ADUBATO: Hmm . . . .
CARLIN: . . . or who I’m talking to.
ADUBATO: So let’s try this. Give me an example of who you were an
understudy for and I’ll show you where I’m going with this. Name some . . . .
CARLIN: Alec Baldwin.
ADUBATO: : Okay. Oh that guy?
Talk about talent . . . .
CARLIN: Where is he now? And where is his career? Yeah.
ADUBATO: He’s just . . . too bad things haven’t
worked out. So you’re an understudy for .
. . in?
CARLIN: In a play called Entertaining Mr. Sloane [by Joe Orton; Off-Broadway revival; Roundabout
Theatre Company, 2006].
ADUBATO: Got it. So Alec Baldwin is there doing Entertaining Mr. Sloane, you’re the
understudy. You have to go on. Is the play different because you are playing
that role as opposed to Mr. Baldwin?
CARLIN: It is. I would like to think that the
audience is excited to see a new actor assaying the role, but the the fact is
that people go to see Alec Baldwin and so . . . .
ADUBATO: Are you aware of that?
CARLIN: I’m not aware of it. I would like to not be aware of it, there was
. . . .
ADUBATO: No no, those are two different things,
you would like not to be, but are you?
CARLIN: I’m not really aware of it unless
there’s a huge groan when I am announced instead of Alec Baldwin which there
wasn’t when we went on, so I’m golden. But
it was funny that Alec Baldwin is a big guy—possibly we are the same height.
ADUBATO: No he’s heavier than you
CARLIN: But he’s a big guy.
ADUBATO: He’s big and beefy
CARLIN: He was telling me how to do a physical
thing, and I was just like . . . “Oh . .
. Oh . . . Okay!”
ADUBATO: [Laughter.]
CARLIN: “Yeah!” Not emotion behind it. He’s just a big guy, and so . . . .
ADUBATO: Does that help?
CARLIN: What . . .
ADUBATO: Or do you say, “I have my . . . I have
a certain body type, you have yours”? You
. . .? Do you . . .?
CARLIN: Oh, it’s great to go to the horse’s
mouth for a physical piece of business. Umm . . . . To know where he might have worked out how to
put his hands how to, you know do all of that little stuff, the . . . In the play, I remember watching it over and
over again, and watching him, and in the play he sort of . . . he tries to get next
to this kind of pretty boy in . . . it’s in England in the ’60s . . . pretty
boy who’s played by a model, I forget his name [Chris Carmack, actor and former
fashion model], and he was standing there next to him and really lording it over
him, and when I got there under the lights, with the audience, I realized I was
nowhere near lording it over that . . . this model that I was standing next to,
that he towered over. I was the little
guy and so it does change things where I’ve thought “oh I have to play it
slightly different, because . . . .”
ADUBATO: It changes the play?
CARLIN: It changes the play a little, yes.
ADUBATO: A little?
CARLIN: Yeah.
ADUBATO: But the other thing . . . . I’m fascinated, before I let you out of here .
. . . Your family? Mom? Dad?
CARLIN: Yeah.
ADUBATO: In the business?
CARLIN: Yeah.
ADUBATO: You said five siblings?
CARLIN: Five siblings.
ADUBATO: All, one time or another, acting?
CARLIN: Yeah, yeah.
ADUBATO: Because?
CARLIN: I guess it’s in the blood—not because
my parents made it look pretty, but we, at certain . . . .
ADUBATO: What are we looking at? I’m sorry, what are we looking . . . . I’m sorry for interrupting . . . What is
that?
CARLIN: Oh that was . . . .
ADUBATO: Is that Outward Bound?
CARLIN: That is Outward Bound
ADUBATO: Georgette, what’s the year? 1940? [Georgette Timoney, booker and segment producer for One on One.]
CARLIN: It . . . .
ADUBATO: ‘54? 1954? Is
that p. . .? That’s not . . .?
CARLIN: That is my father and my mother. That’s Frances Sternhagen and Tom Carlin
ADUBATO: Oh, that’s them right there?
CARLIN: Yeah.
ADUBATO: Playing together?
CARLIN: Yes, and that’s her a little older
with me at an opening night of a play that I was in
ADUBATO: What was it like for you growing up in
that family?
CARLIN: It was . . . it was great.
ADUBATO: Tell us about your dad. But go ahead . . . .
CARLIN: Yeah, yeah.
ADUBATO: Your late dad, go ahead . . . .
CARLIN: Yeah. The thing that was great is with that picture
of my dad . . . he was an Irish storyteller and I remember, you know, breakfast
time where he would be talking about the moment in a play that makes it really
watchable and I thought, “Oh wow, this is breakfast, this . . . .” You know . . . where he . . . . You could see the tears in his eyes and you’d
think, “Oh right, okay, this is . . .. They
understand what I do.”
ADUBATO: That’s beautiful
CARLIN: You know, and I understood what they
did.
ADUBATO: I gotta tell you something. I’ve interviewed a fair number of people over
the last several . . . couple decades. You have just . . . I’ve never heard anyone
with a story like yours. I’ve never really
understood what someone who is an understudy does and you just helped a lot of people
understand just a little bit more about an extraordinary art form and I want to
thank you for joining us.
CARLIN: Thanks, Steve.
ADUBATO: Well done. Stay right there. This is one on one with simply fascinating
people. We’ll be right back after this.
[The transcription
of this interview was posted line by line with minimal punctuation and all in
caps (https://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/captions/one-on-one/3b351317-6389-4c7e-8415-31c923416134/captions/A5ZQiF_caption.srt).
In coordination with the WNET
video (https://steveadubato.org/the-unique-experience-of-a-professional-broadway-understudy.html), I’ve added or adjusted the typescript
as well as I could to make the text readable.
I’ve tried to reflect as accurately as I can the conversation as it
aired on the broadcast.
[Some of Tony
Catlin’s appearances (Playbill lists 72) on the New York stage include The Heidi Chronicles on Broadway in 1989-90, the 1998
Off-Broadway revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s Once in a
Lifetime by the Atlantic Theater Company;
the Broadway première of Mamma Mia! in
2001-15, the 2006 Public Theater production of Stuff Happens, the Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House in 2006, the 2006-09 Broadway musical Spring
Awakening, and the 2014 LBJ bio play All
The Way in which he understudied 9
prominent American politicians (and one White House staffer). The Manhattan Theatre Club production of
Shaw’s Saint Joan opened at the Samuel
J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway in April 2018 and ran until June. Carlin, son of Thomas A. Carlin (1928-92) and Frances
Sternhagen, has also appeared in the
television soap opera Search for Tomorrow and numerous other TV productions.]
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