Photo: Kelley Curran and Frank Wood star in “The Meeting: The Interpreter.” Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided courtesy of Candi Adams PR.
As national news focuses on the upcoming presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the United States and its voters are witnessing the dramas, setbacks, triumphs and reshuffles of this monumental campaign on an almost daily basis. One could be forgiven for forgetting the many chapters in Trump’s book and the momentous events that have unfolded since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower nearly a decade ago and announced his first run for president.
The meeting: The interpretera new play by Catherine Gropper, directed by Brian Mertes, uses an infamous meeting at Trump Tower in 2016 as a backdrop to explore this unique moment in American history. According to press reports, Gropper created this play after her chance encounter with a real government interpreter, and that conversation inspired her to write. The result of her creative efforts is now being performed at the Theater at St. Clement’s in Midtown Manhattan.
The lead role in the show is played by Tony Award winner Frank Wood, known for his stage roles in Side Man, Network And Angels in America. He is supported by Kelley Curran, who can be seen in The Gilded Age on HBO; her stage appearances include everything from Demigod of Rain To Mother of the Maid starring Glenn Close. Press notes indicate that despite the two-person performance, the cast and creative team managed to use the art of multimedia, recorded film and puppetry to represent many more characters on stage.
“It’s beautifully multimedia and beautifully conceived by Brian Mertes and Catherine Gropper,” Wood said in a recent phone interview. “The staging of the play has been expanded around the core of her contact with this interpreter, so that it is now expressed in a stage performance and a (recorded) film. When you put those things side by side and have them interact, it creates a very interesting tension about what the truth is.”
When Wood received the script and was considering whether to join the project, he had to speak to the creatives to fully understand the dramatic meaning of the piece. It is a unique theatrical experiment that required some context and explanation.
“I really needed to talk to Brian to understand how much the way the story was told would affect the content of the story,” he said. “I got a really strong sense of the inner lives of people who are subjected to a lot of press, a lot of rumors, gossip, innuendo and accusations. I definitely got that sense when I read the play. How it would be performed and how dramatic it would be, I didn’t understand immediately.”
To better understand the characters, Wood did what he’s done his entire career: He dove into the text. He started trying out lines of dialogue to see what would come across naturally, and then when he encountered question marks, he approached the creative team and asked for an explanation.
“You kind of fall into holes,” he said of his acting process. “You’re walking on solid ground, understanding the language and the circumstances and what’s affecting you. This guy is an interpreter, so he’s talking about his job as an interpreter, what his job means to him. And those things sink in because they seem like solid information. I approach it by saying, ‘Yeah, I can understand that.’ Then there are places where he talks about things that don’t fit all that, so you have to ask questions. That’s always true with a text.”
Wood is an ever-committed actor who wants to bring the director’s vision to life, so he followed Mertes’ every request. The actor stood on stage during rehearsals, listening to the director tell him what to play in a particular scene, and then added his own unique interpretations.
“The other day (Mertes) said, ‘You’re going to peel this piece of plastic off this glass, and you’re going to do it as quietly as possible. But you have to get to the microphone in time and say these lines.’ And as I was peeling the plastic off, I realized I wasn’t going to make it in time, so I kept stopping the plastic, going to the microphone, speaking and then going back and continuing to pull the plastic. That’s an example of how I learned to understand who my character is, how I understand the conflicts,” he said.
Much of the puppet work in the show is captured on film and then broadcast in the theater. Wood has respect for this theatrical art form, but is grateful that more puppet work is not performed in real time. He had to laugh at his skills in this particular part of the show.
“We spent a lot of time handling the puppets, and it was very funny to people watching us how bad we are,” Wood said, laughing. “And that was part of the narrative, that we’re not natural puppeteers, but slowly that’s boiled down to the best possible way of storytelling, which is as little interaction with the puppets as possible. The puppets are so beautiful in their detail that the shots of them and our mistreatment of them tell a lot about the story, so we rely on the puppeteer Julian (Crouch).”
Wood said he follows political news — he listens avidly to NPR — but he had to recall the details of that Trump Tower meeting to better place himself in the recent past. For him, the power of the play lies less in the political consequences it depicts and more in the humanity (or lack thereof) of the characters portrayed on stage.
“It’s about grabbing people’s attention by saying it’s about politics, about a historical event and a possible crime, and then using that to question what we really know about ourselves and each other,” Wood said. “If it’s about holding ourselves accountable, what control do we really have over events? It’s much more about whether you remember that time and who was guilty and what they did and how we all got lost in the mess or anything. It’s more about the soul. We’re looking at ourselves through the anatomy of two people’s interactions with that time.”
By John Soltes / Editor / [email protected]
“The Meeting: The Interpreter,” starring Frank Wood and Kelley Curran, runs through August 24 at the Theater at St. Clement’s in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
