Q&A: Steven David Martin talks about theater

Steven David Martin enjoyed a long and successful theatrical career, acting in and directing productions across the country and overseas. He also taught at the junior college and university levels before embracing his passion for writing. Martin works extensively with the Raven Theater and Cloverdale Performing Arts Center. He lives in Healdsburg with his family, two dogs, four fish, a chinchilla and cat. His day job is Creative Practitioner at Firefly Creative Company. His new column, “Backstage,” debuts next week in this section.
Why do you think theater is important to the community?
A lot of reasons. One, it reinforces that very idea of community. It’s a place where people gather to hear, see and feel a story well told. They get to experience that story together and, while each person will have his or her unique response to it, it’s an important way to connect to friends, neighbors and strangers, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. Theatre is also a wonderful outlet for an eclectic array of people who leave their daytime identities behind (banker, teacher, realtor, psychic, chiropractor) to act in, direct, design, work backstage or front of house in their local theatre. It opens new worlds, ideas and writers to us.
Live theatre has the capacity to make us think, laugh, cry, question, explore and just feel on a level that’s just not possible with TV or movies. Or even those cute cat-playing piano videos on YouTube. Once we stop expressing ourselves creatively and sharing that with others, then we lose more and more of those connections that are already slipping away.
In an era of increasing isolation and self-absorption, theatre provides a gathering place for equal opportunity entertainment. And there’s something refreshing about not being able to instantly post a performance or tweet a soliloquy. Theatre demands you stay in the moment and experience that moment in all its fullness. You don’t get the chance to pause it, rewind it or Photoshop the life out of it. Theatre celebrates our plethora of human contradictions and wonderful imperfections.
What is your most memorable on-stage personal experience?
Two come to mind. One: The first time I acted on stage. It was in high school. I played one of the leads on a play called My Three Angels. It was amazing. There were 300 people out there and they were actually laughing at things I said. It seemed so much fun and so easy. I was hooked, of course. It was only later when I had the chance to realize just how many things could go wrong on any given night that I ever started experiencing nerves before a performance.
Two: I was fortunate enough to play Hamlet many moons ago. We toured seven states in the Southeast doing 44 shows in 36 cities in eight weeks. I have never before or since felt the same gut-wrenching combination of terror, joy, paralyzing fear and extraordinary exhilaration on stage.
I couldn’t wait to do the show no matter if we were in a high school theatre in Starkville, Mississippi or at a 19th century opera house in Savannah, Georgia. I can honestly say, while I loved every minute of performing Hamlet, I never felt I nailed it. I got close a few times, but it’s such a great big unwieldy role I don’t know if you ever master it. Hamlet demands you to be on your toes every second on and off stage, at the top of your game physically, intellectually and, most importantly, emotionally, without the luxury of your mind wandering even for a nano-second. Plus, many people forget that he’s a pretty funny guy. When he’s not contemplating suicide, driving his girlfriend insane or killing his uncle, of course. To put it simply, it was the most fun I have ever had doing a play.
Who or what inspires you?
Great writing. Fearless artists. People who explore new angles, who are never satisfied, who are not afraid to fail. People who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. Honesty, humility, graciousness. Artists with a sense of humor, and a sense of perspective. People with sharp, not cruel, wits. Those who are truly individuals – John Lennon, Daniel Day-Lewis and that William Shakespeare guy come to mind.
What is your favorite line of dialogue?
Off the top of my head, three:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Our pal Hamlet
“Don’t you see? We’re actors – we’re the opposite of people!” The Player, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard.
“Half of art is knowing when to stop.” Arthur William Radford. Not a quote from a play, but I love it.
For someone who’s not a theater-goer,
why should they give it a try?
Well, first and foremost, it’s fun. It’s the only truly life-sized dramatic experience. Movies are bigger than life, TV is smaller (unless you own a huge flat screen) but theatre is real people in real scale telling a story in real time. As a bonus there’s always a chance something will go terribly wrong. Someone will drop a line, an actor will miss an entrance, a costume will come unzipped, the stage will fall apart. I think some of the fascination with live theatre is knowing that anything could happen at anytime. There’s no editing out mistakes, no doing a scene over, and no overbearing musical score telling us how we should be feeling every second.
Plus, at heart, we are all storytellers, and great listeners, when the story is a good one. And going to the theatre gets us back to our primeval roots – sitting in the dark with a group of people, listening to a story being shared, experiencing it at the exact time as everyone else in the theatre, the audience and actors alike. It’s the original interactive entertainment, authentic 3D and you don’t even need special glasses.
And the audience is the most critical part of the experience. You need to be there! You get to affect the performance, unlike movies, TV or videos. Your laughter (or lack thereof), your silence, your gasps, your applause, they are all heard and felt by the actors on the stage and it informs, guides and drives each individual performance. Unlike most other media, which are passive experiences no matter how well done, theatre engages you with flesh and blood actors only a few feet away. And the great thing as an actor is, although you’ll be saying the same words (hopefully) night after night, each performance will be a unique experience because of the greatest variable of all —the audience.