Alone with a Cast of Thousands

It was in a shared dressing room that I first met Phil Johnson during an actors' festival. These one-ring circus's bring out the giddiness in actors and occasionally a generosity. Mr. Johnson displayed both. While listening to his work via intercom, it was obvious he drew from a deep well of technique and impeccable comic timing. Where actors played one piece, he ambitiously played two pieces both of which he co-wrote. The audience was putty in his hands. 


Now in his adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles he mashes-up Victoriana and mayhem playing all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters. Here is a glimpse of Mr. Johnson's monomaniacal creativity.

TV: How did you end up in San Diego?

PH: I was doing a lot of touring shows and on the road, Les Miz in New York, Miss Saigon, Sunset Blvd., and I came to know that I really wanted to do comedy, not that I didn't love those shows all about “dead people and guns,” but I wanted the cheap tasteless theatrics of LA comedy. I did a lot of sketch comedy with a great place there, ACME Comedy Theatre. I was there for three years. So, LA was where I started first and I began splitting the time between here and there. Steve Gunderson's replacement in Forever Plaid was my first job here.

Don't Dress for Dinner, NCR

When did you know you wanted to become an actor?

Yikes. Maybe when I started making puppet shows out of refrigerator boxes, last year. No! That's when I was seven, I think. I learned so much from the great old 30's & 40's black and white movies they used to show when I got home from school and TV shows: Carol Burnett, Flip Wilson, remember him?

“The devil mad me do it.”

Sonny and Cher--all those great comics from those days-- those great lines, Burnett as Scarlet wearing the drapes, “I saw it in the window and I just had to have it.”

What took you to the next discipline of writing sketch comedy and playwriting?

My days at ACME Comedy Theatre taught me a lot about what works in comedy, how to write fast. I started doing a one-man show that I debuted at Actors Art Theatre in LA with my great acting teacher Jolene Adams. It was, strangely enough, about a singer/ actor who was auditioning for the latest mega-musical, but with a crazed maniac at the helm, loosely based on Nicolas Hytner, our director on Saigon. He was fascinating. I wanted to do shows that were loose and conversational and there weren't many I liked, so I had to write (them).

The Hound of Baskerville, NCR

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote during Queen Victoria's reign as did Dickens. Do you see a similarity in their work?

There was this wonderful morbid fascination with death and freak shows at the time, those wonderfully suppressed people did the most amusing act-out things! There was something called memento mori, I believe photographs were fairly new then, and people would photograph pictures of themselves with newly dead loved ones, really. They would make these little vignettes, with the live people, like the dead people weren't even dead; like painting their eyelids, or sticking their arms and hands up with pins. Fun. Sometimes it was the only a photo people had taken of themselves. Brrrrr.

Doyle wrote over 50 short stories. Why Hound Of The Baskervilles?

It's probably the most popular, everyone has a recollection of it. It's common to a lot of people. You can't imagine the different things people have done to the story over the years! It's an adventure story- I love that about it.

Doyle practiced Spiritualism. Does the metaphysical figure into Hound?

Yes! The MGM movie with (Basil) Rathbone added a séance that isn't in the book, and people loved it so much, it's been in every version since then. This was another of those weird wonderful Victorian delights, séances. It's a big climax for me in my play. It heightens the anxiety so well! People love to be scared. Strange, isn't it?

Sounds intriguing. Do you have superstitions when in the theatre? Ever see a theatre ghost?

Not really. My insane friend Eileen Bowman seems to see ghosts coming out of every broom closet in theatres, but I have not joined that particular club. I don't say the “M word” though. Should I?

Little Shop of Horrors, Cygnet Theatre

The other side of Phil may ask you dispel the curse; exit the dressing room and turn around three times. You received a $15,700 San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst Grant for Hound. Congratulations. Was the competition tough? What was your response on hearing the news?

I was overjoyed. It was wonderful to have that support for something you think is good and someone else does as well- that's the best. I've always wanted to be able to write a one-man show that was elegant and well-produced and could

tour. This is a very big dream of mine and that's what this is. I believe the competition was quite tough. I couldn't believe what prestigious organizations didn't get picked and I did. Does that mean a mistake (was made) somewhere?

How did your collaboration with your director Cynthia Stokes come about?

We had worked together on a very funny comedy Mike Sears and I wrote a few years back called Nemesis, and we were lucky enough to get this big S.D. Opera director, Cynthia. It was a real laugh-riot, the funniest thing I've ever worked on.

She suggested the project to me at that time and I didn't give it much thought, but what a wonderful experience it's turned out to be. She is a great “actor's director.”

Is it difficult to incorporate cuts and changes?

No. I think that's the easiest. I know my own rhythms so well and when I write, almost everything is written the way I would say it playing that character. A 76-page solo show though is quite another matter.

Playing multiple roles in a one-person show is an audacious endeavor. What does it take to synthesize research, writing and performance?

You just stew with the story for a while, read everything. Watch some movies, look for inspiration and something will start bubbling up, that's what happened for me. I started saying “Here's this very famous classic that I am going to destroy. How can I possibly start (writing)?” But I did and I let myself off the hook about the whole thing. Hopefully Mr. Doyle hasn't noticed.

Comedy is one of your fortes. What are your three rules of comedy?

Location, location, location. I think comedy is about averages, like baseball? People try so hard, but what makes you a comic really, I think, is your always present “intent to amuse” and a love of people. When your intent is unwavering, you will be funny and hopefully not annoying more often than not.

And not ignoring the reality, maybe pushing it a little. Oy.

Who would you like to be seated next to on a flight to newark?

Newark? Don Rickles? Alan Rickman? Maggie smith? The President maybe? Can you arrange that?

I’ll get back to you on that. How would you finish this sentence: New work in the theatre is _____.

Essential. You have to keep putting your voice out there somehow. And hopefully retelling old stories well is included in there too.

Are merde and “break your legs” still terms of good luck backstage?

You better believe it. I'm buying a full body cast right now.

                                                                                                                                            

Phil Johnson’s sketch comedy video: http://www.philjohnson.net/comedy.html

Hound of The Baskervilles

May 3^rd through 6^th
Box Office: 858-481-1055
http://www.northcoastrep.org