SCOTT & HEM / RESURRECTING TITANS
Creating a believable and sympathetic character out of the fictional cloth of a script is an actor’s stock in trade. He uses the descriptions, the action instructions, the circumstances, and the form of his character’s dialogue to painstakingly create – out of thin air – the physicality and emotional comportment of the character he is to play.

In many ways, it’s not unlike painting…just in three dimensions and in motion. And for an actor, that act of creation is where the fun is: designing the character as you want him to be, breathing into him a personality and the emotions you want him to have, and then inhabiting your creation. He is the way you want him to be and the way you want to play him.

But what if the character you’re to play happens to be an historical giant – a titan of American letters? What if your task is not to create a character from whole cloth, but to resurrect – in a living, breathing form – an icon of literature.

Such was the task set before actors Tom Wahl and Gregg Wiener. The two consummate actors will take the Red Barn Theatre stage Friday, January 15th for a very short two week run as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, respectively, in Mark St. Germain’s powerful new play, “Scott & Hem”. And make no mistake – these two Carbonell Award winning talents don’t just “play” Fitzgerald and Hemingway. They literally bring them back to life in every way, which wasn’t all that easy.

“There wasn’t much available to find about his voice, posture, or bearing,” Wahl said of Fitzgerald. “Only a couple of short video clips. So I spent my time researching what kind of person he was, and his relationships, like the people he spent time with in Paris of the 1920s. That was extremely informative.”

Wahl is playing Fitzgerald at a critical time of his life – when he was holed up in a Hollywood villa trying to finish a screenplay long past deadline and stay on the wagon at the same time. Enter Ernest Hemingway, who turns everything on its edge. The two powers of the written word square off at each other, both full of swagger and bluster, but both intimating that they are afraid they are out of words. Each man shows himself vulnerable but unyielding, and the result is both witty and very revealing.

“At least I had a lot of recordings and interviews to draw from,” said Wiener, who brings Hemingway back to Key West in full color. “I worked with Mark (St. Germain) on the dialogue he’d written to make it more as Hem would have spoken it. He was very open to that. And I read a great deal of Hemingway’s stuff – the short stories, the auto-biographical books. And of course, the physicality…he was a big man in every way.”

But what was more important to both actors as they slipped into the skins of such bigger-than-life men was capturing each man’s point of view. They focused a great deal of energy on drawing out what Wiener called “the human. We wanted to go after why each man was doing what he was doing at that time of his life.”

And then there’s the fact that Wahl and Wiener have worked together before, and this is the second time they’ve mounted this play, having originated it at the Actor’s Playhouse in Miami last year. They also direct the show themselves.

“We click pretty well,” Wiener said. “We have a great camaraderie. We kid each other mercilessly, which ends up lending itself perfectly to these characters’ relationship. We can really affect each other on stage, as they did in real life.”

The costumes help too, Wahl added. “They’re perfect period pieces, lent to us by the Actor’s Playhouse. We each have wigs that transform us into Fitz and Hem – they really change the way you feel and act.”

All of which contributes to the remarkable resurrection of Fitzgerald and Hemingway on stage. The men truly live again, in all their glory, talent, insecurities, bluster, and pain.

The show also features Key West’s George DiBraud as the alluring Evelyn Montaigne, a studio rep whose job it is to make sure Fitzgerald stays off the booze and at the typewriter. Her job is made increasingly more difficult by the lusty Hemingway’s advances.

Tickets for the short run (January 15-31 only) are on sale now at redbarntheatre.com or by calling the box office at 305-296-9911. There will be a special Opening Night party after that evening’s performance, where attendees can meet and talk with the actors and crew. The show is sponsored by Jane Gardner Interiors, Conch Color, and the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.

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