Photo Source: Judy Geeson
Julian Sands is widely recognized in the U.S. as a star of stage (playing Tony Blair in David Hare's "Stuff Happens" at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles) and screens big ("A Room With a View," "Ocean's Thirteen") and small ("24," "Smallville"). He recently toured internationally with his one-man "A Celebration of Harold Pinter," directed by John Malkovich.
Neil Dickson's career has spanned mediums and the pond. He starred in the cult "Biggles: Adventures in Time" and has appeared in such other films as David Lynch's "Inland Empire" and "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." His television credits include "She-Wolf of London" and recurring guest roles on "Mad Men" and "Sliders."
They spoke with Back Stage before a rehearsal, reminiscing about their early studies (see Back Stage's upcoming issue, "Where Did They Train?"), their processes, and that perhaps most-intriguing trust-developing acting exercise on record.
Back Stage: How did this project get developed?
Julian Sands: I was doing a film in Barcelona about 10 years ago. One of the actors, David Gant, who at that time I suppose was in his mid- to late 60s, told me he had been working on a play. I saw him do this play ["The Standard Bearer"] and thought it was astonishing and moving and epic and funny and insightful—about the life and the work, the philosophy and the raison d'être of being an actor. It's how it embraces the enduring truths of Shakespeare's language and allows the actor to reconcile himself to himself through Shakespeare's language and find a kind of redemption in his own contemporary experience.
Now, that performance, David was a little bombastic. It was more in the spirit of Richard Harris or Robert Shaw. And I felt a lot of the nuance of the piece, which I could have imagined Paul Scofield or James Mason performing, was being subsumed by this heavy touch. It's set in Africa, in an unnamed former territory. I thought how well it would lend itself to the California setting. I was aware of Neil from distinguished work in theater in London, and impressed by him.
He then played this iconic figure in British culture, Biggles, who was the great World War I Royal Air Force hero pilot. It was a role I coveted, and I was told, "Forget it, Dickson's playing it." I think I was offered a walk-on. This was years ago. Then I met Neil here [in Los Angeles] a few years ago and thought, "My goodness, in another few years he could be perfect to be The Standard Bearer. Did I mention it to you when we first met?
Neil Dickson: You did.
Sands: I mentioned I'd seen a play you might be right for but not yet!
Dickson: I had to go a bit grayer.
Sands: So we reconnected at the beginning of this year. And I said, "Look, I'd love you to read this, and if I could sit with you, I could just listen and see what you feel about it." He was quite resistant. He still thinks of himself as Biggles, a fighter pilot. And I told him that this actor, David Gant, who he thinks of as being an old man, had played it before. But once he started to let his voice take this language of the play and allow the character to come in, the transformation was so interesting to see. We've been workshopping it and reading it.
Dickson: The first sense you get from Julian is he's obviously a very bright spark, a very intelligent man, so you trust him. And here is me, as he was saying, still slightly thinking I'm this juvenile lead. Of course those days are gone. But, something within my performance was still kind of resisting moving into the later stages of middle age and being that actor. What this play has done is given me the bridge. And I have discovered things about myself as an actor: that thing you have before they break you down [at the start of drama school]. You have so much confidence, and it's naive confidence, and you let yourself go because you have no fear, because you don't know what could pull you back.
Sands: There's a raw courage one has as an ingénue. There's an openness to anything. The breaking down at drama school was an unfortunate aspect of my studies in the '70s, too—at the other end of the '70s. I don't know if it's like that now.
Dickson: I think it's changed a bit. But definitely, doing this has given me a new, older confidence.
Sands: Freedom.
Dickson: Freedom to go into and try things, albeit older and in a more subtle way than I had ever tried in recent years. I think, because I trust this guy [Julian] so much, I know he's right. And therefore it's a case of freeing up and going with the flow. It's like a river, and he's guiding me up this river. I like to think, in ways, we've hit a strong current.
Back Stage: How did you develop this trust?
Sands: Well, one of my first techniques was I took Neil into the wilderness to climb a mountain.
Back Stage: Seriously?
Sands: Seriously.
Dickson: Seriously. Up to 12,000 feet.
Sands: And I set camp. I carried most of the stuff on my back. I'm a mountain climber; it wasn't just a random thing. And I think I read you poetry.
Dickson: You read me poetry. In a tent.
Sands: Not Pinter.
Dickson: Actually the tent was pitched in an ice field.
Sands: This was in the Sierras.
Dickson: And he's in his sleeping bag next to me, reading poetry. I thought, "This is mad, but it's kind of different."
Sands: I was going to go anyway. I didn't set this up as an acting exercise. It turns out Neil is a keen hiker, locally, so it wasn't difficult to persuade him to come along. In the Sierra wilderness, it's just yourselves. And there's a confrontation of yourself you find in the mountains, which is very revealing. When I finished doing my Pinter show, in Edinburgh, prior to going on tour, I knew we were going to be using a lot more energy, because the show was going to be longer. What was most restoring to me, and invigorating, was going to the Alps, going back to Chamonix, and ending up climbing a pretty technical route on Mont Blanc, which I'd been stormed off in the past, so it was a wonderful freedom to actually get to the summit this time, in tricky conditions.
Back Stage: At what stage of developing "The Standard Bearer" did this take place?
Sands: What I was wanting, in the beginning of January, was just to explore the language with Neil, just see how it would flow, this contemporary language, the Shakespearean pieces, this journey of this character who confronts his own Conradian heart of darkness. I think it was just about doing it: We'd meet, we'd read it, we'd talk about, we'd meet again, we'd read it. I think it was the end of February we went up [to the Sierra]. And then, we had in our minds a belief that we would look to do a full production when we both felt it was ready.
And I think, towards May, we did a couple of open workshops and readings, with an invited audience, just to see how it was going over. And that's the point we thought, "Okay, let's commit." I knew I was away for the summer. "So you commit to learning it now, and let's commit to presenting it." And we did a little look-around at the theaters, and we were very taken with the charm of this place [SFS Theatre], the simplicity.
Dickson: It reminds me of those little theaters in New York where you walk up. It's a weird thing, doing a one-man show or an extended monologue or whatever one wants to call it, when there's just you. In this case, for me, it was getting over the fact that I'm addressing the audience, and they are part of the play. I'm so used to that thing of you don't break the fourth wall.
I was once in a play, and an actor completely dried on the first night, and he walked off the stage, looked at the book, came back on, dried again, then looked at the audience and broke the fourth wall and said, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I've lost my thread here, I'm going to have to go back." And I was lying supposedly dead on the floor behind a couch, thinking, "Oh no, I've got to arise from the dead in a minute." It was horrible. So getting over there not being a fourth wall was a challenge.
I always believe you've got to be bold and daring and take risks. I'd never been on the stage without somebody else coming through a door at some point. I'm in London, 200 people had turned up for [the presentation of "The Standard Bearer"], and I've never done it without the book and in front of an audience before, and I was pacing backstage, going, "Am I mad? Why, why, why do I want to put myself through this at this point?" By the end of the second show, I came off and I thought, "That's why I want to do it!" The charge, the fulfillment of the whole experience, is fantastic.
Sands: Do that on [opening night]!
"The Standard Bearer" continues at SFS Theatre, 5636 Melrose Ave., L.A., through Nov. 12. Wed. & Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. (818) 424-0282. www.plays411.com/standardbearer.
