When Mark Rylance stands still, people notice. His intensely introspective Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company; his self-possessed (and cross-dressed) Olivia in Twelfth Night at Shakespeare's Globe in London; even his sheepish Robert in the Broadway revival of Boeing-Boeing, a 1960s farce known more for its pratfalls than its placidness, for which he recently won a Tony Award — all are characterized by his ability to command attention and interest by sheer force of presence.
So it's not surprising that Rylance lists both Art Carney and Kabuki legend Ichikawa Ennosuke III among his inspirations and influences. Rylance was a high school student living in Milwaukee when he first saw Ennosuke and his company performing in nearby Chicago. When the actor later toured Japan with the Globe, he met the Japanese master in person.
"Actors like Ennosuke use stillness and physical movement to embody the tension in a moment and tell a story," Rylance says. "It was very striking to me and particularly practically useful at the Globe. There is no giving or taking of focus by a lighting designer or by a set. The audience is all around you. There are planes going over. And rain and sun. And birds. To hold focus for a story, we really had to develop a stillness which let the audience know where they should be looking." As for Carney: "He and Jackie Gleason used their bodies in that little set extraordinarily well."
But there's a less familiar name in Rylance's inspiration roster for Boeing-Boeing: Kevin Hannon, accounting associate at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater. Before starting rehearsals for the show's American edition, Rylance was at the Guthrie in Ibsen's Peer Gynt, where he was thinking about how to play Marc Camoletti's French farce for American audiences — he'd performed the role in London with a Welsh accent — and about his character, a country bumpkin visiting Paris for the first time.
He met Hannon, a native of Stevens Point, Wis., and was struck by his manner and personality. "I recorded him," Rylance says. "He had a very wonderful kind of straight face and a grounded quality. I tend to find people, sometimes more than one, who remind me of my character. It's a foundation I can stand on while I find out the details of the character."
Meeting Hannon helped Rylance make an important decision: Robert should be from Wisconsin, a place Rylance knows well. At age 11, the actor moved to Milwaukee when his father was appointed headmaster of University School, a prominent preparatory academy. He enrolled there and became active in the school's theatre program, playing his first Hamlet at 16. (His Boeing-Boeing co-star Bradley Whitford also has a Wisconsin link, having grown up in Madison.)
Rylance remembers his years in Milwaukee as an interesting blend of theatre apprenticeship and cultural confusion. As a student he received a wide range of acting experience, working with students and professionals in the community. From veteran actors, he heard stories about Tyrone Guthrie and other tales of the acting life. His teacher Dale Gutzman cast him in a variety of roles and helped him prepare audition material for London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
"He did such an eclectic mix of plays," Rylance recalls. "Shakespeare, Euripides, original musicals, classic musicals, Ionesco, all kinds of adaptations of novels — a very creative mix of stuff."
In the summer, Rylance's father would take the family to England, with stops at Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare. "Coming back and forth between the two cultures was exciting," Rylance says. "I'm pretty sure I had a straight American accent then. I always thought that I stood out in America because I was English and that when I got to England, everything would be normal. But when I arrived in London at RADA, I was treated as the American."
But his years at the Wisconsin prep school paid off, he says: "I was the most experienced person at RADA in my class. I certainly had done the most work and the greatest variety of work. I had an incredible kind of apprenticeship at an early age in that theatre department."
Now, with his first Tony Award in hand, Rylance can say that his Wisconsin roots are paying off in more ways than one.