Carlo Alban's solo autobiographical play IntrÃngulis -- which in Spanish can mean an ulterior motive, a snag or difficulty, or a puzzle or mystery -- is undoubtedly a terrific acting showcase for the 28-year-old Ecuador-born actor, allowing him to play a range of characters, from a street kid and an immigrant window washer to a big-talking college student, a vigilante, and a wannabe rock star. But Alban says his need to write the play, which he performs Off-Broadway at the Public Theater through April 9, had little to do with promoting his acting career.
"For a long time I felt I had a fascinating story -- the experience facing illegal immigrants -- that was not being told," says the soft-spoken Alban. "We arrived here when I was 7, and for 12 years, before we became citizens, my family was in hiding, living in fear. I wanted to open the public's eyes to the fact that illegal immigrants are not villains. My father worked in a dairy factory. And my mother, who had been a schoolteacher in Ecuador for 27 years but couldn't get her license here, worked as a babysitter. Immigrants have always been vilified, and after 9/11 it became much worse. The image of the immigrant is always manipulated to suit the needs of the culture at large. This piece is a collage that tells serious stories interwoven with comic elements."
As a developmental production of the LAByrinth Theater Company, IntrÃngulis is as much a testament to the company's mission as it is to Alban's determination. Founded in 1992 by a group of 13 actors -- and currently headed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz -- LAByrinth is dedicated to giving actors opportunities to grow artistically by creating plays that reflect diverse cultural experiences. In Alban's case, the production isn't open to critics, so his six performances are all about learning what works.
Alban regards his journey to this point as unexpected. For example, he's probably best known for his five-year stint on Sesame Street as a teenager, though he has also appeared on Oz, Touched by an Angel, and Law & Order, among others, and in such films as 21 Grams and Strangers With Candy. On stage, he has appeared in several LAByrinth productions, including José Rivera's References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, John Patrick Shanley's A Winter Party, and most recently Stephen Belber's A Small Melodramatic Story.
"Before I became an official LAB member in 2002, I just hung out with them," Alban says. "John Ortiz invited me to their open-mike nights. The actors did everything from slam poetry to snippets of one-person shows. I then attended the LAB's two-week intensive in upstate New York, where the members worked on their new plays, rehearsing during the day and doing readings at night. I was blown away by the energy and the sense of community. There was competitiveness, but it was very supportive. Everyone was pushing everyone else to do well. I was so inspired I wrote a screenplay -- a kind of sanitized version of this play, without any of the elements that make it funny, gritty, or true. I never showed it to anyone."
When he started writing the play, Alban found no shortage of challenges, particularly depicting in family members who are still alive. "I try to censor myself as little as possible," he says. "I want to be honest, but of course I have to be careful as well. The piece is also political. I make certain statements about America -- some of its top agencies' attitudes towards illegal immigrants -- and I was afraid some of my friends might say, 'How can you get up there and say that?' But nobody at the intensive had that reaction. The big challenge was streamlining the story, simplifying its structure."
Even more daunting than writing the play, he says, is acting in it: "I haven't done a lot of character work," he admits. "On Sesame Street I played myself, and on most of the TV shows I've done I play the young perp.... One of the problems I face in this piece is that I look so young and many of the characters I'm playing are much older."
Other tough assignments are making seamless transitions between characters and playing the narrator. "The narrator is me, though there is the temptation to start performing, especially since I'm the only one up there," Alban says. "I have to keep reminding myself that as the narrator, I'm there to just tell the story to the audience, who becomes my partner. That relationship changes each night, but I hope I'm able to establish an intimate relationship with each audience."
While writing has made Alban approach acting more cautiously -- now he looks for "greater subtleties in character," he says -- acting hasn't informed his writing. "Since I still don't have a clear idea of what works on stage and what doesn't," he says, "I can't really say my experience as an actor has shaped what I write."
A Scoop of Serendipity
Growing up in Sayville, N.Y., Alban came to acting serendipitously at age 12, when he accompanied friends who were auditioning for a community theatre production of Oliver!. "It was called the Children's Theatre Project, and there were professionals in the cast," he says. "When we got there, I was asked to audition as well. I read sides. The next thing I knew I was cast as Oliver. The co-producer was an agent with Peggy Hadley, and Peggy started sending me out." Alban landed his first role in New York City in the Pearl Theatre Company's production of The Trojan Women in 1991. "I played the dead prince Astyanax and was praised in The New York Times for doing a corpse so well," he says with a laugh. (The critic, D.J.R. Bruckner, wrote, "It has been many years since I have seen an actor of any age play dead so convincingly for so long.")
Yet the turning point in his career, he says, was Sesame Street, a show he views as a great training ground. In fact, not only has Alban never studied acting formally, but he remains convinced the best acting training is experience -- plus "working with actors who are better than you are. That forces you to be good." At Rutgers University, he majored in visual arts and toyed with the idea of a career in computer graphics. "I was there for a number of years on and off, but I never graduated," he says. "When I entered the school, I was still an illegal immigrant and unable to get a federal loan. I'm still thinking of going back to finish my degree."
At the moment, however, Alban's goal is "continuing to act. I'd love to do some Shakespeare. I'd love to be in another José Rivera play and work with John Ortiz again. But I'd especially like to work with some of the very interesting Latin American film directors out there now, such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, or Alejandro González Inárritu.... And I'd love to act with them in Spanish. I think the change of language would change my acting, but I'm not sure how. I'm fluent in Spanish, although English is the language I use most. And like most actors, I have patterns of language -- certain emphases and rhythms -- that I'll fall back on if I'm not sure what I'm doing in a scene. Since I don't have those patterns in Spanish, it would be interesting to see how that affects what I do."
But that's all down the road. For now, Alban hopes that theatregoers, regardless of ethnicity, will be affected by IntrÃngulis: "I wouldn't have told this story if I didn't think it was universal, that everyone could relate to it and take something away from it."
