Hello Beautiful People,
Gabriel Sloyer is one of the most articulate, artistic, and interesting actors I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Moscow Art Theater. Gabriel has been in productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Players Theatre, American Theater Group, Abingdon Theater, The Working Theater, SoHo Playhouse, INTAR Theater, Repertorio Español and Gardzienice in Poland. Select stage credits include MTC’s production of The Assembled Parties on Broadway, Pinkolandia!, Los Valientes, Romeo & Juliet, and, most recently, Bubble Boy the Musical. I’m thrilled that he was able to participate in this Q&A Series, and to be able to share this exclusive interview with you all.
Ladies and Gents, meet Gabriel Sloyer…
MM: What was your experience like while working on The Assembled Parties?
GS: It was just a dream collaboration. Lynne Meadow is a genius. She’s a genius of subtlety, and her presence was the spiritual glue for the whole experience. Judith Light, Jessica Hecht, Jonathan Walker – all those guys are unbelievable. It was an elevation of the game. It’s a challenge. And they are egoless people, with incomparable skill, but egoless. So to be in the room with them …it was an honor.
MM: Just for fun, what books are permanently on your bookshelf?
GS: The Actor and the Target, by Declan Donellan, who is brilliant. Getting Things Done. Actors on Acting. The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz. Sherlock Holmes…and maybe the odd art history book.
MM: Just for fun, if you were stranded on a desert island, what movies or television shows would you want with you, assuming you have a DVD player and a television?
GS: Breaking Bad, I’m kind of addicted, so to speak. Deadwood. The Motorcycle Diaries. I also enjoy foreign films. I like Arabic film, French films, even to mute them. That’s when most of the acting takes place – without the words. The French will hold a moment – extend the silence, take the silence out to dinner — and I’m with them every step of the way. So it’s a learning experience for me to watch some of those films.
MM: Do you have a favorite play?
GS: I like True West, love Shepard’s plays. I like new works. I like what Tanya Saracho is doing. She’s Mexican-American. Tremendous playwright. It would be meaningful to work with her. I am a Colombian American and extremely proud to represent Latinos in the arts. So bringing an authenticity of experience is important to me. Aside from being bilingual, I specialize in Latino accents and dialects. I do twenty-something different sounds, studied and perfected so the industry can seek me out when authenticity is needed. They’ll call me for anything from Chicano-Mexican circa 1950 to modern-day Nuyorican Bronx. I’m proud of it, I’m proud to represent.
MM: So if you had to offer advice to college students who wanted to purse a career in the theater, what would you tell them?
GS: Your experience is valid. I would explain that while I don’t know all the facts about the people sitting here at Starbucks, I know something deep and profound about all of them by virtue of us all being human beings. For some reason nowadays we have critical distance. We seem to think of the past, the people who came before us, as different. But we all share the same human-being material, raw goods, the secrets, the longings, the births and deaths.
Relatively speaking, we are all the same. It can be depressing if you hold it that way. But, as an artist it can also be super empowering because you have the right to play anybody in the world, because you have everybody inside of you. And you likewise have the right and almost the responsibility to connect with everyone. All you have to do is to start listening to it. You and me are different – different genders, come from different ethnic makeups, but on a certain level we’re the same. There’s great strength to be derived from that.
MM: You’ve touched on a concept I don’t think anybody’s ever said before, the concept that we have the right to play anybody. Care to elaborate?
GS: I had a terrific playwright and mentor at Yale, Deb Margolin, who tapped into that. Some budding playwrights feel, “I can’t write a play. The next great American drama? It’s not going to come from me – I’m not an O’Neill or a Williams or a Miller.” But your experience is just as valid. There are threats to our freedom as expressive animals, people who would say you can’t write about this or that. But take a look at your students, there may be a need to write about something that they have no “right” to express, and if you suppress that need, who knows?
MM: In today’s, economy arts programs are being cut, so, as a professional artist, what reasons would you give to a politician and/or school board for preserving the arts education?
GS: If the politician’s goal is to preserve a healthy society, the arts are a staple of that. Theatre in particular is an outlet for many people to express things that society would outlaw, or deem illegal or extralegal or fringe. But to be inclusive and to capture within its folds enveloping all these disparate themes and thoughts would be a catharsis not only for the watchers but also for the theatre-makers in schools. It’s got to be a soul-cleansing experience as a teenager to have the opportunity and the space to exercise. To get clean hormonally, emotionally, and spiritually – to be able to explode and not do it on the street where there are severe ramifications.
There is such a thing as art therapy, and I think the Greeks knew it very well. Watching a piece of art has changed my life. It’s given me other options for how to live. When I see, let’s say, a domestic drama on stage, a woman is hurling a phone at the other main character. She goes, “You son of a bitch, get out of here, you beast,” but instead of exploding back at her and going on a rampage, you might watch the psychology of a man who’s going to choose something else. Now you’re watching that as an audience member, and maybe you think, “Hey, I can react that way too.” It’s a different kind of learning by metaphor, learning by analogy, and learning by storytelling that I think would be very much appealing to a politician.
MM: Who was/is your greatest teacher?
GS: My most influential teacher was John Nici. He is an art historian, an appreciator of beauty, with these big soulful eyes, you know – as if he had personally seen and experienced the sacrifices in making art throughout the ages. So he shared his understanding of the artist’s endeavor over time. And that made me want to see how he was seeing.
But more than his tangible teaching, Mr. Nici lives a life of integrity. He has a set of aesthetic principles incorporated into his everyday manner. That was impressive for me, to meet someone who not only teaches art but also consumes it, who believes, bringing an artistic awareness into his lifestyle.
Against the background of all that historically significant art, John saw the work I was performing and encouraged it. He gave me a new kind of permission to be its practitioner. That was big for me. He could have easily humbled my ambitions with the presumptive authority of the past. The encouragement – appreciating what I was doing in the same paragraph as some of the greatest artists of all time – that made all the difference.
Thank you, Gabriel!
Live, Love, Learn,
Megan &