Step into the high-stakes world of action-based storytelling on this special Utah Shakespeare Festival edition of the APEX Radio Hour with host Ryan Paul. Multidisciplinary theater artist Geoffrey Kent shares his journey directing the frantic British farce See How They Run and serving as the fight coordinator for the epic tragedy Troilus and Cressida. Discover how learning theater as a hands-on trade shaped his unique perspective on balancing stage safety with raw excitement, engineering complex physical comedy, and mastering the real-time feedback loop of a live audience.
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[Reese Whitaker]
You are listening to the Apex Hour hosted by Ryan Paul on KSUU Thunder 91.1. This show allows more personal time with our guests, allowing them to give us their stories and opinions. We will also give you new music to listen to, hoping you enjoy some new sounds and genres. Welcome to this episode of the Apex Hour.
[Lauren Bird]
Welcome to the Apex Radio Hour, Utah Shakespeare Festival Edition. I'm producer Lauren Bird, and I'm here today with director of Apex and professor of history, Ryan Paul, and our special guest, Jeffrey Kent. I'll turn it over to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We are so excited. I'm so excited to have Jeffrey Kent here in the studio to talk about plays and Shakespeare and swords and all kinds of cool stuff I I've been, uh, I, this is going to sound weird, maybe, but I've been a fan boy of yours for a long time.
And I'm, I'm so excited that we can actually have a conversation. So thank you for being here.
[Geoffrey Kent]
I'm delighted to be here and talk about all those things.
[Ryan Paul]
So one of the things I always like to start with is kind of a, how we get to now question. I should say first, before we start, uh, Jeffrey is the director of see how they run, uh, here in the Randall theater this season in the, in the, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival. And also he is the fight coordinator for Troilus and Cressida.
So we'll have conversations about all those things. But first of all, I like to start with kind of a, how we get to now. So you can tell us a little bit about where you're from and how you decided to do what you do.
[Geoffrey Kent]
You bet. I'm I grew up in Denver, Colorado. That's been my home since I was four, very much feels like home.
Um, I started doing theater as a little kid. My mom had me in those type of exercises and group, you know, learning how to collaborate. Then in middle school, I did a play after school because I was getting beat up on the bus.
And, uh, I knew if I did something after school, my mom could pick me up after work. So I did the ransom of red chief with a dog that upstaged me at every turn. Hence my love of dogs, maybe.
Um, then in high school, I thought I would do sports and seemed to think that at ninth grade, you could just decide to join a sport. Other kids have been playing their whole lives. And that was pretty, that was like, went to the meeting, changed my mind and left kind of level of change.
Looking for a community, um, looking for peers, looking for friends. And theater was the place where I found that, right. Where we just made stories together.
And, um, I kind of made some lifelong friends there that are still my friends today. Went to college, didn't like that, left college. Um, and spent my twenties.
I learned theater. I sometimes explain that I learned theater as a trade, kind of like a blacksmith. Um, so I didn't learn theater in a classroom.
I've had no, no classroom training. Um, but what I did do was in my twenties, I started doing murder mysteries to, to make a little bit of money, um, character walk around at corporate events. I was working for a distributor.
They'd be like, you're wild Bill Hickok this weekend at this whiskey convention, go talk to people as well. Um, cue me reading all the book I can on while Bill Hickok, um, or your Oscar wild at this event, go memorize a bunch of Oscar wild and have a great time. Um, Ren fairs and stunt shows like cowboy stunt shows, Batman stunt spectacular.
So like, I just was kind of, I kind of fell into an action role because I, I, when I had a sword in my hand, things made more sense than when it, when it didn't. Like I didn't understand subtext playable actions, but I understood to cut, to stab, to, to, to, to distance, to push, you know, and those were all very action based ideas. So I learned how to act through action.
Um, and I still, to this day, action informs how I direct action informs how I choreograph action informs how I act and then slowly, but surely those skills kind of led me to teach at high schools, then colleges, um, then MFA programs. Then I started working at the Denver center for the performing arts as a fight director around 2000. Um, same time I became a certified teacher of stage combat with the society of American fight directors.
But essentially like I was an action actor that was choreographing violence to keep people safe. That led to them going, well, why don't you just play that part? Because it's doesn't talk very much, but it has a huge fight.
So, and I was like, okay. So I kind of was cutting in line in front of people who had a lot more training because I had a special skill that that role needed kind of like some actors can do when they can play guitar, right. Which is not me, by the way.
Um, and so that led to acting in classical theater because that's where the fights were. And then slowly, but surely working as a fight director actor, my, my scope kept expanding. So I started, um, directing, um, pursuing directing cause I wanted to lens wider.
I wanted to tell, tell a bigger story than just the piece of action that I was helping build. And that's kind of what led me to directing. And I still do basically those three things plus teaching.
So I still fight direct a lot. I still act a lot. I still direct a lot.
They each inform the other. And when I'm not doing those three things, I'll teach a class on Shakespeare or stage combat.
[Ryan Paul]
So the Batman stunts spectacular was an arena show, right? I saw that actually in Vegas. It came to some, yeah, I took Lincoln, my son and Dan, and we saw the Batman stunts depicted.
I hadn't thought about that for a long time.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It was wild. We, I was, I was at the six flags. Um, they franchised it, right.
And it was all prerecorded. So you were just lip syncing. You didn't speak the texts.
You just kind of moved your lips to the patterns. And they started me out as Batman until they quickly realized that my skills on a motorcycle were not. Batman level.
I was henchman level and all the henchmen could ride motorcycles better than Batman. So when I, when I went on all the henchmen would have to dumb down their routes so I didn't look like a child with training wheels. Um, eventually I got myself injured by a motorcycle cause I would, didn't know what I was trying to like be better than I could be.
And they very quickly demoted me in my mind to Two-Face Riddler because Two-Face drove the ATV and he got a seatbelt and, um, the Riddler had to do a high fall and that was something I knew how to do. So, uh, about right after we opened, I think I played Batman for about a month before they finally took me aside and said, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to change your track, um, to something that suits you more. And then I spent that summer jumping away from explosions.
But the best was I think once the Batmobile couldn't open the lid jammed, so Batman couldn't get out of the Batmobile. So the Batmobile drove off stage, but the text keeps going cause it's prerecorded. So now you're acting to an invisible Batman and the explosion is going to happen whether you like it or not.
So you better get under the blanket.
[Ryan Paul]
So, so at least they, at least the idea was that the track wasn't because you were more villainous. But just more agile.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah, more not on a motorcycle, I think is what they were going for.
[Ryan Paul]
But I can say, I mean, as a historian of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, that I don't, I think you're probably the only actor that's ever played Batman in my actor resume at the bottom.
[Geoffrey Kent]
You have special skills, you know, and I always think special skills are a place to put your personality. Not just here. I can sing to this level.
I can do this form of dance, but my, my special skills also says I'm Batman cause I want someone to ask. Um, and, uh, I cannot juggle, which is true. I'm I'll, you'll never teach me to juggle.
It's I'm inept at it. Play the guitar. I can, I can play along fakely to a recorded track of a guitar acting.
[Ryan Paul]
So what, what did your parents do for a living?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Um, my father was in construction. He was in the Seabees, um, uh, did some work during Vietnam, you know, building airfields and things like that. So he was always, the military taught him how to build things.
And then he spent the rest of his life building things. Um, he's still alive, although we're not really in touch. Um, my mother pretty fantastically like, um, was an art teacher, got her master's degree in art, um, was in New York in the sixties and has stories.
I still haven't heard. Um, but I asked for new ones every time. And, uh, then at once we were, you know, a two child family, she shifted to working for the cable company for a good long period of her life.
Um, and now she's retired and she's still watercolors and works in different forms of art herself and lives a very full retired life. And we're in regular contact. She's never not seen a play I've done.
Um, I think ever. Um, and that doesn't matter where I go. She finds a way to get there and see the show and talk about it afterwards.
And she'll always be like, I don't really know much about theater to, to frame her statements. And I'm like, you've seen more theater than most people. Um, I suspect you have an educated opinion about this.
[Ryan Paul]
And she probably thinks you were the best Batman ever. She ever Christian Bale, nothing.
[Geoffrey Kent]
She saw some Batman shows. It was like, it really looks like you're in danger up there. I'm like, well, I kind of am.
It was a stunt show that played pretty fast and loose with some things, but, um, she's, she was very supportive. And when I was, um, thinking college was the way I was going to learn to do this. And it ultimately wasn't, but she was the one that was like, well, what's your backup plan.
And I was like, my backup plan can't be to be a doctor or a lawyer. Mom. She's like, no, what's another form of this art that you can also explore.
So you have more than one way to create a living. Um, she doesn't remember this conversation, but I do where she's like, I, I work in watercolor, but I'm also a silversmith. So I have two different ways I can create art.
And at one point create income if necessary. And so for me, I think I always kind of knew I had the support to be a multidisciplinary and that ultimately I was way more excited as a theater artist, having multiple hats. I can wear because one, I have different ways to make a living.
All three of those are different jobs, but also they inform each other and they give you a break from the other one. You know, I love after I've directed a couple of shows, shifting down to acting where my worldview is just the character, not the play, not the universe. And then I love then shifting back as a director and not having to memorize anything and being more and more importantly, trying to define a world and edit good ideas to something cohesive.
So those, they mix and match. And I like that a lot.
[Ryan Paul]
Well, she sounds like a wise, damn fine.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It'll be wild this year because she'll see the show, but I will be gone. She forgets sometimes that once the show is open, the directors leave or were forced out maybe.
[Ryan Paul]
Well, let her know. I'll take her to lunch. So what's the first thing as a kid that you remember wanting to be when you grew up?
[Geoffrey Kent]
A ninja. Which kind of turned out to be true. It did.
And there was no plan to get any training in being a ninja. I just seen the movie American Ninja and I thought ninjas were cool. So I was making swords and covering them with black electrical tape and making throwing stars with cardboard and black electrical tape and running around in the woods behind my house, hiding behind trees in all black cause that helps you blend in with green trees.
Um, yeah, it was ninja. I don't know that I spoke that aloud, but it was really clear that I liked running around with swords. And when I think back on that, like that my interest in swords was there in a way that I had never thought about.
I certainly wasn't at age eight going, I'm going to monetize this. Someday I'm going to have a 401k that contributes to that. I can, I get, I make contribute contributions to through sword play.
Um, but always swords, always something to do with swords. Always drawn to shows like He-Man that had swords in them and, and uh, action. I was drawn to action.
Um, and I think because I liked the way stories could be told without words at the time, I really enjoyed watching a physical story. So that was really fun.
[Ryan Paul]
I remember for me, the, I was, I was probably too young to have seen this movie when I watched it, but it was the movie Excalibur.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Oh yeah, man.
[Ryan Paul]
And, and uh, I mean, I go back to watch it now cause I have so many well-known actors.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson are in that. They each have like one line.
[Ryan Paul]
But I just remember thinking, boy, this is like the thing. Like, I mean, I, I didn't become an English historian or anything else, but for me, that movie informs that the movie crawl, opposite things. But, but crawl was super cool.
[Geoffrey Kent]
I did a play with someone who was in crawl.
[Ryan Paul]
Oh really?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. Um, Tony Church, the founder of the national theater conservatory, a former RSC member, um, uh, quite well-beloved in RSC history who, um, came to Colorado with the Denver center for the performing arts to found a grant, an MFA level training program. Um, I did Hamlet with him when he played the, he played the grave digger.
He played, um, the player King. And I remember like being at the table reading, we were reading the play. And I was, I was kind of impressed.
It was my first big professional show. I had like one line and I remember just watching that guy and being like, how is he doing that? And also he was very blind.
So he read with the script like an inch from his face with a magnifying glass. And it was the clearest text I'd ever heard. It was, it was hilarious.
And I was like, who's that guy? And then I was like, that guy was in crawl. Probably not the thing he likes getting recognized for.
He might prefer Hamlet at the RSC to be remembered for, but I remembered him in crawl. I would add to that clash of the Titans. Those are my three Excalibur, Crow, clash of the Titans.
Those were all, you know, action, action, fantasy adventure stories that to me kind of checked all the boxes that, that, that was, it was that. And then I got into dungeons and dragons like in middle school and in dungeon dragons, I was a dungeon master because I was the only one who read all the rules and dungeon master being a dungeon master is an awful lot like being a director. You're creating the environment, you're creating the story, or then you're letting the characters play in it.
When you played a character, you had to create a backstory. You had to create things you wanted. That's acting.
And there was tons of action and I was describing action and I go in seventh grade, I, I, my body knew what I wanted to be. I just hadn't figured it out yet.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah. I was like, we're kindred spirits. I was an OG DM too.
And I was in blue books, the red books, the yellow books, yeah. Keeper of the borderlands. I probably have that thing.
But, uh, but I remember Crow. I remember where I was when I saw clash of the Titans for the first time. It was a double feature at the, at the old Egyptian theater in Ogden with dragon slayer, the Disney four, where you of course realize if you want to defend yourself from a dragon, you need to make a shield out of dragon scales.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Cause that's the only way you're going to get away from the fire.
[Ryan Paul]
Right. And how you kill Medusa and anyway, all that stuff. Like it was, you know, all the marketable skills.
[Geoffrey Kent]
My mom worked for the cable company. So we were a low income family that had HBO, you know? So it would have three movies on a loop and often it was those movies.
So you realize as a kid with unstructured key, you know, time, um, I was a latchkey kid, you know, my parents were divorced. So I was, it was me and my sister and my mom. And so I had an awful lot of TV watching time.
And sometimes I'll, I'll stumble across an eighties movie and I'll know all the words and I'll realize, Oh, I must've seen this like 60 times. I don't remember that, but it's, it's tattooed on me.
[Ryan Paul]
I don't think that Jeffrey and I are considering that you and your parents should watch the movie crawl, but, but it's, it's an entertaining, whatever that star thing that that guy had.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. The glade, like five pointed, you know, I already talked about throwing stars. Like that was like an upgrade at five points.
Um, Liam Neeson also in that, um, Liam Neeson, someone asked me recently who my favorite sword fighter was in film. And I said, it was Liam Neeson because I think his fights in Rob Roy, he's in Batman. He has the, my favorite lightsaber fight.
Like that guy is in all the action sequences that are my favorites. And I don't think I'd really fact it. But then you go, Oh yeah, he's also got a sword fight and Excalibur.
He's also got a big action sequence and crawl. And that guy has been, yeah, he's been stabbing people with weapons in film for a long time.
[Ryan Paul]
Is it the Darth Maul?
[Geoffrey Kent]
It is.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
I like that one. And I think to be fair, that fight to me is the soundtrack, the soundtrack underneath it, just elevate that coral bit comes in and you just lose your mind. And up until that point, this lightsabers had been kind of smash and bash a little bit.
You know, Bob Anderson was choreographing the ones like star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. That's Bob Anderson. He's Aero Flynn's guy.
Like he was doing pirate swashbuckling. It was very fancy, but it was Darth Maul and Ray Park that came along and brought martial arts to it. And suddenly they were doing things with lightsabers I'd never imagined.
And they were doing like cuts that were like 25 moves, no cutaway. And you're like, that's Hong Kong action style. So they were just doing, I find the prequels problematic, but I damn well love that lightsaber fight.
[Ryan Paul]
But it's the first time you see a different lightsaber, the dual bladed.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And like, you know, and, and just, and just the fact that he could kick, like there's not kicking, you know, like Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn't throwing snap kicks against Darth Vader's face. So yeah, I think it was just someone recently asked me my favorite lightsaber fight. And I was like, that's mine of live action.
There's some, some clone war stuff I like too.
[Ryan Paul]
But yeah, I, well, we're getting way off track.
[Geoffrey Kent]
That's what I'll do.
[Ryan Paul]
But I think my favorite lightsaber fight is in the, is it rebels or the clone wars where the final one between young Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. And they just do a couple of different wards that each tell a story. And when you hear it narrated, you're like, there's a lot going on behind those poses, you know?
And, um, some of the best fights are, it was very Kurosawa, you know, boom and over. And you almost feel like Darth Maul gets to say goodbye in a beautiful way. Spoilers for my non-rebel watching friend.
Well, there you go. If they're behind, you've already watched Darth Maul die once.
[Ryan Paul]
So what's the deal? He's back. Same thing with Boba Fett.
So let's, I mean, I love the idea that, and I'm actually reading a book that's similar along these similar lines. I love the idea that you learned, you, you, you call your craft a trade, right? You go through this kind of apprenticeship and then you're kind of a journeyman actor director until you become a master or whatever.
How are you? Well, I guess you are a master.
[Geoffrey Kent]
The fight side, I guess that's the title they give us. Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
So I think it's so interesting because I live in a world academically where if you haven't reached these certain levels of degree, somehow you're not, you know, even though you are more qualified, we're very title oriented in that way. And I love the fact that that that's how you approached this in, in almost a real world type of thing.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. And like, you know, the, the skills I learned when I, when I speak about learning something as a trader that, that I think performing in theater is a blue collar job, right? It's a labor, like it's a physical labor.
We're also emotional athletes. But like when I think about those early shows like that, that Hamlet where I had one line, but I had Tony church and John Hutton and goodness, like so many of my favorite actors at the Denver center resident company, so many people have been making theater at this place for 15, 20, some cases, 25 years. You're, you're watching people at the peak of what they do and you just get to sit there.
You're in the scene, but you're just watching them work. And so like, I just learned so much from, I learned what really works in rehearsal. Cause I only learned theater through rehearsal.
I didn't learn theater through a classroom. Not that classroom learning isn't very valuable. I'm a teacher.
I believe in it. I just also believe there's many different ways to find your route to the thing you love to do. And sometimes that can be apprenticing.
Sometimes that can be, you know, learning it as a trade. And I'm a firm believer that that is one of the legit ways to get into any art. Um, and not everyone, everyone who's a teacher might not encourage you to do that because they're, they're pot committed to that process, but there's lots of ways to get in the room.
[Ryan Paul]
So let's talk about getting in the room specifically at the Utah Shakespeare festival. Your, your history here is, is broad. Yeah.
You've been around for awhile. And what is your first experience at the festival?
[Geoffrey Kent]
My first was coming out. David Ivers cast me in complete works of William Shakespeare abridged here. It was a fall production.
I want to say it was 2008 or 2009. Um, was that a, was Quinn Mattfeld? Yeah.
It was me, Quinn and Matt Mueller. And I, it was my fifth production of, of that play. Um, in fact, I closed one at the Colorado Shakespeare festival on Sunday at 5 PM.
And I started rehearsals for the production here on Monday at 10 AM in the middle of that was the driving part. Um, Matt and I were both coming from that production and I was pivoting roles. I was originally playing the same role, the Hamlet track.
And then they lost that actor. They brought Quinn on and Quinn was younger than me. So they asked me to move to another track and I was like, no problem.
Although I was like, but I just memorized that. Um, and so we got to do that, that here. And we were rehearsing like in an old abandoned strip mall, like, you know, like over off campus where there was like no power.
And I think there was, there was a functioning bathroom, but there was no power. So we only rehearsed during the day because there was no lights. They eventually fixed that part.
But we were so far off campus that we felt like rebels because no one was popping into rehearsal to see what we were up to. And we were definitely working with material that wasn't going to be in the show. We were playing offside, outside the script, really pushing the edges of what we could get away with really for any form of family entertainment.
And then very slowly, David just kind of pruned us into a much tighter show where we kept the energy of that, but kind of moved back to the script. It's a great rehearsal process. And that was some of the funniest stuff I've ever done.
Like, I mean, we, we added something like 22 minutes to that show.
[Ryan Paul]
The first time we had an audience, I remember that show that was the first year that I started doing, working at the festival, doing orientations and seminars.
[Lauren Bird]
My mom's been talking about how amazing that show was for years. And I'm so sad that I was too young to see it.
[Geoffrey Kent]
My favorite part in that is we had this bit where we had Joe Minarski did that set. Joe's doing my set for See How They Rot. I've known Joan a long time.
It was my first show with Joe and we had, she built the set out of remnants of other USF sets. And you could, you could participate by guessing if you could find all the shows that were in our set. And in one case for Merchant of Venice, there was a monkey in a cage hanging off the set.
And we'd figured out that if we stood on the set and wiggled our hips, the monkey would just dance in his cage. So we would, at one point we just stopped the show and we said, do you want to have a monkey dance party? And, uh, and I was like, yeah, yeah, Quinn.
And then we would just say monkey dance party and we'd wiggle back and forth and make the monkey dance. And it was ridiculous and very funny. And then we decided it was so funny.
We threw a bunch of tech at it. We like threw music at it and a light effect at it. And I'll never forget this.
What I learned as a director there was we added that to it and it broke the joke. The tech of the joke made it now seem like a preplanned idea versus a fairly improvisational idea, which is how it began, was us just trying to make each other laugh, which is I do believe the core of comedy is trying to make your scene partner laugh within the bounds of your words. And so we cut the, and then David cut the tech.
He's like, I don't think it needs the tech. And it went in the, in the joke came back and popped higher. And I was like, that's good direction.
That idea that sometimes you can over-structure something you can in doing so can break it.
[Ryan Paul]
I think that it's interesting that, well, let's do this. Let's take our first break and then we'll come back and then talk about some of your more recent work and, and pivot into your stuff you're doing now. Awesome.
So as those of you who've listened to our show at the apex radio hour, know that we don't do commercials. We ask our guests to provide a list of songs that resonate to them for whatever reason. They don't have to be tied to things they're doing.
Just it's a very eclectic list. And if you want to go back, listen to the apex radio hour podcasts, there are anywhere you get podcasts. You can see we've got some stuff.
And I've been doing this a long time and I've heard a lot of music and you have some pretty serious bangers here that I appreciate. So the first one we're going to listen to, I was so glad you chose this because it reminded me, first of all, of a TV show that I used to watch, not in first run as a kid, I'm not that old, but it was, it inspired me to love history and drama and excitement and adventure. But, but it's from the more recent movie.
This song is called wild, wild West by Will Smith. Why did you choose this song?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Um, why did I choose the song? This is a song that always makes me happy. This is a song that I deliberately put on when I'm in a mood that is not happy because the song can redirect me because it makes me tap my toes.
I pretty much know all the words to it because I've listened to it a million times. I have a ton. It's I frequently, when I'm working on a show as an actor, lip sync this song in costume sitting at my dressing room table.
And I've got probably 20 shows of me playing from Mark. Anthony has lip synced this song. Um, uh, McDuff has lip synced this song.
Dracula has Bob Cratchit. All these I've played. I have a video on my phone of me lip syncing this song in the hopes that someday I will smash, cut them all together into like all the characters Jeff played in his life and they all loved wild, wild West.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay. This is wild, wild West by Will Smith.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild,
[Ryan Paul]
wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild,
[Geoffrey Kent]
wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild west.
[Lauren Bird]
That was Wild Wild West by Will Smith. You're listening to the apex radio our Utah Shakespeare festival edition. I'll turn it back to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We're here with Jeffrey Kent. He's an actor, director, fight by director for the Shakespeare festival.
We've been talking a little bit about his formative career and things that we've learned plus some amazing film recommendations that we've we've given you, but I want to talk about. So you, you did the, you did the complete works and a few other things, but then you came, kind of came back into directing. I mean, more recently you did the play that goes wrong, which is.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It's like a dare that play is like a dare. Like I dare you to survive this. I dare you to stage this.
It's a glorious piece of comedy that is essentially is a, basically a list of everything that's ever gone wrong in any play all happening in one play in front of you. And when you get actors in it, all of them, I'm like, I've had this happen to me. I've had this happen to me.
And when we all build our own list of what happened to us, we can pretty much build this play. Like it is a really truthful list of everything that can be go terribly wrong. And physically challenging because it's a very physical show.
The set collapses multiple times. It kept me up at night cause building it on a fast rehearsal schedule, which we have here at Utah, it was a real challenge. You have to be really efficient with your time and you have to put safety in front of pretty much everything.
[Ryan Paul]
Well, I knew that there were some behind the scenes discussions. I mean that, that play had been on the list for a while, but many of our, our properties and tech and, you know, the scenic folks were like, we're not in a position yet to do that. And so it was almost like the festival angled and it came at the right time in the right season with the right cat, I think in the right director to pull that off.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It fell into my lap too. Cause you know, directing, you know, acting has auditions. You, you can see the auditions get listed, you submit for shows, right?
Um, directing doesn't have a process to get that job. There is no, you don't apply to be a director at these theater companies. You network and networking is a really is very human and very different with every human, right?
Some people I email, some people I get out for coffee. Some people I go to opening nights and kind of bump shoulders and try, you know, but in that bump, you're not going to go, by the way, you should hire me. You just bump and become two humans together.
My, a lot of my directing came out of fight directing relationships because when I'm a fight director, I'm on that director in a fight show, like three Musketeers I'm on that director's shoulder a whole way through it, like a DP, right? Helping make sure my action meets the story they're telling. So a lot of times those are ADS I'm fight directing for.
And that's how I ended up directing where, so as in the case of this, you know, the relationships I was building were with David and Brian. And when that season started, neither of them are here anymore. And I was like, Oh, I'd networked these connections.
That's where directing work comes through. And I guess that that chapter is probably closed at that theater for me. I might be able to act there some more, but I'll probably put my directing energy elsewhere.
And then the phone rings and they're like, how about this play? And you're like, that plays was built for me. That play is everything I love to do.
And because I'm an action actor and a fight director, I'm discovering as a director. Well, like every director wants to tell you we can direct anything cause we just want to direct, you know I know my specialty is physical comedy and, and swashbuckling. Like if you've got a play that has that as a director, I can also, I can collaborate with the fight director cause the fight director is also me.
So when we're building that set, I can be like, with that angle of the door is not right. We need to move it because that head hits not going to sell. Whereas often as a fight director, I'm brought in once rehearsals are starting and the sets already built and all those mistakes have been made.
So I can be like, the pitch of the stairs needs to be this. That fall can't be more than this. To do this swing, we need to reinforce that.
And I need a pick point here. And a lot of times directors don't know that stuff. So I've found that I've kind of specialized in it and play that goes wrong is, was a, was a hell of a challenge here.
But I hang myself, I hang my pride on the fact that there were no real significant injuries over the course of the run of that show, which is saying something cause in rep they're not doing it every day. They have to remember this stuff. But other than the occasional pinched finger or a small bruise, nobody went out of that show due to injury, which, which means we did it right.
[Ryan Paul]
Oh, that was a great cast too. So, and then of course you, you shift a little bit and then the last, the, the people, the work that people will be familiar more recently for you would be Antony and Cleopatra. You were Mark Antony last year, and you were in as you like it.
[Geoffrey Kent]
I played the Duke, the evil Duke.
[Ryan Paul]
And, and I we've, we've, I've been in other scenarios where you've, we've had a conversation about acting and Antony and carrying those things. That's the first time is that that's not the first time you've done that role.
[Geoffrey Kent]
No, it's my second pass. But the best part about Shakespeare is one, there's only 37 plays and, and there are opera singers who play Carmen 40 times, right? So repeating a role is, is part of the Canon of great literature, right?
Those roles come around and you test yourself against them because you'll never fully measure to the depth and width of that character as written. They're, they're, they're, they're gods, I think. Um, so I think the joy of playing these parts again is you want to make sure you're, you're encountering them with curiosity and that you're not encountering them as a, as a math problem.
You have already solved that you are now trying to solve again. It doesn't really work that way. So when I revisit a role, I revisit it because I'm chasing it because I'm still testing myself against it.
And Anthony's a perfect example of a character that has got too much going on to ever fully you, I would always, every performance walk off after one scene, but nope, whiffed on that scene, you know, said all the words, did all the moments, but wasn't connected to the story in the way I want it to be. But the best part about Anthony is he has something like, you know, because there's so many short scenes, I have like 22 scenes in that play. So you've got to reset after every one to go, well, maybe it's this one, you know, maybe this one is the one where I can reconnect and get it going.
So Anthony's perfect for that. I, I, I adore him. I got to do him with Carolyn who I'm doing Troilus and Cressida with as well.
We have a long partnership of collaborating on action based characters. And she's, she's directed now, you know, she did, um, winter's still here. She did, um, last year's Anthony Cleopatra.
And this year she's doing Troilus and Cressida as I think she would admit, she's thrown the problem plays a lot plays that require a director to stick the landing. So I was also thrilled to get to take a character I love that I'd walked through and get to run through it with a director I really trusted.
[Ryan Paul]
So I'm interested, you make this comment about revisiting characters. I, I, when I was in grad school, my, my work was in rock and roll and the history of rock and roll and, and it was an Ole Miss and the Allman brothers came. And so I saw the Allman brothers in concert and, uh, they, they didn't play rambling man, which of course is, you know, they're that's, that's the song.
Right. So I was talking to a professor of mine and he said, well, you know, they don't play rambling man anymore because they can't jam on it. Right.
They're, they're a jam band and people want to hear the radio edit of rambling man. So they just choose not to play it anymore. So I'm wondering, is there ever a time, or would there ever be a time in a character where you just say, you know, I, I can't have the freedom to do what I want anymore in that scenario.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Absolutely. And I think, I think age dictates a little bit of that. Like, you know, my ingenue days are thankfully behind me.
I found most of them pretty thankless and I didn't really ever embody them. While I was at sea and Romeo, I, I, I massacred Orsino. Like I don't, young lovers, even when I was one, didn't make sense to me.
Cause I, I, you know, um, uh, I, I, I don't think you have to bleep this, but I generally play, I ask people sometimes to define their type by two words. And I play charismatic a-holes. That's just kind of who I play.
And when I look back at the guys I've played, Iago, Benedict, Mercutio, Mark Antony, they're all, that's who they are. Right. They're, they're kind of antagonists of themselves, but they have a lot of wit that goes along with them.
And those two things tend to suit me. Um, but like some of them, you know, once you've had one where you really feel like you really connected and really, really delivered it, it's hard to revisit it because there's a desire to chase that experience and not refind it. So like I would happily retire Mercutio because I don't, even if someone wanted a middle-aged one to go up there, I don't know that I would feel at home in him anymore.
I don't think that he's my worldview anymore. Um, though he was the most fun I've ever had in a Shakespeare play probably. Um, whereas the, the, the, the other ones you're like, no, I could, I could, I do Anthony with Carolyn again tomorrow, you know?
Um, and, and if someone felt like they had a vision for it and that I could fulfill, I would still explore it because there's so much within it. So there's, I mostly just age out of them. Um, thankfully the younger kids, but, but I used to say, you know, when I was in my thirties, I thought, you know, Macker's Macbeth should be 30 cause that's, he's a young man.
Like he's making young decisions. And I think that's very defensible and that's a really great production. I now of course think Macbeth should be in his mid fifties.
Um, a lived life with one last chance to take to swing for glory because that's the age I am now. So like there are, there are edits in my head I do where the character's age just moves along with me as long as it can until I feel it's rotated out.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah. I, that's an interesting thought. So I, let's talk about see how they run.
Yeah. You bet. So you were asked to come back as a director, see how they run is a farce, right?
A British farce. I mean, it's, um, a frantic show. What, what are your thoughts?
Let's talk a little bit about how, if when you first were set, had you seen this play before? Had this been something you'd know?
[Geoffrey Kent]
And I suspect few have, which is kind of the joy of it, right? Is that it's not, you know, in the same year I did play that goes wrong. I also did noises off and both of those are dare plays.
Noises off has to have a rotate, has a revolve, has stair falls, has giant stunts. This is a little more, um, relaxed as farces go. It's a lot of running.
Hence the title. Um, it's a lot of Vickers. I think there's four Vickers and a Bishop in a, in a, in a cast of nine, I've got four Vickers and a Bishop.
Which is the joke in and of itself, right? Four Vickers and a Bishop. Walk into a bar, um, and, uh, and hit their head really hard.
Um, and then, uh, so, so see how they run kind of was written as a world war two piece, um, written at that time premiered during world war two. The original performance was interrupted by the bombing of the West end. Um, actors complained that it ruined some of their punchlines, um, cause the bombs were so loud.
Um, shows you, shows you a true actor in world war two. I'm like this damn war is ruining my punchlines. They say, how dare you?
Um, uh, at the time the play premiered the, the, the villainous, um, uh, fake Vicker, the piece was German soldier. Um, that is not true in our play anymore. It's been moved forward to the airlift of Berlin and it is now a Russian, uh, antagonist, um, for obvious reasons, a little more palatable for comedy.
Um, uh, and, uh, it's, it's like all, all rules of farce is, um, very high stakes. Um, very, a lot of confusion and no one slowing down enough to ask anyone the real question of is like, who are you actually? Right.
So as the four Vickers run around, each person's mistaking each Vicker as a different Vicker and different Vickers are pretending to be different Vickers and then encountering the Vicker they're pretending to be. Um, and it's pretty ridiculous. Um, and it builds really slowly in the classic sense of a farce.
So the first sex, a whole lot of plot building, a whole lot of baseline. Well, I know he's coming to visit, but as you remember, I've never met the man before lots of sentences that you kind of want to underline for an audience to go. This is, these are the things we're going to build the comedy on later.
Yeah. Um, we have this amazing protagonist named Penelope, who's an American actress who grew up in Britain and has fallen in love with this Vicker and married him, but as chafing at the constraints of a small British Vickerage, like they're so upset she wears pants. They're so very, very upset about it.
And they talk about her in pants a lot. And of course in our show, she's definitely in pants, um, and longing for an adventure. And then along comes an American soldier that she did some USO shows with, and they decided to go out on an adventure.
But by the time they get home, a whole bunch of Vickers have showed up and there's a criminal running around dressed as a Vicker and there's a concussed husband. And there's a lady trapped in the closet. And, um, on, and that's a farce.
[Ryan Paul]
So in the, in this scenario, when you were offered this job, the, the call just comes and says, do you want to do, see how they run? And, and you had never read it or.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. I mean, I would say that every theater is a little different. Sometimes you just get the straight up offer.
So for play that goes wrong, it was a straight up offer for see how they run. It was like, read it, come in and talk to us about what you like most about it and what you think, what are your tenants of farce to kind of give an audition for a new artistic management team, John, being the one making that decision to get a chance to like talk with him about what I think is important in farce. And we align there, which is if you're not careful, if you shift to camp too soon, they're not real people.
And if they're not real, why they all are heightened and not exactly real people. If they're not, they don't have real relationships and real needs and real things that they want. You need something to hang the comedy on.
And I think John and I both connect in the belief of that, that even in play that goes wrong, I was like, this is this, you're dating, right? These characters are dating behind the scenes. So how do we bring that into the, into the conflict of the scene?
You know, you, your character paid for all of this, right? So how does that inform how you're playing the scene? And this, it's the same thing as like, she's longing for, for some kind of adventure.
And when someone, you know, if you've been in a cage in some way of social restraint and then a door gets cracked open, you're going to run out that door. And if you can build a character where you really believe that's what they need and want, you can then go along with them on the journey when they're then drunk talking to their uncle, the Bishop and completely confused because you, you see how they got there.
[Ryan Paul]
So it's kind of like you being in the cage of the school bus getting bullied. And then you saw the door open.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. You're like, I'll just do this. Uh, I'll just do this play called the ransom of red chief with the dog.
Um, and, and, uh, you know, I love me a dog. So that's all right with me.
[Ryan Paul]
So is it, I'm interested in the thought process of the, it seems to me in this play, as you said, there's a, there's a SIG, maybe significant is the right word, but there must be a setup for the payoff to happen.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
And, and is there ever a concern to keep the audience there with the setup, you bet with the promise that the payoff is going to be worth it?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Well, you bet. And in fact, I think part of my original pitch when saying, here's what I would do with this play is that plays from this era are three act structures and three X structures. Ernest was a three X structure last year and they chose to put one is separate and then put two and three together.
Cause two and three are in the same location. And my play, it's all in the same location and each of the acts are about the same length, 35 minutes, 35 minutes, 45 minutes. And so we put one and two together so that we could make sure the audience got to feel the wheels coming off the bus and experience the comedy of that before we went to an intermission.
Because if we just did act one, I went to the intermission. It'd be like, watching someone do a whole bunch of setups and give you no punchlines. And then we're just trusting you'll come back.
So we definitely deliberately compressed one and two together so that you get to watch. Cause there's a time jump between one and two from afternoon to like 10 o'clock at night. And then the rest of the play is from two to three, there's no time jump.
It's just linear. So we definitely moved some comedy onto the front half on purpose, which gives us the permission to keep act one kind of light and not too farcy. Cause we know we're going to give them act two before they get intermission.
[Ryan Paul]
And then they have a reason to come back.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. Cause it's going to freeze basically in the middle of a sentence. And I'm going to hope you want to see where that goes.
You know? Um, in fact we end act two. And then when we come back to act three, I repeat the last two lines of act two to launch us, to remind everybody we're right here.
Remember where we were and off we go.
[Ryan Paul]
Previously on.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah, exactly.
[Ryan Paul]
So I I'm glad you mentioned that cause that's something that we'll use in, in the grove as we prepare people to see it. Cause the one thing we didn't do until later, like when we did raise it in the sun, which was three acts is that our audiences weren't prepared.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. So they might leave after two.
[Ryan Paul]
They left after two and said, boy, that a horrible ending.
[Geoffrey Kent]
You're like, yeah, there was hope in there. You just missed the hope part.
[Ryan Paul]
So I, it's interesting to think about how, how you, when, when you direct, when you get a play like this and I've talked to other directors who think about, well, these are the actors. What can the actors bring me? It seems to me that in a play like, see how they run or even in a play that goes wrong.
Um, that, that the audience is so critical to that, that there is a third leg on that stool. And without that third leg, how, how does that mean?
[Geoffrey Kent]
It's huge. Um, for, for, I love doing comedy, but the tricky part with doing comedy as an actor in live theater is that your feedback loop is constantly happening. So when your joke fails, you instantly know because no one laughed.
If you've got 700 people out there and you just did something that you thought was funny and nobody out there laughed at it, it's like getting stabbed. And then you're bleeding, but you have to keep going. And then sometimes while you're starting to process why that joke didn't work, you bomb your next joke because your brain is wanting to think about what was in the past.
Cause you're trying to figure out, you're trying to fix it for tomorrow. But in doing so you can create a chain reaction of failure while you're still processing behind you. You have to be in the moment in comedy and you have to be like, I'll think about that after the show.
Right. Um, so when you're in tragedy, sometimes I don't know whether they liked it or not until the curtain call, you know, until you feel the, the, the rupture of applause and go, Oh, that was so successful. Or the polite applause and go, okay, I get it.
We weren't quite connected today. Whereas in comedy, right? It's constant.
You're going to 200 times over the course of the show, be aware whether you succeeded, it failed, and you're never going to get a hundred percent. So there's failure going to happen. Even on a joke that worked great on Tuesday, it's going to bomb on Wednesday sometimes because that group has a different vibe.
They're smaller, they're a different age group. Anything can change it. So when you're rehearsing comedies, it's really important even before you're really ready to get guests in the room who haven't seen it or heard it, that will just, that are open to responding to it.
We, we did a run of a, see how they run a tech run on Tuesday night. And the understudies were there and there were, we had four understudies there and that was enough that it lifted my cast because suddenly there were people out there who didn't know your jokes that you had to try and chase. Cause I've seen the jokes now 20 times.
So if I laugh, it's polite. It's an acknowledgement of, you're still doing that joke. Good job.
Um, but it's not like a shocking reaction whereas they now had new people to play with. So that importance of the scene partner of the audience and recognizing that just like your scene partner in the play, they might be really dropped in some days and they might be struggling some days and you have to do your show and let the audience come to you. You can't let the audience run the show, but you have to also when they start to fire up and start to participate, you have to create space for them because if you don't create space for them, if you're stepping on their laughs, they'll stop laughing cause they're worried they're going to miss stuff.
So you'll teach them to stop laughing. Um, so you, it's really tricky about, it's all about pace. It's all about driving the thought and then having one ear on the audience.
And if you feel them start to bubble to kind of take an intake of breath to let them bubble that through that laughter through and then pick up the ball and keep going. Um, and other places you want to keep driving because I have actors who are so funny in the show. They can get a laugh on the setup, the setup for the punchline.
They'll get a laugh because of how they say it. And then the punchlines watered down because now they've already, the laugh dissipated the energy. It's the old Steve Martin rule of comedy, which was he didn't believe in punchlines.
He created a character that was in his mind thought he was good at comedy, but wasn't. And then by never giving a punchline, you just build tension, you build tension and then it erupts randomly in places and it's all really honest versus, but I'll bump, give me the laugh cause here's the joke. Right.
So I really believe in that. I believe you have to build given circumstances attention. The audience will eventually come in hard and you'll know when they do.
[Ryan Paul]
So, which is a skill that has to be taught. I would imagine in some, and it might be challenging and rep because you've got, you know, Frank Jackson over in Troilus and then he's got to come over and be funny. Yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And see how they run. And I have some people in see how they run who, when I asked them, you know, I always meet with actors one-on-one to go, how do you like to rehearse? You know, some actors like I'll ask him, do you like to know when something's succeeding?
There are some actors who really never want to be told something's working because they, it breaks it in their brain. They just want to know what to fix. Right.
Oh, good. Good to know that. And then I had some actors who like, I haven't done comedy in a long time or I haven't done comedy at all.
And so we had a day in rehearsal where I was like, Oh, we just need to do double takes. You don't, I was like you have to do a take there. And they're like, I don't understand.
And I'm like, Oh, well, let's all line up and talk about single takes and double takes and triple takes and how to come through a door and see, like definitely like three's company, like how to come through a door and see something and get a laugh just by how you receive it, independent of what is happening on stage.
[Ryan Paul]
The John Ritter school of comedy.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And it's very true is like, you can have people come, you know, and I had the pros go through the door that have been doing this a long time and they can go through a door and get a laugh from their reaction. And they're reacting to nothing. The only thing we're doing is coming through a door and you start to empower them to go.
Your reaction is its own laugh. And you can have it anytime you want it. And I'll tell you when it's okay, that's 20 that's too many, you know, but I have some characters in this play who come through the door like 40 times.
And every time they come through the door, they see a different Vicar doing something that Vickers aren't supposed to do. And that reaction is the audience is in, you know, so reactions are key.
[Ryan Paul]
So do you ever worry that, so you, you will direct the show. It will preview, it will open. And then you're off to somewhere else doing something else.
Does it ever, do you worry that somehow the show will Frankenstein itself into, you know, how like, I've had that happen.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Um, I, I, I directed a play once where I had clowns that were really fired up. And then my lead, I was like, your job is to tell the story, their jobs to make it hard for you to tell the story. And then that lead had started to clown with them.
And I got asked by the stage management production team to come back. And in that case it was in town. And I had to then take that actor out afterwards for a drink to go.
You've, you've lost your route. I need you back on straight man. Straight man is its own art form.
And if you start to clown with them, you're actually watering down the jokes they have with weaker jokes in front of them. So, so you gotta, you gotta knock it off. But I learned from that.
And I think it's, you know, when modern theater is managed by the stage manager, when you leave, and to a lesser extent, the AD who can also come watch and go like, Hey, Hey, what's going on? Um, I've had actors like do ad libs and I'm like, this isn't an ad lib show and your ad libs from the sixties and our show set in the forties. And please don't break the world that far for me.
I, you can't make a Stevie Nicks joke in the middle of a 1930s roaring, you know, roaring comedy of midsummer that, that is just, that is beyond cheap. That is just saying funny things. We don't do that here.
Um, so when I'm directing, um, farce, I'm very specific about pacing in sections where I'm like with the stage manager, I don't mean we get a stopwatch out, but I'm pretty much like there's no room in here to play. This is where we drive. So I expect this to drive.
And then I have other things I do, which I call recess, which is like this is a recess joke, which means you can play here. You can do something different every show here, but it can't be long. And you're going to, we're going to know we're back on track when you, when you say this so that the stage manager can call the next cue.
Cause they're not, we're not just wishy washy improvising our way through the play, which I think shows a lack of respect. There's a point in the play where one of the characters sits down and goes, she's like, there's a community theater doing a play. And he's like five to one.
It's, and he says the name of the play. And in the script, it's Sweeney Todd. The play because the musical didn't exist, but it sounded to me like Sweeney Todd, the musical, which makes it going to make people go that didn't exist in 1940.
So he just says different plays, but I was like, you just can't ever say the same play. That's the rule. It has to existed and it can never be the same place.
So he has every show load something up. And that actor is about to hear something they've never heard. I like little things like that.
It keeps the show alive, but you have to define where the recess is. So the play, the whole play doesn't become that.
[Ryan Paul]
Interesting. Okay. Let's take our next break and then we'll talk about it.
And by speaking of something different, this, uh, this song could probably not be more different than, than the first one. This is, uh, we're going to listen to Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Rock, Christopher Crossley, Yacht Rock. So tell me about this.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Well, Ride Like the Wind, I've always liked it, but last summer I shared a dressing room with Walter. Walter was playing Macbeth. I was playing Anthony.
And on the third day we would do as you like it, where he would play touchstone and I played the evil Duke, which we would admit was a smaller lift than the other thing. So on Macbeth days, we kind of vibed with what Macbeth needed on Anthony days. We vibed with what Anthony needed.
And on, as you like it days, we listened to Yacht Rock the full half hour leading into the show. But what came out of that was Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross became the Mark Anthony theme song. So on Mark Anthony days, when we would get, we get places called backstage, you'll get a 15, you'll get a five and you'll get places.
Places is at two. So when you hear five, you have three minutes and at three minutes, you can play Ride Like the Wind. So when we would get a five, Mark Anthony would listen to it.
Cause to me, the goal for Mark Anthony was for him to be hopeful heading into the play, even though it is a tragedy. He doesn't know he's in the tragedy. He is out there with Cleopatra living the time of his life.
Doesn't care what's going on in Rome, wants to end his life just happily with her. And within one scene, that shatters because Rome comes back and says, Hey, guess what's happening. And so Ride Like the Wind helped me get away from the weight of where the story was going to go.
You know where, I mean, I'm going to end in some sort of like group suicide, you know, like it was not a happy ending though. Funny, I think.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Um, Ride Like the Wind just lifted Anthony up so that he could head into that great adventure with Cleopatra.
[Ryan Paul]
So what you're really telling me here is that Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross was Mark Anthony's walk-up song.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And I will not only say that I just bought tickets to see Christopher Cross and Toto, uh, in Denver in August because of, of the yacht rock summer I had with Walter.
[Ryan Paul]
There you go. All right. This is Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross.
[Geoffrey Kent]
That was Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross.
[Lauren Bird]
You're listening to the Apex Radio Hour, Utah Shakespeare Festival edition. I'll turn it back to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We're here with Jeffrey Kent, director, fight director, actor. Uh, we've just been talking about some amazing things and I just noticed the assumption that you're not going to be able to see a lot of the things that you're going to be able to see.
I will tell you, I was this close to wearing the Ahsoka shirt today.
[Geoffrey Kent]
So I got Tiger on there and I got Quinn's, I got Quinn. Yeah, I got to tell you, man. Um, but Ahsoka, if we were talking lightsaber fights, Ahsoka's got two of the best in animated history when she fights Vader, when she fights Maul, those are, those are money.
Those are incredible pieces of action.
[Ryan Paul]
Have you ever seen the Thundercats?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Oh, Thundercats.
[Ryan Paul]
Thundercats was my jam.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Thundercats, He-Man, Voltron, GI Joe, man. Like those were all the kind of like latchkey kid post, post school, you scurried home and you got to watch your car. They weren't the, they weren't like, they were Saturday morning sometimes, but they were always after school.
[Ryan Paul]
I have a sort of omens many times in my, my life.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Okay.
[Ryan Paul]
Let's talk about fights, right? So one of the things that you've done significantly at the festival is the, listed as the fight director for multiple shows. First of all, what does that mean?
And then let's talk about why that's important.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. I mean, I, and I have various compatriots in this field. Some call themselves movement choreographers.
Some call them like choreographers. I've always kind of like leaned towards fight director because I, cause directors are the editors of story. Whereas choreographer to me was like, these are the moves.
And whereas I like director because as a director myself, I think I'm in, I'm really in charge of the narrative of this piece of action. Not, not, not the here's where the swords go, which is what I do. But here's how the swords doing this makes you feel.
This makes you root for this, which makes you emotionally respond to this. So I think a lot of times playwrights, particularly Shakespeare, violence is going to show up at the end of the play. That's the greatest final.
Whenever I'm in tech for a Shakespeare play, I'm usually there. It's usually at 10 45 at night that we tech my stuff because it's always at the end because it's when characters can no longer use words to get what they want. They, they, they, when words will no longer suit, they choose violence.
And so you're, you're always meeting characters at a point where they're they're departing from word and into action. That's the word of the action, the action of the word, right? Shakespeare said it too.
So my responsibility is often the end of a character story. A lot of times you're, you're, you're when that, when this fight is over, one of these characters is not alive anymore. So there's a lot of responsibility there of storytelling.
And I work a lot with the actors and the, and the director to achieve that thing because the moves are to me secondary to the story. You have to know what the story is of the fight before you can choreograph it. And then you choreograph towards that end, right?
So that's why Mercutio and Tybalt never are the same because when those two characters meet, they're played by different actors in a different production in a different time period with a different director. And once you put all those lenses on it, those fights become something else.
[Ryan Paul]
Does the, does the director of the play say, okay, Jeffrey, you have five minutes. Do they, do they give you a time limit of how the fight, I mean, how does that work?
[Geoffrey Kent]
I would say, um, when I first started directing the place, I was weakest was in the pre rehearsal starting meeting with designers. Cause I wasn't sure what happened in those conversations cause I'd never seen them. Cause I'd previously been an actor and a fight director.
So when a director talked to a light designer, I'd never heard one of those conversations before. So I didn't know when I first met with light designers, I was like, so it's a comedy. So really bright or so it's a tragedy.
So we can have lots of shadow. And that was it. I had two sentences and it was those two sentences.
And for the first five years of directing, that's all I could. And then I started asking light designers, what do you like in this convert? What is helpful for you in this?
And then I just learned how to talk to them a little bit better. Um, as a fight director, when I meet with directors, if I've worked with them a lot, we have a shorthand. If it's the first time, I will have read the play.
They'll have read the play. I will ask them what do they want the role of violence to do in their play? Like how, how does violence work with the story of their whole play?
What, when the play becomes violent, why for you does that happen? I mean, I know what the playwright thinks, what's the director thing. And then, um, after I've kind of had that conversation with them, I will often go give them film clips of action to go.
What, what did, what are these, do you respond to? We're not going to do filmic action. That's really hard to achieve on stage.
It's, it's a different speed. It's a different rehearsal schedule. And it's usually people who have less skill.
Like I don't have stunt doubles in place. Um, so I do have to build it on the actors. And when things go wrong, we got to make it safe enough.
They can keep going because there's no cut. We can't do another take. Hamlet and Laertes three hours in have to get that fight rights.
You got to build something that will succeed for them. So I'll give them styles. Like a three musketeers is a great example.
I'll be like, well, here's how, here's like, um, Gene Kelly, three musketeers. Here's, um, the seventies three musketeers that were done by Hobbes. Um, which is like Michael York and you know, Charlton Heston and that style.
And then here's like Hollywood 2003 musketeers where they're fighting 100 guys and it's all, all, all forms of Hollywood flash. Which of these three styles do you respond to? And if they can pick one, that lets me know what I want to lean towards.
Do they let you choose the weapons? Like it's usually a negotiation with, um, the director's concept and time period. Right?
Like, so if they're doing kind of a modern Hamlet, it's going to probably not be broad swords or rapier and dagger. It's probably going to be fencing foils and masks, which actually I think is similar to, I think that's what Beth is doing or something along those lines. So the time period of the setting in Shakespeare is going to affect weaponry a lot.
And I need to kind of be kind of a, or encyclopedic knowledge of different decades and what the weaponry was. But then there's like storytelling where you break that rule cause you want to tell a cool story. And there's also, what do they have?
Right. The Utah Shakespeare festival has a pretty sick armory when I'm dreaming up random things. Usually Ben, the properties director can then send me a photo and go, you mean this?
And I'm like, ah, I see you have that. This year, for example, the swords I was looking for, for, um, Troilus and Cressida weren't quite what I wanted, but they were going to work for me because by using them, we would save enough money to buy the ax that I wanted for Ajax, which had a price point. So we negotiated to go, okay, I'll use these kinds of cutlasses from, from kind of pirate world to pretend they're military sabers.
So I can have that ax cause I want that ax. So that, so it's a lot like that too.
[Ryan Paul]
It's a nice looking ax.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It's a damn fine ax.
[Ryan Paul]
Very shiny.
[Geoffrey Kent]
We're going to see it in shows for years just to pay it off.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah. Uh, the 2028 version of Paul Bunyan, damn right.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Starring Jeffrey Kent as long as he doesn't sing.
[Ryan Paul]
So the, you, you've got that figured out then. And then you.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And you meet the actors.
[Ryan Paul]
Yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
And it's not just weapons, right? You, I mean, fight coordinating is this fists too. Right.
And, and yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
And it's also like, I think the reason fight coordination and fight direction led to direction for me was that it's a cross collaboration with all the departments, right? I need to work with costumes to talk about padding and talk about mobility and talk about armor. I need to work with props.
I need to work with scenery because we want to throw someone down the stairs. So the pitch of the stairs has got to be this, the rope, we got to roll the edges. We've got to pad this here.
I need to talk with lighting because it looks really cool, dramatically side lit, but they can't see anything. So we, we have to find them. We have to change angles of lighting to make sure that we get the delight designer, their look.
But my actors can still see, you know, even, even in Charles and Cressida, we're negotiating light sometimes. Right. Um, so it's all of those things.
And then you're also involved. If it's a big action play like Troilus and Cressida, I'm pretty aggressively involved in casting in the sense that I don't have a veto, but I can be like, if you cast this actor, what I can accomplish with action will be greater than if you cast this actor. So when you're weighing them as actors in terms of their command of text, I'm going to also have a scale over here to show you where I think these actors based on their resume or my experience with them or checking their references tells me I can get the action to in the limited amount of time we have to build it.
Because, you know, when, when I'm really fighting and I'm being kind of snippy with casting, I'll be like, so when's the last time you cast a musical with someone who couldn't sing and just told the music director, you can teach them to sing. Right. And they don't do that.
They make sure they can sing the role. But then with fights, they're constantly like, yeah, but this is who I want. So you can teach them.
Right. I'm like, well, I have, I have two and a half weeks of rehearsal. I'll probably get to rehearse this fight a total of four to five hours.
If I'm lucky, where do you think I can get someone who's never held a sword to in four or five hours versus someone who has done a ton of action, who knows how to tap dance and I can just give them patterns that they already understand. So it's, I I'm, but it depends like when you're casting Hamlet, in this case, it's Walter. Walter's a great fighter.
Um, but when you're casting Hamlet, often the director's needs for them to fight is pretty low on the list. Right. So you go, okay, well then give me a layer to suit can fight because, and we have, we have Blake who's great.
Um, and I'm not on that show, but they have good fighters there. And, um, so you want to give them a ringer who can elevate them, right. Like a dance partner who knows how to dance so well they can kind of bring you along.
Right. So a lot of times when I'm casting, I'm fighting to at least get, you know, Tybalt should be a great fighter. And yet you'd be surprised how often I meet an actor, a director who's like, but I like the, the menace that that actor is bringing.
Like if that actor has never held a sword before. So that menace is going to fall apart when they pull the sword out. Cause they're going to hold it like it's a foreign implement.
And I can only get them so far in a rehearsal process if I'm not building off of existent skills.
[Ryan Paul]
Right. So do you, do you own the choreography?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Like I know how, like some shows, it's my intellectual property by my union SDC. So like if someone saw filmed this fight somehow and then put those exact moves in their show, I would own that property and I'd have legal rights to pursue. But it's so rare that that would happen because it's so unique to the set, to the actors, to the design, to the costumes that I don't think, I would never want to look at someone's fight and go, I'm going to do that fight move for move.
What I do do all the time is steal moves from cinema, like a little three move sequence that is super useful. I have a little sequence from Danny Kaye in the court jester, which is this great little sword fight that he does as a little five move sequence. I throw that in things all the time because it's intuitive and easy to learn.
Danny Kaye was not a sword fighter. He was a dancer and it looks cool. So like I have little snippets of, of action pieces in my Rolodex of my brain that I can throw in when I need them to moves here, one move here, three moves here.
But mostly it's, it's creating it on the actor.
[Ryan Paul]
So do you ever have scenarios where someone says, Oh yes, I, I, I could do sword fighting because I've watched all of these movies, right? That I, or I've LARPed or whatever.
[Geoffrey Kent]
I mean, you know what I mean? I certainly have met lots of people who think they're good at it that aren't. Um, I've also met people who think they're not very good at it that are right.
Cause sometimes we're just not good editors of our own skill sets. And sometimes, you know, we're, actors are hungry and they're chasing jobs and I've, I'm an actor too and I chase jobs and I've, I told the Batman stunt spectacular I could drive a motorcycle, which was true, but I couldn't do stunts on one, right? I could drive it in a circle.
Could I do a wheelie? No. Did he have rockets that he needed to launch on a wheelie?
Yes. So did they have to angle the rockets differently on my motorcycle because I couldn't do a wheelie? Yes.
So, so I'm constantly interacting with people who are not as good as they think they are, who are better than they think they are. And my job is to build the best fight I can with the ingredients I have and the time I have to make sure no one gets hurt. And then it tells a story.
That's the job.
[Ryan Paul]
And it's in that sequence, right? I mean, your number one priority is no one gets hurt. Number two is it looks cool.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah.
[Ryan Paul]
I guess is it, so no one gets hurt tells the story looks cool or no one gets hurt. Looks cool.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Tells the story. I definitely, I'm like, you know, when I ask audiences, you know, like when, and students in classroom, I'm like, what's the two most important things about a fight? And I was like, you're going to do it eight shows a week.
What's the most important thing? They're like, they say safety. And I'm like, all right, but you just bought a hundred dollar ticket to watch it.
What else is important? They're like, it should be exciting. And I'm like, it's those two things.
And the problem is to make an exciting fight and to make a safe fight are very different things. Like, um, I can make a very safe fight that is very boring and I can make a very exciting fight that is very high risk. So what I'm trying to do is create safety and action that you cannot see hide the wires.
It's like, I don't, when Peter Pan flies, I know that actor's on a wire. I'm fairly certain they don't know how to fly. Um, but I don't light the wire because I don't want to be reminded that they're in a safety harness any more than I have to be.
Um, and I feel the same with action is that I need to hide safeties in there that the audience, uh, that, that, that an inexperienced audience cannot see, but allows them to perform this fight at an incredible speed without risk, without physical risk. And, and, and, and acknowledging that the safest sword fight in the world is still more dangerous than not doing one. Like there is an assumed risks to action that is part of it.
Sprained ankles, whacked fingers. The, those are part of the trade. It doesn't mean you go, Oh, that's okay.
We're going to get some of those. You're trying to have none of those. It's just that when you're running across the stage at high speed, doing a sword fight and it's rained and you're kind of over eager and you want to go for it, like accidents can happen.
So my job is to be a risk assessor all the time to go. Everything I'm doing up here is a risk. Is it worth the risk for this moment?
And if so, what do I do to increase the safeties for this particular move to make sure that this isn't going to hurt somebody? And generally they, they dial in over a few shows and it gets to where, and like when I'm building action for Trillis and Cressida, for example, um, my goal is to have the fights at full speed at the designer run, which is at the halfway point of the rehearsal process, right? Cause we do the designer run after we've staged the play before we've gone outside.
And that's when we add technical elements like the theater itself, sound lights, costumes, all that stuff comes outside. So I want in the rehearsal room to have those fights smoking so that they're ready to encounter the enemy being clothing, lights, sound, um, scenery in the sense of that is going to come in and influence our action. So I need the action ready to adapt to it.
If my action leaves rehearsals slow, I often don't find time in the tech process to push the speed because every time we get together, we've thrown a new element at it and they're processing new elements. And I'm trying to say go faster and then you start corrupting safety. So I really like to get the fights.
I like to keep them simple enough that I can get them to speed in the first, you know, we had our fights cooking at speed here by the end of week three of rehearsal.
[Ryan Paul]
Oh, they were cool. I saw the first dress the other day and I thought it was, wait, we talked about the ax. I thought it was cool.
So very quickly before we take our final break off the top of your head, five best sword fights. Now it could be movie, uh, animated, whatever, just overall, not like, if I want to see a cool sword fight, you want me to your top five?
[Geoffrey Kent]
I would start with Rob Roy. Cause we talked about Liam earlier, but I think Rob Roy is a great fight because Tim Roth and Liam Neeson are acting that fight so well that they couldn't use the stunt doubles because the stunt doubles couldn't emulate the acting choices they were making physically because they just were making such an so amazed. So the actors were so good.
That whole fight is them and it's like seven minutes and I would never stay just a fight on stage more than a minute, but in film it holds. So I get really excited about that. Um, I like, um, Kurosawa stuff.
Um, just because of the way he, he, he, it's kind of operatic and Epic. So, you know, like really any of his stuff, all his action is, is kind of breathtaking. Um, I, I think it's important that we'd cycle back.
It's Liam again, but I, my favorite lightsaber fight that's live is definitely episode one of phantom menace. Um, I really love the Lester three musketeers fights top to bottom. That's also William Hobbs, the same man that query craft Rob Roy.
Um, Hobbs is just my favorite fight director of all time.
[Ryan Paul]
That would be the 70s three musketeers.
[Geoffrey Kent]
That'd be the Lester man. He did the Beatles movies and then he did, and he did that. And if I want actors to see a really well acted fights with, with mistakes and sloppiness, it's that it's like Oliver Reed and, um, Michael York.
I mean, it's just a glorious set of, and, and, and, um, uh, Christopher, uh, Saruman, um, plumber is, is playing, um, uh, not plumber, um, uh, Lee Lee, Christopher Lee is playing Rochefort and like is, is, is 10, 15 years older than all those guys and just being the crap out of them. Um, so I liked that one. And let's see.
Um, let's get tears. Splash buckling. How many I got there for, for, uh, let's see.
Oh man. Oh, that's easy. Um, it's Mark of Zorro, um, with Tyrone power and Basil Rathbone.
Um, Basil's also in the court jester. So I could, I could basically just say anything Basil did. Basil died for a living in film.
Like he was, he's, he dies in Robin hood. He dies in Mark of Zorro. He dies in court jester launched by a catapult.
Um, but he was an Olympic fencer and an actor. He played Sherlock Holmes pretty famously in a lot of films. But, um, in Mark of Zorro, I was just recently watching a clip of his death.
And he does like eight missed Perry's leading into this death. And it's the fanciest blade play. You'll ever see a full camera frontal of an actor's face doing because he could do it.
So yeah, it's in Mark of Zorro.
[Ryan Paul]
How's Errol Flynn as a sword fighter?
[Geoffrey Kent]
He was really good. That's legit, man. He was really physical and really understood it.
And in his later days, he, as he'd lived a harder part of your life, he'd lost his step. Like in master of Ballantrae, Patty Crane, who's kind of the grandfather of stage combat for so many of us. We all got to study with him at different points.
I, I studied with him right at the end where he wore like a sweatsuit and an Ascot, you know? Um, but Patty Crane was his stunt double and master of Ballantrae and he, and he wore fake rubber shoulders. So he'd look as big as Errol.
And you can see in the sword fights, you can watch Errol's shoulders just disappear every once in a while and watch Patty snap his shoulder and throw that rubber shoulder back up while he fought. So he didn't look like he had a hunchback. Um, but yeah, Basil was legit.
In fact, my online handle for years has been, um, Basil Flynn, which is a mashup of my two favorite cinema swashbucklers.
[Ryan Paul]
Very cool. All right. Let's take our third break with a song that I had never heard before, which we've talked about.
This is called American Wedding by Gogol Bordello. Is that, did I say that right?
[Geoffrey Kent]
Yeah, you did.
[Ryan Paul]
So let's, yeah.
[Geoffrey Kent]
Gogol Bordello is a gypsy punk band, um, that I really adore. Lots of toe tappers, um, start wearing purple is one of their songs. Um, and this one, American Wedding is new to me.
Um, it's been around for a bit, but new to me, it's in Creature Commandos, an animated, um, DC, uh, show that's for adults. Um, so it's pretty violent and there's a giant fight between Frankenstein and the bride of Frankenstein throughout the entirety of this song. Everything's about action today.
And, um, throughout the entirety of this song going through time, because he constantly is trying to find her. So for like 150 years, every time she's tried to marry someone, he shows up and gets in a huge fight with that person as Frankenstein. Um, and they use this song to kind of choreograph all the action to, as they go through it.
So I like it. It's mostly just saying American weddings are nowhere near as cool as the weddings that we go to out here in Europe, but, um, it's funny and makes me laugh.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay. This is American Wedding by Gogol Bordello. It's one in the morning and DJ's patching up the chords and everybody's full of cake, staring at the floor.
Proper couples start to mumble, then it's time to go. People gotta get up early and they gotta go.
[Reese Whitaker]
People gotta get up early and she's got a boyfriend. And this whole thing is one huge disappointment.
[Ryan Paul]
And nothing gets this going, not even chips and cakes. Nobody talks about my super theory of super everything.
[Geoffrey Kent]
So whether you're Donald Trump or being an anarchist, make sure that your wedding doesn't end up like this.
[Ryan Paul]
I understand the cultures of a different kind, but here word celebration just doesn't come to mind.
[Lauren Bird]
That was American Wedding by Gogol Bordello. You're listening to the Apex Radio, our Utah Shakespeare Festival edition. I'll turn it back to you, Ryan.
[Ryan Paul]
Thank you, Lauren. We're here with Jeffrey Kent, who's a fight director, director and actor. He's directing See How They Run this season at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, our 65th season.
He's also the fight director for Troilus and Cressida, which both are must-see shows. So this is the moment that as we've listened to our show before, that we talk about what's bringing us joy. So I'm going to start with you, Jeffrey Kent.
What are you currently watching, reading, listening to or playing that is bringing you joy?
[Geoffrey Kent]
I'm going to share two things. One is something I just did, which is a doing, but I think is still very joyful. I went out to Great Basin on Saturday night to see the stars and to visit these 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines and to just sit in front of a tree that has been alive for 5,000 years.
They're the oldest living things we think on the planet, and there is just something about that that means a great deal to me. But what brings me joy is Arrested Development. When I'm working on a farce, I like to surround myself with great comedy.
I grew up as a kid, when I was being babysat by my grandmother, we watched Hee Haw and we watched Laugh-In and we watched The Carol Burnett Show. Those were the things that kind of taught me, and Mary Hartman too. But we watched a lot of that kind of structured comedy with a little bit of improvisational structure to it, which I always loved.
And then I watch Arrested Development because I think it's kind of the perfect American comedy because the speed at which it's operating with humor is incredible. Even the setups are jokes because they're setting up something that's three episodes down the line. The thread of their matrix of comedy is so complex, and it wasn't as successful as it could have been on television because it was a TV show that said, You can't cook dinner while this is on.
This is a full court press comedy, and if you don't watch it, you get lost. And so I've rewatched it many times in my life, but what I've done now is I load them up on my phone when I'm driving and I listen to them. I don't watch them, but I just kind of listen to them because I enjoy the rhythm of the language and the way it pays off things.
And it always makes me smile, and every time I listen to it, I catch a joke I missed. Especially now that I'm listening, not watching, because I'm catching stuff in the setups and the words that are just so funny. I know it's a bird.
I'm on the phone. I love that show. How about you?
[Ryan Paul]
Lauren Byrd, what are you currently watching, reading, listening to, or playing that's bringing you joy?
[Lauren Bird]
So this is one that you, Ryan, have actually talked about, I think, on the radio show. My dad and I started watching The Residence, like the White House murder mystery. We're halfway through, and just like the way they talk, I don't know if it's exactly how real people talk, but it's so my humor.
I'm just having a great time with it.
[Ryan Paul]
Plus, you know a lot about birds.
[Lauren Bird]
Exactly that. And then my dad's like, oh, they actually did it right for how the White House is set up. So he's enjoying that, and I'm just enjoying how funny it is, and I love murder mysteries.
What about you?
[Ryan Paul]
I'm glad you like that show.
[Lauren Bird]
What about you, Ryan? What are you currently watching, reading, listening to, or playing that's bringing you joy?
[Ryan Paul]
I am rediscovering the music of Jesse Belvin. Jesse Belvin was, in the 50s and early 60s, was a crooner singer. Think Sam Cooke, think Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, that kind of stuff.
And he was very, very popular, very exciting. His life was cut short. He was in Little Rock, Arkansas at 27.
Did a concert, and the concert had been disrupted by the Klan multiple times. And on his way home, he and his wife got in a car accident and killed them both. And they found that the brakes had been tampered with.
That they think that white supremacists, the Klan had... But his catalog is not deep, but it's broad and beautiful, and his voice is just incredible. He co-wrote Earth Angel.
You've heard that song before? Of course. But he does a version of It's Alright With Me, which is just spectacular.
So Jesse Belvin has been on a loop of my playlist recently, and it brings me joy. It also brings me joy as a historian to think what could have been. What could have been if life would have taken a different turn for Jesse Belvin?
So that's what's bringing me joy. Jeffrey Kent, thank you for being here. We're going to go out here with your final song, but I should say that he's directing See How They Run, which is in rep this season in the Randall with Something Rotten and She Loves Me.
The Engelstad has... He's fight directing Troilus and Cressida, which is in rep with... I was going to say Hamilton, but Hamlet and Twelfth Night.
And then, of course, the Ains Theatre shows, the Book Club play, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will open later in July. So thank you for being a part of this experiment, and it's fascinating. You're an amazing human.
[Geoffrey Kent]
It's a pleasure being here. It's fun to talk about theater. Thanks, friends.
[Ryan Paul]
So let's go out with the song you gave us. It's from Billy Joel, a song called Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Why did you choose that one?
[Geoffrey Kent]
We talked about my dad briefly earlier. He's not really part of my life because my parents were divorced young, and I found my own way with my relationship with him, and it just wasn't healthy and kind of let it go. But Billy Joel is a dad memory, but it's an interesting dad memory because it was because I had access to his cassette tapes, so I was listening to his music.
But I don't have memory of listening to it with him. I just have memory of stealing his cassette tapes to play in my little Sony Walkman, and I had... He had a ton of Billy Joel, and I remember really loving the length of the song, the narrative of the song, the way the song is multiple songs, the way the song can kill a karaoke night if you can get him to play it because it's like 12 minutes.
You can fade out where you like listeners. But I laughed because after I sent that to you, I realized it's also a song about divorce, which I think is really funny that I ended up picking a Billy Joel song in memory of my dad that is about divorce. So you can take the...
I'll talk about that in therapy next week, I'm sure. But love it. Fantastic song.
[Ryan Paul]
Okay. Well, thank you again. If you want to know more about this season for the festival, you can visit bard.org.
If you're interested in downloading more episodes of the Apex Radio Hour, it's the Apex Radio Hour wherever you can get your podcasts. Thank you again, Jeffrey Kent. Thank you, Lauren Bird.
And of course, in the words of the great American poet Bill Withers, I wish you well. Perhaps a bottle of rosé instead
[Lauren Bird]
Get a table near the street In our old familiar place You and I face to face A bottle of red A bottle of white It all depends upon your appetite I'll meet you anytime you want In our Italian restaurant
[Geoffrey Kent]
Things are okay with me these days
[Lauren Bird]
I got a good job, I got a good office I got a new wife, got a new life
[Reese Whitaker]
And the family's fine Oh, lost touch long ago You lost weight, I did not know
[Ryan Paul]
You could ever look so nice after so much time You remember those days hanging out at the Village Green
[Lauren Bird]
Engineer boots, leather jackets and tight blue jeans You'd drop a dime in the box and play a song about New Orleans Cold beer, hard lights My sweet romantic teenage nights Oh, Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies And the king and the queen of the prom Riding around with the car top down and the radio on Nobody looked any finer Oh, it's more of a hit at the Parkway Diner We never knew we could want more than that out of life Sure, Brenda and Eddie would always know how to survive Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of 75 When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July Everyone said they were crazy Brenda, you know that you're much too lazy And Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life Oh, but there we were waving Brenda and Eddie goodbye Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Well, they got an apartment with deep-piped carpets And a couple of paintings from Sears A big waterbed that they bought with the bread they saved for a couple of years But they started to fight when the money got tight And they just didn't count on the tears Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh They were having a very nice time, but it's always the same in the end They got a divorce as a matter of course And they parted their posts as friends Then the king and the queen went back to the green
[Ryan Paul]
But you could never go back there again, no I knew an idiot had it all ready by the summer of 75
[Lauren Bird]
From the height of the load to the end of the show For the rest of their lives They couldn't go back to the greases Let's say good news, pick up their pieces We always knew they would both find a way to get by Oh, and that's all I heard about Brenda Renee Can't tell you more unless I told you already And here we are waving Brenda and Eddie goodbye Oh, oh
[Ryan Paul]
Bottle red, bottle white
[Lauren Bird]
Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight I'll meet you anytime you want In our Italian restaurant