Solo Performance: “It Has to Ache” by / Sara Felder

The May/June issue of Theatre Bay Area magazine includes a feature by Sara Felder titled “Juggling the Truth: True and Semi-Factual Confessions in Solo Performance.” We’re pleased to present a number of Felder’s interviews with her fellow Bay Area solo performers that went into the article.

Geoff Hoyle trained with Marcel Marceau’s teacher, Etienne Decroux, in Paris, developing his unique physical comic style, a combination of the court jester, vaudeville and English music hall. He made his mark in the Bay Area as the Pickle Family Circus clown, Mr. Sniff. In addition to many comic roles in plays at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and American Conservatory Theater, he was the original Zazu in the Broadway cast of “The Lion King.” His long-extended solo show “Geezer” at the Marsh was just the latest of many shows Hoyle has created, including “Feast of Fools,” “The Convict’s Return,” “Geni(us),” “Boomer” and “The First Hundred Years.”


“It Has to Ache”
Geoff Hoyle, interviewed by phone by Sara Felder, February 16, 2012.

The prelude: before I start I want to quote Buster Keaton who said, “I don’t feel qualified to talk about my work.” The answers to all your questions are in the show. When people ask me if I teach, I answer, “Yes, come to the show. That’s the class.”

Why is it important to tell the story of “Geezer”? What’s the impetus for the stories you tell?

It comes out of anxiety. A lot of my shows come out of Jewish Viking anxiety.
I always feel, as an exile, a kinship with the Jewish spirit. Because I’m a displaced person. And being a fool, there is a need to say things that are unpopular and unpleasant, and as far as I can see—given the laughter that is provoked—true.

For “Geezer,” the stepping off point is in a general sense, feeling, “Wait, let me read the contract again. What’s this, on the bottom in small print: may cause death in older people.” So there’s the general anxiety and confusion and worry about that process. As I say in the show: Is it death we fear or decline?

The specific trigger for the show was when I had surgery. Because of my history with British hospitals and my early postwar experiences; it was so frightful. So I felt my fears were well-founded. I was afraid. So I wrote some stuff down and gave it to David Ford and he said he would help me develop it. Charlie [Varon] is the one who pushed me into this material and David put it on the stage.

It seems like you write a lot about aging. Like with “Boomer.”

“Boomer” was the midlife crisis. Seems like the dark ages now. “Boomer” was “What happened?” I just saw a bumper sticker and it simply said, “What just happened?” [Going into character] “I was going to be this or that and then something happened. I was going to be in working class movies in London and then what happened? Is there a plan? What just happened? Did I do okay?”

“Boomer,” about the midlife crisis and this one, “Geezer,” are both a reckoning. Hopefully when people see “Geezer,” they will say, “I’m not alone.” And judging by the audience demographic, some, but not all, are older people, who know my clowning work from the Pickle Family Circus [as the clown Mr. Sniff] and they want to know what Mr. Sniff has to say about all of this. Though I’m not just a clown. There’s nothing wrong with clowning. Comedy is commentary, not just laughter. Laughter is deeper if the commentary is sharp and truthful. As I told Lorenzo [Pisoni, who has a solo show about his life in the Pickle Family Circus], It has to ache.

Why tell the story on the stage, as opposed to another medium? Why make it public?

That is my field and forum. I am trained to make people laugh as the business of my expressive life. I started writing a bit more poetically as I got older, but really, I’m a performer. So far, that’s what I do. There’s a certain fearlessness about it. It’s provocative in the sense that I’m going to take off all my clothes, show all my warts.

It’s a formal counter to the fact of aging, because performing “Geezer” requires so much effort, will, energy, transformation. To memorize the script, do all the physical parts. If I can pull that off, it’s its own redressing.

So by performing this show about growing old, you are actually countering the aging process. And we (the audience) get to come along on that trip with you.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney called it, “the redress of poetry.”

Is your solo work mostly based on your own experiences? Is that aspect important for you?

When you perform theatre, you don’t swear on the bible or the constitution to tell the whole truth. It’s art and requires a leap of imagination. I say it this way in “Geezer”: “Is that really what happened or am I making it into a story?” That’s a David Ford line… It’s a transitional line. David saw the need to say these things about telling the truth and selectivity. So we put that in a character’s voice.

On choosing which scenes go in the show:

How did I choose certain moments? Specifically when I take Mary, my girlfriend in the show, to meet my parents: Why did I choose that scene? It was important to show that I was embarrassed by my parents (and they were embarrassed by me). And then I show the scene where I am embarrassing to my children. Generational embarrassment. Demarcation of time.

I find it isn’t about what’s technically “true” but what is emotionally true. To me, it doesn’t matter if those scenes happened exactly as you say. The sentiment feels very true to me.

Yes. Philip Roth calls it, “the truth behind the fiction.”

Can you talk about the role of comedy and physical theatre in your shows? How do you decide when it’s important to tell the story with words and when with physicality?

I’ve been around the block with physical comedy. Comedy is a means, not an end. The process is that I’ll be telling a story and then I start acting it out. And I play all the characters. For example, in “Geezer,” when I leave my father in the hospital, I do this thing with the hands [putting his hand up against his father’s hand]. People don’t know if he has died. He is no longer with us. He can hear. And he can feel. He can’t talk. The next minute is silent. All it is is me thinking: “Now what do I do? I’ve said goodbye - what more can I say? Will I come back again and say goodbye again? Is that cold-hearted to run to catch a train to do a show?” All of that is in the nonverbal struggle. I look at my watch, which is a signifier for the audience, meaning, “I gotta go. The train’s waiting.” And then being stopped by seeing the nurse. I nod my head to the nurse. Yes, I have to go or he died. Yes, I understand how hard this is for me. She is looking at me and nods her head. Yes, I understand. She watches me leave. And I hold that moment. There’s a lot that’s nonverbal. I guess I must have acted it out. And David [Ford] said we don’t need the words.

Right. It’s more powerful as a nonverbal sequence. The audience gets to work a little harder, which we enjoy doing, and the power of the emotion is stronger.

It’s the gestalt of looking at a beautiful painting. I’m not saying my work is like a beautiful painting, but you get so much that is nonverbalized. Or a gesture in a film. The visual. “Ohhhh!” And it’s good to make the audience work too.

On doing solo theatre:

For the performer it’s about being in control. That’s also the liability. If you fuck up, you fuck up. No one else is there to help you and there’s no better-looking person who is going to enter the scene. Your drivel is out there.

If you can make it work—like Lily Tomlin or Lucille Ball or Dario Fo—these are bravura commentators. I put myself in their hands and I know it’s going to be worth it. To see Lily Tomlin do “Tommy Velour” is the price of admission. Or to see Dario Fo do the old woman, a bystander, watching Jesus drag his cross [in British working class accent]: “He’s not going to make it. He’s going to need help.” It’s a working class, bottom-up appreciation of the Savior.

One of the tricks that David and I have come up with when I was putting up the show again and rehearsing it, to keep the material fresh and alive and to keep exploring it was throwing yourself a bone. We’ll try a joke or a line at different shows. Dan [Hoyle] does that too. Throw in a couple of extra lines, write a new joke. Find ways to keep it sharp.

On taking risks onstage:

I read this interview with Lorenzo [Pisoni] and he talked about his dad [Larry Pisoni] and Bill [Irwin]. And he said, “Hoyle is completely fearless.” I took that as a huge compliment. Richard Seyd [the director and teacher] once said to me: “No one could ever accuse you of not taking risks.” And yet, I’m worried and anxious as a performer. You should talk to [his wife] Mary.

I totally understand. Yet onstage you are not worried or anxious.

Onstage you commit. You can get angry too. I can get pissed off at an audience if I feel I’m not getting it back and I’m working so hard up here. They have to do their part too. We’re here because we’re here.

With the audience, sometimes I feel like a charioteer with 150 horses—or in a big theatre like the Nederlander, 1700 horses. You have to keep the horses from falling. Working the house. It’s very exciting when it works.


Sara Felder is a local solo performer who recently workshopped a new play, “A Queer Divine,” at the Marsh on June 6. Visit sarafelder.com.