Encore: Dan Hiatt
by Sam Hurwitt, Associate Editor

Actor Dan Hiatt moved out to San Francisco from his native Idaho fresh out of college in 1976 and has since become a local comedic favorite from many productions at California Shakespeare Theater, where he's an associate artist, and at ACT, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep, the Magic, Aurora, TheatreWorks and Marin Theatre Company. After many quick-change roles over the years, last December he took on his first one-man show This Wonderful Life, a solo version of It's a Wonderful Life at San Jose Rep. He just finished back-to-back runs of Gogol's The Government Inspector and Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class at American Conservatory Theater and is gearing up for the title role in Uncle Vanya at Cal Shakes this summer.

Was This Wonderful Life your last gig before the two ACT shows?

I had to rest my voice after This Wonderful Life, because it kind of got trashed after the first preview, just talking for 90 minutes and all those different voices. So I couldn't do anything, but there wasn't enough time to do a full show in between anyway. I've lived in my place for about 11 years now and never painted, so I got about half the inside of the house painted. That was my rest.

How did you wind up in the Bay Area?

Howard Swain and I went to the same university, and we had friends here, so we came here in '76 and both of us ended up staying. I worked at various jobs for about 10 years and did theatre at night. I did a group called the Distractions for about three years back in the late '70s, early '80s. It was kind of a crazy a cappella comedy group. I worked at the One Act Theatre a lot, but none of these were paying jobs, so I worked as a welder and a shoe salesman and a bunch of stuff during that time. Then I got into Greater Tuna in the late '80s. That was my first quit-your-day-job job. I hung onto that for about two years, and knock on wood, I've been able to make it ever since.

What playwrights do you particularly connect with?

I like Shaw. There's something about him that I just find so incredibly funny, and the fact that somebody writing 100 years ago can still shock people today I think is really great. And Chekhov, whenever I get a chance I'll leap at it. I've done Cherry Orchard and Seagull, smaller characters in each of those, so I'm really looking forward and a little bit scared to be doing Uncle Vanya. I'm still trying to figure out Shakespeare. Maybe it's the milieu that I grew up in. I always feel like I have such a tin ear poetically.

This is after how many Shakespeare roles?

A lot of them, but a lot of clowns. That's kind of how I got into the Shakespeare world.

Do you prefer comic roles?

I think I feel more comfortable in them. You can kind of gauge how you're doing in a comedy.

What do you do when you can tell it just isn't working?

Well, here's the thing about comedy. I think it all has to come out of a really grounded emotional character need, so you have something absolutely real that can play like drama. The trap that I've fallen into many times, particularly with those clowns of Shakespeare, when you see in the dramatis personae "Dogberry, a clown," it does something to you in the first two weeks of rehearsal where you go in and you try to be funny. If you're lucky you can get out of that trap real quick and realize that Dogberry is a man who has really pressing needs, a man who has tremendous pride in who he is and what he does. That is where the comedy comes out of. It's not about a funny walk, a funny voice or how we can fall down and look foolish. I find that with comedy it's usually a mistake to play someone as stupid. Even playing a stupid person, there has to be some sort of intelligence shining through, a human need that maybe his stupidity is an obstacle to. I think if you've done your job right you're pretty much immune to a quiet audience.