Like everything I've gotten in this town, said star-of-the moment Michael Emerson, "I got this job on my own." He didn't have much choice. Hard as he had tried for 13 years, Emerson, now acclaimed by critics near and far for his portrayal of the title role in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Minetta Lane Theater), couldn't get an agent. Now, they're calling him!
Since opening in Moises Kaufman's sleeper-of-the-season docu-play (all material spoken is from trial transcripts, Wilde's works and letters, and biographies), Emerson, 42, has made movies, done magazine layouts and been offered big money roles on Broadway. "But where would I find another part like this?" he asks. "This is what every actor dreams of. How often does the dream come true? I have a regular paycheck and was finally able to quit my day job (which he kept until well after the Off Broadway opening). I just want to enjoy it."
Emerson has had time to reflect. "My life will never be the same," he says. "The press has been amazing. People are even starting to recognize me. Who would have thought?"
Maybe he looks familiar from dozens of theatre district retail jobs he held. Little is known about Emerson. "I like performers who have a little mystery," he laughs. "But I'm not very mysterious. I grew up in a farm town in central Iowa, mid way between Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, and from age nine dreamed of acting. When I finally got to New York, I never pursued my dream. I was too busy trying to survive." He paid his dues and sudden success is sweet. "The stress has come and gone," he says. "The day the review from the New York Times hit was pretty dizzy. But I've settled in and do as much as I can. When it gets overwhelming, I go home and hide."
Emerson had returned to New York after acting and directing in the South for four years and completing the MFA program at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, he learned from a friend that Kaufman was auditioning actors over 35 for a reading. He was familiar with the Wilde plays -- had even acted in a couple -- and could do a very good British dialect. Kaufman cast Emerson immediately, but it took two and a half years to reach off Broadway. The playwright/director, a teacher and native of Venezuela, is the founder and artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, under whose auspices Gross Indecency was produced on a shoestring budget. "Moises spent his money wisely," says Emerson. "He got the right actors (an additional ensemble of nine), first-class costumes, and a terrific publicist who got the Times' chief drama critic to break precedent and review an off-off-Broadway showcase. We were a bunch of grumbling, out-of-work actors hoping to find an agent, but we rehearsed as if it was Broadway."
Kaufman noted that the play is attracting mainstream audiences in addition to "the audiences of the converted (younger, more literary, gay audiences) who go along with Oscar Wilde and his humor... No matter the type of audience," boasted Emerson, "we always get 'em by the end!"
[END]
