After the O'Neil. Chapter 24

When I got back from Conn. I still had no agent but I was being offered really good roles Off-off. The most interesting role and play for me was "The Gentle People" by Irwin Shaw.

Now the character I played was written to be evil. Why I say this is because ,from my research, the writer wanted the audience to hate this character. It was written in the 30's and the character I played, Goff, was a metaphor for Hitler who was in power in Europe when the play was originally done.

I had played bad guys before but none with the intelligence and the audacity of this Goff. One of the things he does was to extort money from the father of a girl he was dating. To get into that mind I had to rationalize his actions. Goff felt if he did not dominate , he would be dominated. So his evil came out of fear. Again I kicked ass.

At the end of the play, these fishermen ,who I had been terrorizing , plan to kill me because ther was no other choice as the police were paid off by me. They took me out on their boat to take me to the other side of the river and when the time was right they hit me over the head and throw me out of the boat to drown.

When I was thrown over the audience would clap and cheer. If I could be so believable in comedy and drama, the big time in acting should be just around the corner.