Actor's philosophy on life differs greatly from his fatalistic stage role
Friday, May 26, 2006
BY PETER FILICHIA
Star-Ledger Staff
NEW JERSEY STAGE
Fate, shmate.
David Conrad doesn't believe in it -- though the character he's playing at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey certainly does.
Conrad is portraying Guildenstern -- not in the Bard's "Hamlet," but in Tom Stoppard's 1967 existentialist drama, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." It starts a four-week run Tuesday in Madison.
While the title characters are small roles in "Hamlet," they're the main ones in Stoppard's play. The playwright focuses on the pair, who were asked by Claudius, Hamlet's stepfather, to see what's bothering the young prince of Denmark. They agree, though they'll soon wish they hadn't become involved.
The fatalistic nature of the play becomes an issue in the first scene, where Guildenstern loses almost 100 coin tosses in a row to Rosencrantz.
"Guildenstern's the type of guy who looks for some overarching design," Conrad says. "He figures that if this keeps happening, there must be some kind of great fate at work."
So when matters become dicey for him and Rosencrantz (played by Sean Mahan), Guildenstern -- unlike Conrad -- chalks it up to fate.
"I just don't believe in it," he says, with a casual shrug. "Though some people are born better than others, or are luckier, others get drowned on a boat, or wiped out by a war. You do what you can with your life. You decide what to do with it, and make choices."
Conrad chose to travel to Los Angeles for the pilot season last year, and it certainly worked out. He's a regular on the CBS series "Ghost Whisperer," just renewed for a second season. He portrays Jim Clancy, the paramedic-fireman whose wife, Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt), can communicate with the spirit world.
Not bad for a kid from Pittsburgh (where he still lives), who was originally a history major at Brown University -- until he chose to segue into acting.
"It was something that interested me, when Yul Brynner came to town in 'The King and I' when I was 15," he says, a bit sheepishly, as if ashamed to admit he liked a mere musical. Then he rallies. "I always liked characters in books, but in plays, they really stood out. When they pause in a play, you can see them actually pause. You don't see that as much in a novel."
At Brown, he had his first encounter with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." He played Hamlet -- which is a minor role in this play. Conrad says he never tried to aggrandize himself by saying to people, "You know, I once played Hamlet."
The dark, brooding actor acknowledges that he and Hamlet share a melancholy nature. "When people at Brown heard I was playing him, they say, 'Sure. Perfect casting.'"
After Conrad was graduated in 1990, he didn't seek acting work right away. "I did the slacker lifestyle thing, being a waiter and a carpenter. When I heard that the best actors went to Juilliard, I decided to go, too."
He played Hamlet there as well -- but again, only in a manner of speaking.
"We did a workshop freshman year where we did the whole uncut five-hour play, so we all played different parts in it," he says brightly. "I was Claudius and Bernardo, too."
Despite saying that "Ghost Whisperer" provides him with "a nice paycheck," his Hamlet melancholy kicks in again.
"I've always felt I've done a bad job of managing my own life, or saying the right words," he admits. "My personal life doesn't really exist. I mostly work. You have to decide if you're going to settle down, and at 39 -- well, I'll be 39 in two months -- I probably missed my chance with any woman.
"My choice," he adds. "Not fate."