Paul Boocock (Performer/Writer) performed ‘Boocock = VP’ at HERE’s American Living Room, EST’s Octoberfest and ARSNOVA. As a member of ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, he collaborated on ‘Highway to Tomorrow.’ From 1993-1999 Paul was in the comedy duo PREMIUM BOB, performing in theatres and clubs in New York and Hollywood – including The Flea, The HBO Workspace and the off-Broadway Kaufman; PREMIUM BOB had a development deal with ABC-TV. Paul was Steve in Hal Hartley’s ‘Henry Fool.’ He is Dirk in Steven Schardt’s short film ‘Boutique’ – currently showing at film festivals. He played Malcolm in ‘The Curse of the Starving Class,’ at Yale Rep – directed by Jim Simpson. Other NYC theatre work: Peter in the Kristin Marting directed adaptation of ‘The Possessed’; Benno in Todd Alcott ‘ Waterbirds’ (at PS 122); Marcus in Target Margin’s seminal ‘Titus Andronicus’; Galy Gay in Tiny Mythic’s ‘A Man’s a Man.’ Paul has worked extensively in commercials as on-camera and voice talent. He is the voice of Dr. Jonas Venture in the Cartoon Network’s ‘Venture Bros.’ He was photographed by famed photographer Richard Avedon for The New Yorker Magazine.

 

What first attracted you to acting? What were your goals when you first began performing, and have they changed since?
I was first attracted to acting because I wanted to feel the love. I think that's why lots of us get into it. For a while you think that fame might be the same thing. But after a while I started to realize that just doing it was the way to feel it. It sounds so ooky cliche, but there is no connection like live theater. It's one on one to the nth degree. One on one on one on one infinity symbol.

Please describe your training as an actor. In your opinion, what part of your training best prepared you for a career in showbiz?
I've been performing since I can remember. Always took classes through school. Took lots of Theater at Williams College. Did scene work with a great teacher/director named David Kaplan who encouraged my hambone instincts, but gave them legitimacy in Brecht and Shakespeare pieces. Then did some Meisner work with Louise Lasser and Bob Modica to add some depth to the ham.

Best Training: Just after college I was part of an avant-garde theatre start-up in Williamstown with some other Williams Grads called the S.E.T. We all taught each other how the theatre works, from doing the shows to cleaning the commodes. All aspects of producing work that mattered. Close 2nd: the years I worked with David Latham and Gary Schwartz on Premium Bob - for similar reasons.

You seem to have had a lot of success as a professional actor. In your opinion, which of your qualities have enabled you to succeed where so many others give up in frustration?
I am really really stubborn. And delusional. I believe that folks really MUST see my stuff. That it is my calling. Like a priest or teacher. Stubborn = delusional?

An actors’ career has ups and downs. Is there anything you do when you’re working to prepare for potential lean times?
If I had to do it over again, I would spend a bit more time up front looking for the other thing. Because no matter what gains you make, there are those un-times. You just have the wrong haircut or something. I started generating my own work when I was in Premium Bob. Wish I did that from the get-go. I wasted a couple of years hanging at the Equity lounge with my card. The only successes I have had have been from the self-starters. The writing now seems to be developing into the thing that will be the bridge to the performer - hopefully they will support each other more and more.

You have worked with David Latham as the comedy duo, Premium Bob, as well as in numerous larger cast shows, but you also perform solo shows including your current production, Boocock’s House of Baseball. What inspired you to begin performing solo shows?
Premium Bob and the solo stuff come from sort of the same place. Since childhood I have always been one of those people who enjoyed doing what Latham calls parlor tricks. Look, I can sound like James Mason in the boudoir. Look, I can sound like Jimmy Stewart asking to get his car re-fueled. Look, I can sound like Sean Connery being Russian. We both decided that sort of Vaudevillian performance style had just as much legitimacy as what we used to call wool theatre: folks trying to look cold while wearing heavy clothes under the hot lights, folks trying to create the pretense that they are actually living through a Chekovian winter.

Of course, after doing the solo or duo stuff, I always get drawn back to larger cast theater work, because I do need to hang with other people once in while and not have everything be about me. Sometimes I do get sick of me, me, me. I fascinate myself, but you can only learn just so much about life from yourself.

Do you begin work intending to create a solo show, or do your shows come out of an ongoing creative process? How does a Paul Boocock show “come together”?
I just write things. Then start to think of the things as monologues. Then I attach music to them - sometimes I write certain stuff to particular music in my head. I've always liked early 70's R&B. I am one of WASPYist dudes you'll ever meet, but my life soundtrack is the O'Jay's and Issac Hayes. If that makes me
sound like every other guy you grew up with, so be it. I don't claim to be completely original. At some point I start looking at the stuff I've written to see if there are any theme streams running. Then stuff that doesn't fit into the theme stream stays in the computer for something further down the line. I am starting to get curious about the idea of writing stuff that could come out of the mouths of others.

You are working with director Mary Catherine Burke on this show. Can you describe how you work together?
As part of her incredible skills sets, Burke is an incredible dramaturg. She, more often than not, is the one who figures out how stuff will connect. She'll say/write in so many words what the connection should be, and then I figure out how to put that stuff into my own words. I tend to want to think that folks will just go with me anywhere I want to take them, and she says: No, Boocock, folks are gonna p.o.'d at you for just moving onto the next thing without making it clear why you did or said something. She always reminds me that theatre/performance is different than life. Life can seem random and then we figure out how to explain it with performance. Not theatre is random and then we try to apply that to life. She really helps make the shows go somewhere too. Not just be exercises in picking up the rock and lowering it in the same place. I could go on and on about Burke. She's really terrific. No lazy answers. And I think we do push each other into territories that are great places that we wouldn't necessarily know were there for us.

With something as personal as a solo show, how do you find the right director?
You ask around. The good ones stick out for people. It's such a hard job: producer, therapist, dramaturg, traffic control etc etc. I've been really lucky to work with unique talents. Gary Schwartz was someone I got to know through the fab director/producer/impresario of HERE Kristin Marting. David Simonds - actor/director/producer/impresario - directed my first piece to perfection. And different pieces need different amounts of the above director skill sets, so you trial and error it until you find the right match-up.

What’s the most challenging aspect of putting up a solo show?
Staying focused while you have to do all the other things in your life with the same degree of focus. Just keeping all the balls in play and then being really present when it's time to deliver the goods.

In practical terms, how involved are you with the promotional efforts of your show? What have been the most effective methods for bringing in an audience?
I'm involved with it all. Burke has taken on lots of the producorial aspects. Hard worker/ perfectionist that she is. A good publicist is key. I have been really pleased with a guy named David Gibbs

Boocock's House of Baseball examines contemporary American politics through the vehicle of baseball. If I don’t know anything about baseball, why should I see this show?
As I say in the show, baseball is just my way of explaining what I revere about America. If someone told me that they were using Opera to explain what's important about our current body politic, I would go see that show. When you're living in challenging, polarized times, sometimes you need to look at things from another angle, the angle of somebody's passion. You can look at the media, blogs etc to just talk politics and that can get tiring, and I know my opinions start to get codified into inflexible talking points. I think we all need to look at stuff from a fresh perspective, through different filters to loosen up the dialogue a bit. If we don't loosen, things aren't gonna change much.

I tend not to get to baseball wonky either. I keep the baseball stories in the realm of character studies, and characters are something most folks are interested in. And I dance at bit. I do Derek Jeter the same way do Brando or Dick Cheney.

Your show is generlly critical of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. (“If baseball can survive W., then America can survive W. “) What are your goals for this show? (Social goals as well as career goals.)
I am definitely critical of those guys. But I was critical of Clinton too. Criticism is crucial to democracy. I know that some folks look back at the Watergate era as a national nightmare. I grew up with a totally different opinion. I thought that that process confirmed that our system of checks and balances worked - A warning to those with access to power, that the body politic would not just look the other way. I want to keep the heat on, without making the room so hot that folks just check out.

I've said this before, but I want our system to gain some of the mature confidence of the Brit parliament. Those guys rake each, but with good humor. They understand that consensus can only found with PUBLIC, ABOVE GROUND debate.

The Bush folks want to keep everything in the realm of expedient service exchanges between the already empowered. That 's not democracy. Some folks say that what I just do is talk. Maybe. But people have to speak up in a democracy. It's one of the most important aspects of a real republic. Otherwise we get a theorcratic plutocracy of the mediocre but rich.

At a time when the country seems starkly divided with media and shows catering to specific markets (i.e., Air America Radio for Liberal Democrats, Fox for Conservative Republicans), where does your show fit in? In your opinion, what is the most effective way to get the two sides listening to each other again?
I think of myself as a progressive. I put myself in with the liquid evolvers. Believers in an ongoing process of moving forward while making sure to remember the unvarnished lessons of the past. And that process is liquid, endlessly evolving. My only real opponents are strict dogmatists of any ideology. I have my own ideology, but I would never assume that it works for everybody else. That's fascism. Woah! I broke out the f word!

I think that people are just learning how to speak up in this country. And I think that that process will take some time. So many politicos run for office as opponents of politics. I think we all need to first acknowledge that there is a business of running things called politics. Don't over-idealize that. Learn not to call the other side devilish. Assume that the answer to a particular issue isn't about one side winning - or rather that winning is finding an answer that the most number of folks can live with and not feel threatened.

A good start would be to stop paying the cable bill. That's just a place for ranting. I have been very encouraged by the whole internet thing that developed in 2004. The major media outlets are so controlled by the powers, that if you watch cable you think that the powers will just keep being the powers, Internet sources make it obvious that there are lots of opinions out there.

Short answer: I sort of think the answers are already in progress. The floor for debate is open, folks are using it, and it is having an effect. The extreme spins that Rove has had to use sort of reflects the fact that he is having to respond a multitude of new pressures that didn't exist when he put his man in in 2000. And he isn't getting to control the dialogue as much as in the past.

If you had to pick, which would you rather watch: sports or theater? Why?
I see them as being on a theater spectrum. Sports has the advantage of being real in real time. In general I would rather watch almost any theater than almost any sport - other than baseball. Football is really predictable theater. Christians and Lions and Bears for people who like to bet on sure things. Basketball is high on style and the substance is also pretty predictable. Nobody does anything until the last 2 minutes. Clocks suck in general. Borg vs. McEnroe was great tennis theater. Now the equipment upgrades have made the sport boring for men - though the women's game is real good these days. And that has created passionate rivalries.

Bad baseball trumps bad theatre. There is much it learn from a bad baseball game. Bad theater is just confusing. Great baseball is the best theatre of all. The best theatre I ever saw was in the 1996 World Series. The game 4 comeback against the Braves. Unlikely twists. Unlikely heroes. Old gunslingers showing up at just the right moment. The game 5 fight to win a 1 - 0 game was almost as good. And when Joe Girardi hit a triple in Yankee Stadium in the Game 6 clincher, I really thought the place was gonna explode. The 2001 World Series was p incredible too. Anybody who thinks baseball is boring should stop watching unimportant games between the Royals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Watch a Series game between a Blue State team and a Red State team. High stakes indeed!

In your opinion, what is the role of the actor in our society? Why do we need actors? Why should anyone go see live theater?
Actors are here to help us figure out the truth. To get at the truth in a moment in a way that we can't describe or control. You watch theater and you can tell who is telling the truth and then you really can apply that to your day to day. We particularly need these live truth telling rituals in an increasing virtual world. You have to really be there for it to really happen.

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