One on one, face to face, Patrick Page comes close to being the perfect interview. He's articulate, quotable, quiet-spoken - a real gentleman.
But add some greasepaint, a costume, some well-focused spotlights and put him on a stage and he seethes with brilliant passion and power.During the past few years, more and more Utahns have become dedicated fans of the Oregon native through his memorable performances at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City and several guest-artist appearances with Pioneer Theatre Company.
Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, theater patrons will have a rare (but limited) opportunity to see Page in his nationally acclaimed one-man show, "Passion's Slaves," in which this consummate Shakespearean performer will present characters and scenes from several of the Bard's classic comedies and tragedies.
"Passion's Slaves," written and produced by Page, will have only eight performances, from Friday, Nov. 25, through Sunday, Dec. 3, at the new Broadway Stage, 272 S. Main. Curtain is 8 p.m. nightly this coming Friday and Saturday and the following week on Wednesday through Saturday, with performances at 7 p.m. on the two Sundays, Nov. 27 and Dec. 3. For tickets or reservations, call 359-1444.
In writing "Passion's Slaves," a production that Page still tinkers with as he goes along, he determined that Shakespeare's 37 plays - the comedies as well as the tragedies - have passion as a common thread, although not necessarily the steamy stuff that we see on contemporary TV, but from Shakespeare's perspective.
"For Shakespeare, passion could mean love and lust but also dozens of other emotions like envy, pride, ambition, jealousy or a passion for power," Page explained.
The concept of "Passion's Slaves" had been rolling around in Page's head for some time when he got a phone call a few years ago from a former drama coach asking him to conduct a workshop on Shakespeare in Georgia. He had seen Ian Macellan's one-man show and John Guilgud's "The Ages of Man," but he didn't want to copy these productions.
Page said he had always been fascinated by the running theme of passion vs. reason in virtually all of Shakespeare's plays.
"We see it all the time, the character following his desire or passion rather than what he knows to be the right course," he said. "In `Anthony and Cleopatra,' Anthony knows if he goes along with Cleopatra, Rome will fall, but he does it anyway and destroys himself, too."
"Macbeth knows what he is doing is wrong, but he follows his passion . . . his ambition," Page added.
In researching Shakespeare's plays for his production, Page discovered that passion was a theme that not only interested Shakespeare, it obsessed him.
When Page first performed "Passion's Slaves" in Georgia, he had no idea how it was going to go over. "There I was in front of the audience all by myself, and somehow I got through it, I didn't think it was very good (but the idea was very good), and the crowd was ecstatic. They loved it! They went crazy," he said.
Maybe, he surmised, it was because they appreciated "the tiny effort of a lone actor" all by himself on the stage. But he also hoped it was because of the content.
"Passion is at the very heart of the human condition," Page said. "It's that tug-of-war between what we want to do and what we should do. It's not wanting to fall in love but being drawn to that person anyway."
Page considers the 37 Shakespearean plays not as individual tragedies and comedies, but as a single work of art.
Just reading one Shakespearean play, he said, would be "like looking at just one square of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel."
He also considers this performance of "Passion's Slaves" as something of a "farewell" performance for Utah audiences. Although he may do one more play at PTC this season, he and his wife, actress Liisa Ivary, will be moving next spring to Ashland, Ore., where he has a contract with the Oregon Shakespearean Festival.
Performing the rich and dramatic dialogue of William Shakespeare seems to be almost second-nature to Page. That's not surprising, considering he practically cut his teeth on Shakespeare's works. When he was a toddler, his father was an actor at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. While other kids were learning things like "See Dick run" or "There goes Spot," Page was picking up such Elizabethan words and phrases as slaughterous, thence, wherefore art thou - even cuckold.
He didn't always know their precise definitions. He'd guess from how they were used in the context of the dialogue or he'd ask his parents.
But he grew up listening to the great works of Shakespeare, so it wasn't a cultural shock when the plays were part of the English literature curriculum in school.
Growing up in this theatrical and literary environment (when he was in the third grade, his father transferred to Western Oregon State College in Monmouth, near Salem), it's easy to see how Page developed a deep love and appreciation for the classics and, in particular, Shakespeare.
Even as a lad, he never considered anything other than becoming an actor. With his child's doctor kit, he enjoyed playing "pretend." And it was the "pretend" part that fascinated him - not any aspirations of becoming a physician.
He started acting in plays when he was 4 or 5, and by the time he got into high school he already had more than 60 roles under his belt. Then, right out of high school, he headed for the prestigious Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Maria, Calif., for an intensive, one-year course in virtually all aspects of theater - technical work, lighting, costuming, writing, directing, acting.
PCPA is the Marine boot camp of theater. You put in 12-hour days filled with hands-on training (with an occasional theater history class to remind you that it's still school).
When he finished his PCPA experience, Page made what he feels is the best decision he ever made. Instead of attending a university where there was a terrific drama department, he furthered his education at one of the country's finest liberal arts schools - Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.
"It was small enough to guarantee that the students would get a lot of attention - and you know how actors thrive on attention," he said.
Patrick Page is a rarity. He's a working actor who's nearly always working - and not washing dishes, waiting tables or parking cars. He works at what he enjoys and does best - the craft of acting.
Many actors have one big dream - heading for New York City and the Great White Way. Not Page. For someone who's intensely creative, he is also logical and level-headed. So far, he's content to perform in the Western United States. He was born and reared in the West, and there are plenty of acting opportunities out here, with major theater companies all along the West Coast, from Los Angeles to Vancouver, British Columbia.
And Utah.
When he first came to the Utah Shakespearean Festival six years ago, he was awestruck by the size of the festival and wondered "where will the audiences come from?" At that time, he didn't realize that the festival's acclaim had already spread far beyond the boundaries of tiny Cedar City.
"Every single house was full. It was phenomenal," he said.
This past UFS season, in addition to roles in the festival's Shakespearean plays, he also was featured in the late Doug Christensen's one-man drama, "Nothing Like the Sun," in which Shakespearean rival Ben Jonson sits down to write an epitaph marking the Bard's death.
Page counts "Nothing Like the Sun" as one of the great learning experiences of his life. Although Christensen, a former Deseret News writer, had been commissioned to write the play as one of three productions to inaugurate the festival's new Randall L. Jones Performing Arts Theatre, the young playwright died of a heart attack before his script had been completed.
Page assumed that the project would be abandoned, but instead he and Larry Baker, one of Christensen's closest associates and the man who taught him how to write, were able to collaborate on the play and finish it.
"Baker sort of knew the inside of Doug's mind and knew his style and was able to recreate his writing style," said Page. This, combined with Page's detailed knowledge of Shakespeare's works, allowed the two of them to finish the script.
"The whole time it was almost as if we were being guided by Doug," said Page, noting that, ironically, the play itself is about somebody (Jonson) writing about someone who has died (Shakespeare).
Although Page has practically built a career out of performing in Shakespearean works, he readily admits that an actor cannot live on Shakespeare alone.
"It would be like eating caviar night after night. You have to change your diet now and then," he said.
As a guest Equity performer with Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City the past three seasons, he's been able to do a variety of other roles, along with TV commercials and other work.
Page met Liisa in Cedar City. They've performed, usually not opposite each other, in plays both there and with PTC in Salt Lake City. Just recently, before he and Liisa reported for work on PTC's "The Three Musketeers," the couple performed together in a production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" for the New West Stage Company in Las Vegas.