The Acting Company to perform ‘Pudd’nhead’ High school workshops round out stop in Maine

Jimonn Cole, a star performer with The Acting Company, called on a cell phone from the back of a bus on the open highway. He and the cast and crew for “Pudd’nhead Wilson” had left Syracuse, N.Y., and were en route to a theater in Concord, N.H. They have been on the road since January and, after a performance of the show April 23 at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono and workshops in local high schools later next week, the prestigious ensemble will give a final 10-day run in New York City.

Considering he has been on the road several months, Cole sounded surprisingly chipper.

“It’s very engaging to be on a tour,” said Cole, a native of Virginia and graduate from The Juilliard School in New York City. “We appreciate that we’re in a place for only one night and have only that night to make the show work. For the audience, it’s their only chance to see us. So they appreciate us, too.”

The mutually satisfying exchange between actor and audience is the cornerstone of The Acting Company, which was co-founded in 1972 by the esteemed producer, director and actor John Houseman and current producing director Margot Harley. Houseman rose to early fame with government theater projects in the 1930s, and also when he and Orson Welles founded the avant-garde Mercury Theatre in New York, which produced the notorious 1938 radio play “The War of the Worlds.”

In his 70s, Houseman played a brilliant law professor in the film “The Paper Chase” and won an Academy Award. The role launched an active late-life career in the spin-off TV series, as well as in commercials and cameo appearances in films. Houseman worked continuously until his death in 1988. Amid these achievements, however, Houseman once remarked: “The accomplishment of which I am most proud is The Acting Company.” He and Margot Harley, a dancer, actor and TV producer from New York, were heading up the drama program at Juilliard in the late 1960s when they decided to establish a touring company to extend the performance experience of talented and well-trained graduates such as Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone. The goal was to underscore training through productions and to develop new audiences through theater-arts outreach.

“Our first class at Juilliard had both individual talent and collective talent,” said Harley, who has produced more than 100 plays. “They were extremely well-trained but did not have a lot of performance experience. We wanted to keep them together and tour them in a repertoire of plays. It spun off immediately into The Acting Company.”

After Houseman’s death, Harley continued the mission. She deeply felt the loss of her partner but has worked hard to preserve the original commitment to quality actors. This year, the company celebrates its 30th anniversary. “John was someone who had an effect on people’s lives,” Harley said. “He always took public transportation and in the subway people would recognize him not because of ‘The Paper Chase’ but because they remembered The Acting Company. It had come to their town or college, and they had been theatergoers ever since.” While the company visits schools and offers post-show discussions of productions, the intention of the educational programs is not necessarily to create new actors.

“We want to expand the imagination and make an audience,” said Harley. “I think we’ve built a strong audience in 30 years. I do miss John and I miss his ideas. He was brilliant – one of the last Renaissance men. And it was better when he was around. But we’ve survived his loss and we are very strong again.”

In addition to Harley’s strong producer’s sensibility, the company has benefited from an ambitious five-year project to develop new theatrical works based on great American literature. Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” which was adapted by the Emmy Award-winning playwright Charles Smith, is the pre-Civil War story of a judge’s two sons – one by his wife, one by his house slave. After the wife dies and the slave is threatened with separation from her son, she switches the brothers in their cradles. The two boys grow up in ironically disparate worlds, a situation that creates a poignant and dramatic commentary about race and privilege.

“This piece is timeless,” said Cole, who is 28 and plays the spoiled son with an Ivy League education and money in his pocket. “People ask us what is the point of the story. Mostly, it asks questions about how we’ve been raised. What is more influential, the way you are brought up or the color of your skin?”

For Cole, the character of Tom is a “role of a lifetime.” “This is a really proud thing for me,” said Cole, who also teaches acting to young people when he’s on tour.

Being a member of The Acting Company is a big step toward Cole’s continuing goal to perform as an actor and share his skill and inspiration with audiences both in the classroom and onstage. At the end of the phone conversation from the bus, Cole said next week’s show would be his first visit to Maine. What, by the way, did he know about the state he was coming into? “Lobsters, right? Delicious lobsters?” he said.

The Acting Company will present Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” adapted by Charles Smith, 7 p.m. April 23 at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 581-1755.