Actor Madrid St. Angelo is bringing Shakespeare back and this time as the title character Julius Caesar. He has a background of working with a variety of Chicago theaters such as Goodman, Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens. Television credits include appearances on ER, Boss and Chicago Fire. He is a member of Actors' Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, Guild of Italian American Actors and Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.
His current project, Julius Caesar, is a political drama where Rome's government officials set out to stop the man from becoming king. Writers Theatre is spotlighting diversity in this production by casting a variety of ethnicities and a transgender actor is playing Caesar's adoptive son.
Windy City Times talked to the openly gay actor and AIDS activist while in tech rehearsals.
Windy City Times: Did you study theater in school?
Madrid St. Angelo: I graduated from The Neighborhood Playhouse in the late '80s. I was one of the last classes that got to study with Sanford Meisner. I was lucky.
WCT: How did you wind up in Chicago?
MSA: I was born in north New Jersey. I grew up there and New York. It was my playground. I eventually got a scholarship for a program with LGBT youth under 30. It was training to be a political activist that took me out of New York to San Francisco.
Through [AIDS-rights organization] ACT UP, I was eventually involved in protests that brought me to Chicago. It was part of a personal journey that I was willing to take in order to fuel my experiences to bring to my work as an actor and writer.
WCT: Where have you worked in Chicago theater?
MSA: I worked at Steppenwolf as an understudy and a director. I directed a Jose Rivera play a couple of years ago at the Steppenwolf Garage called Old Century. I worked at the Goodman as an understudy and part of their Latino Theater Festival each summer. I have also worked with Victory Gardens, UrbanTheater Company, and Silk Road Rising.
Bailiwick produced a play I wrote in the early '90s about a politically incorrect drag queen at the height of the AIDS epidemic who has lost quite a few friends. She puts an ad in the Village Voice and puts together a club of the hottest HIV-positive men around. In a series of meetings she forces them to confront their disease, and forces them to chart a path for self empowerment. It was called The Club and David Zak produced and directed it. It was remounted after that. David called me recently and told me to do something with it for television. I would like to do that.
WCT: How does your ethnicity affect the way you are cast?
MSA: It is interesting because I am half-Italian and half-Spanish. My family married in with Native Americans in the past.
I have been cast as a Latino, but also as Middle Eastern, Arabic, Indian, Persian [and] Pakistani; here I am playing Julius Caesar, who is Italian.
My sexual orientation has rarely figured into the casting decisions about me. It makes me feel even more obligated to come out in that front.
WCT: Talk about your current show, Julius Caesar.
MSA: First off, what Michael Halberstam is doing at Writers Theatre I have never seen in my life. He is pushing the envelope. He has created a space that is very inclusive of LGBT people. An award winning architect designed the new building with gender neutral bathrooms.
The cast of Julius Caesar is wildly diverse. I was one of the first ones cast and they brought me in to audition people for my wife. I saw every ethnicity, trans actors, and gay men who play women. He brought them all in. I felt lucky and I was in heaven.
It is a 90-minute adaptation of what is a three-hour-plus play. It is scaled down with no intermission. It is an intense exploration about an individual's desire for power. It is about how that trickles down and affects the senate. They eventually conspire to kill Caesar. What lingers in the air is the desire for power. It is explored through the relationship of Brutus and Cassius. It is riddled with homoerotic undertones. It is a Julius Caesar like I have never seen.
WCT: There's a trans actor in the cast?
MSA: YesSydney Germaine. Syd is really fantastic. Hats off to Michael Halberstam for being inclusive. He's openly gay and co-adapter/director Scott Parkinson is also openly gay. They hired the very best actors while still being inclusive.
WCT: What about audience members who are turned off about Shakespeare?
MSA: We spoke about that to great lengths. The verse is kept with iambic pentameter. There are many versions of Shakespeare where they change the words to make it more palatable to the general public's ear.
The period style in this show is made contemporary with modern costuming. Sometimes I feel like I am walking down the Paris runway!
This adaptation in many ways is a direct mirror to what is going on in our current political climate with the advancement of Trump. His desire for power has done the same thing that Julius Caesar's did. It has infected the mind of many Americans who believe he is capable. No matter what Trump or Caesar says they it with a certain amount of flare and people buy into that.
People will relate to that when they see this show. We have done everything we can to make it audience friendly.
Julius Caesar runs now through Oct. 16 at Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, Illinois. Call 847-242-6000 or visit WritersTheatre.org for tickets.