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BY JERRY MILANI
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
There aren't too many Princeton graduates with Aerospace Engineering degrees starring on Broadway. But Bill Dawes, an actor and comedian who has appeared in dozens of films, TV series and plays, took that unusual route to the theatre, realizing upon graduation that he was "... a little too stupid to be a rocket scientist and decided to hop the art train, heading to NYU graduate school to get a MFA in Acting. MFA, of course, is short for ‘Mother and Father Annoyed.' "
Dawes, who is the house MC at The Laugh Factory in Manhattan, in addition to playing the key role of Paul Hornung in LOMBARDI opposite Dan Lauria (Vince Lombardi) and Judith Light (Marie Lombardi) on Broadway, took a few minutes to talk to Newjerseynewsroom.com about his career and N.J. roots.
NJNR: You have worked with Dan Lauria before; how has this experience been different, and do you think it helped in getting this role?
BD: I worked with Dan on a two-man play called ‘Ears on a Beatle.' We did it at a summer theatre and ended up moving it Off-Broadway and, in the process, became great friends. Dan became sort of my surrogate dad in New York. As a matter of fact, when I got offered the role of Paul Hornung, I called Dan right away to tell him he'd be perfect for Lombardi and that he should try to get in on it, having no idea that he was in the process of waiting for the offer.
Coincidentally, the first play Dan and I did together was about two guys didn't know each other at first but become friends. In Lombardi, Paul and Vince are already close friends and have known each other about six years, which is around the same amount of time I've known Dan now.Paul and Vince had a deep friendship, and I think my history with Dan makes it that much easier for both of us. I think some of the other actors were intimidated a little by Dan at first and shocked at how I would mess with him. I already knew that Lauria was a big softie despite being an ex-Marine, but they hadn't figure it out yet. Somehow, it makes all the sense in the world that I'm the Paul Hornung to his Vince Lombardi.
NJNR: What have you learned from working with Lauria and Light, two such accomplished actors?
BD: Dan and Judith are two of the most giving and generous actors I've ever seen, so to be able to work with them in the same play is nothing short of a miracle. When in doubt, they connect to their fellow actors and consciously give the other actors moments. That may sound like 'mumbo-jumbo,' so I guess the best way to put it is that they don't work from an ego-driven place. They fight for the integrity of the role and the play in their work, but they're both willing to relinquish their own choices and moments if it doesn't serve the whole of the play. Sometimes I get hung up on ‘moments' I want to have and lose track of the fact that the audience's experience is infinitely more important than mine. They've taught me to relax a little.
NJNR: What was your previous awareness of Lombardi and Hornung?
BD: Gladly, I didn't know anything really, so it was a fresh discovery. I knew something of the Lombardi lore, but I had no clue who Paul Hornung was. As I began researching him by reading his three books and David Maraniss' book [When Pride Still Mattered, on which LOMBARDI is based], it became almost like a personality scavenger hunt. Although it would be easy to classify Paul as a narcissist or just some free-spirited playboy, he was also smart, a resilient fighter, and he struggled with deep-seated fears about his reputation and his legacy in the NFL.
NJNR: Hornung and Lombardi had a unique relationship among his players. How do you try to get this across in LOMBARDI?
BD: Susan Lombardi told me that ‘Paul and Vince had a great love affair.' Paul never really knew his father and Vince didn't have the tools to really love his own son, so they both kind of adopted each other in a weird way. How it evolved isn't exactly clear, but we know that Vince used to holler at Paul constantly, and Paul not only took it, but seemed to appreciate having a father figure in his life giving him some direction. Paul and Vince don't have too many moments in the play together, but the ones they do have, Dan and I kind of forget that we're Paul and Vince ... It's more like we're Dan and Bill, old friends, sharing an inside joke in front of 800 people. Sometimes, everything disappears, and we're just looking at each other like ‘Hey buddy, good to see you up here with me.' We trust each other completely and you can't fake that type of intimacy.
NJNR: Hornung is known as a free spirit and something of a jokester. Which background has been a bigger factor for you in preparing for this role, football or comedy?
BD: I was always pretty shy when I played football. I was, in general, shy during high school and my freshman year at Princeton, when I played football. Stand-up comedy was sort of a late development for me, but when I started, it was like a genie breaking out of a bottle. I guess I was always a bit of a clown, but stand-up gave me a mic and said, ‘Hey, shy kid, now you get to say whatever the (heck) you want! Go for it!' I'm almost at my eighth year of comedy, so my sense of entitled tomfoolery is pretty well honed at this point.
NJNR: What were some of the places you frequented in New Jersey when you were at Princeton?
BD: I would go to the shore sometimes and cruise Jersey girls ... to little or no avail. We'd road trip to Asbury Park (I was a huge Bruce [Springsteen] fan) or we'd go to Atlantic City every couple of months and pretend that we were high rollers on the five-dollar blackjack table. The campus was pretty self-contained, so most of my time was spent there. As they say, Princeton is nothing but a country club with an $80 thousand cover charge. Sorry, mom and dad.
NJNR: You grew up in Virginia, but between Princeton and NYU you have spend the better part of your adult life in the N.Y. metro area. How do they compare?
BD: They don't. I remember I was in LA in theatre and De Niro's black and white American Express commercial about the Tribeca Film Festival came on before the movie. It made me cry like a baby. I realized then and there that I missed New York like a long-lost lover. I tend to regard my relationship with Manhattan like it's a human being or something. And it's often that complicated a relationship. On the other hand, Princeton was a nice, if somewhat pretentious, party with an open bar. Virginia was pretty and a great place to grow up. But I don't have the need really to go back to either place. I know I won't ever be able to say that about New York.
NJNR: If you had to choose between comedy and acting, which would you do and why?
BD: I think I might choose comedy if I had to. I've traveled the world as a comic, quite literally -- Hong Kong, Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Hawaii, Canada, Alaska, South Africa, and New Zealand. In each of these places, all I needed was a microphone. That's it. With that, I made money and I made people laugh. In some cases, like Baghdad, it was people who really needed to laugh. That's a pretty amazing thing to be able to do.
As an actor, you need a lot of elements to come together to make ‘acting' happen, and even more things to make it a great experience. To have an amazing experience as an actor, there needs to be a synergistic confluence of cast, playwright, director, producer, crew, and audience that is incredibly rare. Luckily for me, LOMBARDI is that experience and, I must say it, comedy can't quite compare to it in many ways. When Judith Light looks at me towards the end of the play and tells me that I'm ‘still her boy,' the hair stands up on the back of my neck. You can't get that telling fart jokes to strangers in a comedy club.
The cast is incredible, Tommy Kail is the best director I've ever worked with, and the producers, Tony Pinturo and Fran Kirmser are beyond amazing and supportive. I have to stop myself every couple of days and say ‘Wow, Bill, you lucky son of a bitch, you are living your dream. Don't take a moment of it for granted.'
