ANDY DRACHENBERG – This is one of the largest plays in recent Broadway history. With 17 actors, in many respects the show operates like a musical. You could almost say it’s a Greek tragedy in scale, similar to the size of Enron’s legacy. What has the experience been like for you?
STEPHEN KUNKEN – I have to say, it’s amazing to be a part of something as big as this – to see the props coming in, the dinosaur heads, the fireworks…you get very very excited. It’s one of the reasons you go into this profession, to experience the spectacle of it. The play itself requires a kind of scale and scope that reaches across the foot lines – It’s thrilling because it moves back and forth between styles. It’s a two-person small scene then you fly into a musical number, and then there’s a dance number – there’s no place to hide in it; I don’t do a lot of musicals, so that’s thrilling for me. You’re choices need to be made in a way that doesn’t give you an opportunity to dip your toe in before you dive in and get wet. Similar to Shakespeare, you’re acting on the lines and it forces you to have to warm up your vocal and physical instrument, and then just launch into it.
SK – I’ve been lucky enough to play a couple of characters based on real people. When you start working on any play, I think the mistake is to go and do too much research on the person before you dive into the play, like you would for any other part. As good an impression of Andy Fastow as I could do – if that would mean anything to anybody – we don’t have a sense of him like we do Mel Gibson or Marilyn Monroe. What is most successful is going to the text and finding out what the writer wants to give us. Then, go “Okay, now I know what the skeleton is, I need to go and find the flesh and the heartbeat.” And then, you’re doing tons of research. You’re really lucky when you work on someone who was a public figure in this media age where you have a countless amount of resources. But I think Lucy (Prebble) would be the first one to say that Andy Fastow in her play is just one part of Andy Fastow in real life. So it’s fun trying to meld both of those.
AD – How long did you have to sit with Fastow as a character – his numbers, his theories, etc. before you were describing “raptors” to your wife and friends over dinner?
SK – I knew I would be doing this piece for much longer than I’ve known on other projects, so I had a long time to steep in it. I think Lucy does an amazing job of making it clear, from the first time I read the play it was clear, and then it just got clearer and clearer. I think the amazing thing is that part of what Andy’s brilliance was that he constructed these special purpose entities that were completely impenetrable, and people just gave up after time. With my two economics courses in college, I didn’t expect to be on a course to really grasp everything about them, but I spent a lot of time looking at the concept of how they were making something out of nothing. I got really jazzed about Lucy’s anthropomorphizing these ideas – making the metaphors something you can touch.
AD – In the play, Fastow clearly takes initiative on his own projects while also taking orders from up above. He’s both a leader and a follower. In this story, how have you shaped a perspective on laying blame in for Enron?
SK – The play makes me far more skeptical of everything. Once your ear is tuned to the frequency of what these guys did… I’m now noticing this millionaire who built this system, and I’ve gotten very skeptical about giving my money to any kind of financial advisor. You know, usually if it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
For me, the more theoretical something is (ie: super sciences), the harder it is to touch. The thing I’ve learned from this is to re-adjust values – not to ask the question “can we create a financial system that’s airtight or water tight from scandal?” We need to adjust our values. It isn’t about money, the bottom line, corporate jets – it’s about quality of living… and I’m certainly not a socialist (definitely not!). I think that the country elected the man right now who can maybe realize that dream – we need to step back and see the dream is still there- everybody can get a house, but getting a house doesn’t mean that you’re mortgaged under a million dollars of credit card debt. There will always be a way to construct something that builds a system… and these guys came out of the roaring ‘90s when the whole deal “what’s the bottom line?” It reaffirms for me that there’s value in something you can touch.
AD – With Enron being nearly a decade old now, many people still don’t truly understand the accounting, the scandal, or financial practices that occurred. Why do you think this play has been so popular in the West End, and connects with so many theatergoers?
SK – I think it will play differently here than it did in the UK. I think on a very base level, it has all the makings of a really great play: the characters are very well drawn, the play is funny and challenging, it has the comeuppance of the Greek tragedy, the whip crack of a thriller; and then you have this really incredible production put together that uses all these different forms and styles to tell the story visually and emotionally.
This play goes one step further by showing to us this profoundly important story; it’s filled with really important questions we can all be asking right now of our world. These guys didn’t do anything anybody else wasn’t doing, so why did they get burned? Is this whole system broken? Am I at fault? I think everyone will find something here.
AD – So – due dates for taxes just passed. Have you been fighting temptations to develop some raptor-like ideas of your own?
SK – Well… seeing that at the end of the play, I got six years, it made me double think it. It’s funny you ask, though, I remember thinking when taxes were due how we have a responsibility. The machine works because we’re honest. You can’t point a finger with one hand and have the other one behind your back. Andy has a great line at the end of the play “I lost my moral compass.” We can all lose our moral compass – the needle is constantly fluctuating. A play like this will hopefully help a lot of people keep finding magnetic north. It helped me on April 15th…that, and Actors get audited a lot!
STEPHEN KUNKEN Broadway: Tom Stoppard’s Rock n Roll, Frost/Nixon(Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Nominations), Festen, Proof.National Tour: Proof. Off-Broadway: Stage Manager in David Cromer’s Our Town(Barrow Street), Our House(Playwrights Horizons) A Very Common Procedure(MCC) *Drama League Nomination, Fabulation(Playwrights Horizons), Journals of Mihail Sebastian(Keen Co.), The Story (Public Theater), A Dybbuk (Public Theater), Arrangements(Atlantic Theater Co.), Henry VIII (NYSF), Misalliance (Roundabout Theater) Regional: Quartermaine’s Terms, True West, Three Sisters(Williamstown Theater Festival), Mister Roberts(Kennedy Center) Television: Gossip Girl, The Unusuals, New Amsterdam, all the Law and Order(s), The Sopranos, Spin City, Far East, Mary and Rhoda. Film: All Good Things (2010), Taking Woodstock, , Girl in the Park, Wait till This Year, Light/Sufferer, Bamboozled. Multiple honors from Juilliard’s Graduate Acting Program. 2004 Fox Fellowship recipient.