Play time with Clinton Johnston

The cast of Othello is working at the 12th Street Taphouse. Desdemona watches her tables, brings burgers and pints of beer to customers. Roderigo, the man secretly in love with Desdemona, glances her way every so often as he manages the bar. More than once, Montano—the former governor of Cyprus, before Othello took charge—storms into the dining room through the kitchen doors, looks around, then disappears again. Each is dressed like a stagehand: black shirt, dark slacks.

Clinton Johnston sits at the bar and, although he doesn’t work at the Taphouse, he wears the same get-up. His black T-shirt is huge and loose over his enormous frame, and his dreadlocks hang down to the backs of his thighs—some thin and tight, some thick as tree limbs. He’s waiting for a strong Belgian beer, a burger and fries, and his interviewer, who’s running just a few minutes late.

He’s also waiting for the next show to start. The date is August 5. In two months’ time, his production of Othello will open at Barboursville’s Four County Players, one of a few local theaters he knows as intimately as the back of one of his large, not-too-soft hands.

Each local theater in Charlottesville has its share of regulars—actors who might work exclusively with Live Arts or The Hamner Theater or Play On! Theatre. Yet each different venue seems to know Johnston as a writer, performer or director; more than likely, they know him under a few different titles from multiple shows during his 15 years of local theater work.

“He’s a playwright, director, actor, scholar, musician, improv master, dead-on mimic and connoisseur of esoteric beers,” writes local actor and director John Holdren in an e-mail. “Look at the range of plays he’s directed—Shakespeare, Guys and Dolls, A Christmas Carol, In the Blood—he knows and respects theater, all kinds.”

Similarly, Johnston knows the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of each local stage—the demands of a modern Scarlet Letter in a tiny black box theater, or Shakespeare with pop music in a refashioned school house. As a director, Johnston makes it his business to squeeze every drop of potential drama from a script before deciding upon his staging. Among a group of local stages that bear their own unique characteristics, his process is similar.

“For me it’s always a question of what’s the story? And how do I best tell the story?” Johnston explains to me later. “So it’s a question of what’s the setting that the playwright has chosen and why?” Which makes this story the story of Clinton Johnston, written by Brendan Fitzgerald but, in some sense, still directed by Johnston himself—he picks the settings, and the characters are drawn from his life.

The story of Clinton Johnston is the story of a man who made a choice to quit his post and another to take it up again; a man inextricably tied to our theater community as a result, a General defending his Venice. If community theater struggles, falls, we won’t condemn Johnston for his service; when community theater succeeds, however, he deserves our praise for taking a stand. The setting—in a bar surrounded by his day-jobbing actors—is perfect. The ideal way to tell Johnston’s story? For me, it starts with a monologue.

"You’re talking to me in the past, man"

“Hello, you’ve reached Clinton Johnston’s voicemail and time machine. Usually, I’d say I’m not in right now, but I actually am in right now, if you think about it. I mean, if you called me right now, I could take your call. The thing is, my now is not your now, right? Because your now is in my future. You’re talking to me in the past, man…”—Clinton Johnston

When I arrive at our first interview and our beers (and Johnston’s burger) are delivered, we start in the past.

Johnston grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, the youngest of two sons—“middle class people in a conservative Midwestern town.” When Johnston was 15, his dad took an assignment to work in Belgium for two years and brought his family with him; at 17, Johnston returned to Cincinnati to finish high school, then left for Pennsylvania, where he majored in English (“Believe it or not”) at Haverford College, and fell in love with feminist theory and literature.

Johnston graduated in 1991, then spent a year working in Philadelphia—mostly at an independent book store, where he coordinated rare book orders. In 1992, a friend called him from Charlottesville and suggested that Johnston move.

“He said, ‘Hey, you’re sitting up there living in Philadelphia. You’re not doing anything in Philadelphia. Why don’t you move down to Charlottesville and not do anything? It’s cheaper and the weather’s nice.’” remembers Johnston.

“And, to be honest, it’s only a little cheaper and the weather’s only a little nicer. But I did that.”

Johnston found another bookstore job at Anderson Brothers Books, moved on to Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center for five years or so, worked as a “web monkey” for a web design firm until it was bought out, then temped a bit with Lexis Nexis.

In 2002, Johnston enrolled at the University of Virginia to pursue his MFA in directing. He finished his degree in 2005, got a job at Market Street Wineshop, and was eventually hired as an associate professor of theater at Mary Baldwin College, where he currently teaches.

It was during his gig at Legal Aid, however, that Johnston first graced a Charlottesville stage—a role in a 1994 production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, presented by a local theater troupe called the Midsummer Players.

“I would juggle to relieve stress,” explains Johnston of his paralegal job. “So, here I am, in the middle of the day, walking through the hallways, juggling between tasks.” An attorney at Legal Aid spotted him and told him that director Tim MacDonald was looking for jugglers for the show.

“She asked, ‘Have you ever done theater? You seem like a theatrical kind of guy.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t do theater,’” remembers Johnston. But he felt fine juggling. So, Johnston went to an audition, wound up reading the part of a male character and was cast by MacDonald.

Except Johnston wasn’t quite telling his attorney friend the truth. He did do theater. He’d simply quit seven years earlier—for good. But that’s another monologue.

Highs and lows of a theater junkie

“Clinton Johnston is a Shakespeare junkie…Though he’s getting older, he remains rather spunky. Once upon a time, people thought him hunky and hung like a donkey. But now he’s rather chunky, which leaves his spirits sunky. Still, he’s a cheeky little monkey…”—from Johnston’s Much Ado About Nothing program bio

Johnston’s first performance came in fourth grade. His teacher would assemble pageants, pick a few public domain songs and play piano while her students sang tunes like “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Johnston was the master of ceremonies for a show titled History is People.

“I remember my friend James played Louis Arm-strong,” says Johnston. “We all got to sing ‘Basin Street Blues.’ It was awesome.”

Not often do fourth graders sing “Basin Street Blues,” I tell him.

“And it’s a shame,” says Johnston. “Because, in my version of world history, you need to know about Louis Armstrong.”

The performance marked the beginning of Johnston’s “approach/avoidance” relationship with theater. “I liked it, but due to my own insecurities, most likely supported by my parents, I was always afraid that I wasn’t good enough at it to really take it seriously. So I would do school shows because they were convenient and safe, but any thought of doing community theater? Never.”

By the end of high school, Johnston decided that he would either take theater seriously or drop it altogether. He did the latter, went to Haverford, ignored theater courses (“Absolutely piss poor theater program at the time”). Yet Johnston and a friend—another theater expat—would walk the Haverford campus and talk about where they would stage certain productions and scenes.

“We were like alcoholics,” says Johnston. “We were like any junkies, saying, ‘Oh, no, I don’t partake in it. But, boy, could I use a drink right now!”

Relapse came in 1994. At the audition for Comedy of Errors, Johnston read the part of Dromio of Ephesus and landed the part, which he credits with bringing him back into theater. Oddly, Johnston returned to the stage in roughly the same place he left it.

“I had been in a production of Comedy of Errors when I was in high school, and I played Antipholus of Ephesus,” says Johnston. “Both Antipholus and Dromio are twins and, of course, the other actors are white. So, in both cases, I found myself sitting backstage with makeup, trying to make my counterpart my shade of brown.”

He laughs. “That’s right.

Free summer Shakespeare in Charlottesville, complete with blackface.” (The “bizarreness and the irony of it” occurred to Johnston later; at the time, he says, “I was really interested in the challenge of trying to match skin.”)

But Johnston was back. And his commitments to local theater grew—more frequent, more fervent. Just more.

Boomie Pedersen, a director and actor who co-founded Nelson County’s Hamner Theater, met Johnston during an audition for another Midsummer Players production, a 1995 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Pedersen worked with Johnston at least once during each of the years that immediately followed: Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins in ’96; Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women in ’97; adaptations of The Conflict, a teleplay originally written by Earl Hamner for “The Waltons,” in 1998 and 1999.

“We have this joke that he’s our token black actor, because he’s so committed,” says Pedersen. “He would close at the wine shop, get in his car, drive down to the theater, literally walk into his costume and walk onto the stage for performances of The Homecoming,” a show that Hamner Theater presented annually during its first two years.

“The timing was so tight. But he did it,” says Pedersen. “And I don’t know any other actors who would be willing to do that. And he brought so much to that.”

Around the time he started his MFA in directing, Johnston began writing plays, monologues, riffs, rants and songs with No Shame Theatre, a local theater ensemble founded by Todd Ristau in 2001 (and part of a larger network of No Shame groups around the country).

Johnston’s first piece written for No Shame was a monologue titled “Taking Sides,” performed on May 4, 2001, at Live Arts. The monologue features a character named Shanté, described by Johnston’s notes as a “college educated black woman in her 20s,” whose boyfriend leaves her for a white woman. The following notes on Johnston’s monologue come from No Shame’s online archive:

[A] nice monologue which was hurt by the actress announcing unexpectedly before the monologue that she was not a racist. This really undercut the effectiveness of the piece. Clinton hammered back several beers.

Black like me

“My friend Tom says that all art is autobiographical, whether you realize it or not. And I believe it, because I’ve argued with him.”—Clinton Johnston

Johnston composed dozens of pieces, increasingly sharp in dialogue and dry in wit, for No Shame between 2001 and 2004. He continued to direct and perform while he wrote, portraying a bear in a Live Arts piece about Lewis and Clark and directing a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in 2004. Pieces of his original works—including “Taking Sides” and a poem titled “Two Black Girls, One of Them White”—found their way into a collection of scenes and sketches that Johnston titled Am I Black Enough Yet?

Johnston workshopped the play and held staged readings at several regional theaters; Am I Black Enough Yet? premiered in 2008 with shows at the Charter Theatre, Live Arts and the Hamner Theater. A reviewer for The Washington Post wrote that “Johnston’s bold tonal shifts add surprise and texture to the piece, which is always thoughtful and sometimes enjoyably sly.”

I remember components of the show from a midnight performance at Live Arts. A meeting of the “International Slang Council.” A conversation about cultural contradictions, in which a black man reveals that he loves the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” (He recites the lyrics like an indictment: “Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields? Sold in a market down in New Orleans?”) A monologue about Ezra Jack Keats, the Jewish immigrant and children’s book author who wrote seven books centered on a black boy named Peter.

Around the same time, Johnston was busy with the period in his life he refers to as “directapalooza.” Between 2007 and 2008, Johnston directed In the Blood, a Scarlet Letter-meets-modern poverty tale, at Live Arts; a version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at Four County Players; and the musical Guys and Dolls at Play On! Theatre.

“I thought the play was incredibly powerful,” says Pedersen of In the Blood. “[But] I talked to Clinton afterwards and I said I felt like he had tried to make everybody likeable.”

During directapalooza, Johnston also acted; he appeared in director John Holdren’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at Four County Players in Barboursville. Holdren first met Johnston during an audition for All’s Well That Ends Well, which Johnston was directing for Four County Players.

“He came with a reputation,” remembers Holdren. “When I was going out, I’d never met him. But people said, ‘Oh, Clinton’s directing? Wow.’”

As a director, Holdren says that Johnston is “always sort of intensely right there in the moment with you. He’s sitting right there at the table, but you can just tell from the quality of his attention that whatever you’re doing onstage as an actor, he’s right up there with you.”

“He and I may not always see eye-to-eye on Shakespeare. He’s much more of a textual completist,” adds Holdren. “I remember doing All’s Well That Ends Well, he didn’t want to cut any lines. I’m all about cutting lines.”

Johnston has a wickedly strong identity in his original plays, and can make most traces of his identity vanish as an actor. Being a director, however, means finding a balance between those skills—facilitating someone else’s work for a group of interpreters and an audience.

“I think, as a director, he’s a little bit unwilling to make a stand,”  says Pedersen. “Having said that, he’s made some very deliberate choices about casting in Othello.”

And not just casting, although that’s a significant series of choices. When I first asked Johnston about directing Othello at Four County Players, he emphasized the number of strong women in the show—Desdemona, Emilia, Bianca. Not surprising, really; Johnston said on one occasion that he was “raised by feminists,” and likes the idea of offering a number of strong female characters.

As Pedersen points out, however, three of the four arguable leads—Emilia, Othello and Iago—are played by black actors. Iago (played by David Straughn, a regular with the improv-centric Bent Theatre) is a particularly interesting choice, a typically white character whose schemes might resonate differently if the character is perceived as a black man acting against another.

Of course, that’s up to the director’s interpretation. But with Othello, says Pedersen, “it sounds like Clinton is really trying to make a stand, or explore something that’s important to him.”

"Ain’t too proud to beg"

“I did the open mic at Baja Bean… It was interesting and it was fun because it was a very different artistic experience than doing theater. Because with theater—at least the way I do theater and the way I think of theater—it’s such a group thing. You go out on stage and you’ve got other people with you. Every once in a while you’re alone—you’ve got a soliloquy—but mostly you’re with other people. And the way I think of it, they’re there to help you. You’re in it together.”—Clinton Johnston

In a way, Johnston has more time to devote to Othello than any show that he’s directed previously. Each semester at Mary Baldwin College, Johnston’s teaching gig includes a drama class that he takes to plays around the region each week—an obligation that he previously scheduled rehearsals around.

“Because of the global financial collapse, the college is looking for ways to trim down costs and cut corners,” says Johnston. “[T]hat was one of the first ones where we said, ‘What happens if we just teach it one semester?’ So I’ll be teaching it next semester but, for the first time in two or three years, I don’t have to miss Thursday [rehearsals].”

Of course, Johnston isn’t exactly thrilled about what the decision means for local stages. “There are theaters that have asked me, ‘Are you bringing your class?’” he says. “And I have to break the news to them. ‘Sorry…’”

The beauty of community theater is that the product doesn’t necessarily suffer. Plays don’t pay the bills for actors or directors; the people who choose to participate in one schedule-screwing show after another are addicts, lifers.

They work on craft for craft’s sake, entertain crowds by entertaining themselves and vice versa. Many are the budding thespians of your primary school years who never outgrew their love of the show. Others are belated newcomers who discover a love for the stage. Clinton Johnston is both.

“Everyone has to work, to pay the rent. But [work] is only eight hours a day,” says Ray Smith, Johnston’s choice for the titular lead in Othello. “For those of us who are pre-kids and post-kids, you’re going to want to do something to fill the other 16 hours a day, be it with music or theater or golf.”

On a Sunday in September, I’m in Barboursville to watch Johnston run the cast of Othello through rehearsal. It’s a month before showtime, and things are half-finished: Actors in lead roles ask the stage manager, Caitlin Lucia, for lines, and the bones of the set are still visible. A moment after Iago slays Roderigo, he announces to the cast: “Roderigo sneezed!”

Eamon Hyland, the 21-year-old actor who plays Montano, former governor of Cyprus, couldn’t miss work for rehearsal. For Johnston, it’s an occasion for another monologue.

“So, ladies and gentlemen! We are now going to stumble through part two!” Johnston announces. “And though our cast member Eamon told his employer that today is a day he should not work, his employer responded, ‘Nay! Indeed today is a day you will work!’ He is doing so, and we support him in this.”

During scenes, Johnston is nearly mute and immobile; more often, he turns towards Lucia, murmurs, and she delivers the director’s orders. But during breaks, Johnston goes into actor mode.

“And now the only scene change in the show!” he says at a point, then launches into a Mexican accent to interact with his Beatrice. A second later, a prop topples over with a crash, and Johnston goes into Beatles mode, trying on his Liverpudlian best, singing “It’s getting better all the time!” Later, he switches from Liverpool to London proper, pronounces “stretcher” like “stre-cha,” only to turn and address Lucia in Scottish, grumbling good naturedly, “Ye took yer own sweet time!”

The cast loves it, urges him on or engages him with their own characters and impressions. In a way, these exchanges are the defining moments of local theater: Actors sift through catalogues of well-loved characters, find one to trot out for the amusement of friends. No roles get discarded after a pay day, because nobody gets paid; to discard a speech or scene or character is wasteful, because you’ll always have a chance to use it again.

Later, I speak to Hyland, the Othello cast member who missed practice. Many of Hyland’s first moments on stage were with Johnston—working on sets during Noises Off! at Live Arts in 2005, acting in Johnston’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well in 2006, and acting opposite Johnston for Twelfth Night in 2007.

“It was great to dance onstage with him like that,” says Hyland of Twelfth Night. “He was so accessible, you know? He didn’t hold himself on a tower—which he could very well do if he wanted to, because he’s very good.”

But even as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, Johnston was directing Hyland a bit. Holdren, who directed the show, says that Johnston and Hyland made the 30-minute drive from Charlottesville to Barboursville together for rehearsals. “And you could just see that, as the play went on, there was a whole lot of refinement and rehearsal that went on in those car rides,” says Holdren. “And came out of his [Clinton’s] head.”

For me, Johnston’s performance in Twelfth Night also highlighted one of the man’s unlikeliest gifts—his often exuberant, perhaps unexpected physicality as an actor. In an e-mail, Holdren went to great lengths to describe a warm-up routine that Johnston led him through on a few occasions, something he describes as “little short of a religious experience.”

“He gets the actors’ bodies relaxed, their minds focused, the syllables tripping off their tongues, all leading up to a call-and-response version of the Temptations’ ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,’” wrote Holdren. “When it’s over, as an actor, you’re ready to go out and tear up the stage or capture an enemy fortress—you’d do just about anything for the man at that moment.”

During Othello rehearsal, every volunteer is focused on Johnston as he raises his immense figure from his chair and addresses them. “Did anybody get anything from our stumble through?” he asks. He points out how quickly the second half of the show moves; after intermission, Othello “takes off like a rocket.”

“We are now three weeks from tech,” he reminds the actors. “There’s only so much we can do with nuance, choices…” Or with taking stands.

As I sneak out the door, I hear Johnston tell his performers, “I’d like to spend the remaining time we have doing the first scenes. Which means we need…Caitlin!” Johnston’s stage manager begins naming actors, and the door closes behind me.

Making a stand

The next time I open the door, it’s October 2—opening night, time to make a stand.

Start to finish, Johnston’s production of Othello runs roughly three hours—from a surreal opening scene, in which Othello’s previous battles are rendered in shadows on a screen, to the play’s final body count. Before the show begins, Johnston tells me that it’s O.K. to laugh, and there are a few humorous moments—Brabantio’s book-throwing fit, well-timed glares from Gratiano towards his brother. At moments, David Straughn is an inspired choice for Iago, yipping shrill laughs before sharing his plans. At others, he speaks too quickly and quietly, more sneaky than outwardly power-crazed, and I can’t quite make out his words.

Volume is an issue for a few other cast members, but not Ray Smith, whose voice carries well and serves as one strong gateway into Othello’s insecurities and jealousies. The set is broad, and used broadly by the director; cast members can be isolated in pockets long enough to plot their schemes, then sweep together to put them into motion.

Othello runs at Four County Players for two more weeks—through Saturday, October 17. Then prep work begins for A Christmas Story in December, and the cast of Othello will return to the 12th Street Taphouse or Bent Theatre or this day job or that gig. It’s the end for every local theater production—costumes are dropped, characters are filed away for future monologues, and the set comes down until the next group of players brings in another for two or three weeks.

But Johnston remains something of an eternal player—dressed in stagehand black, consuming roles and scripts and material, that next collection of players, story and local stage converging in his mind, a monologue for whatever crowd appears. My advice is that, when Clinton Johnston stands to speak, you listen.