Ask an Apprentice: Joseph Green

We're back with another installment of our "Ask an Apprentice" series! Today we're chatting with Joseph Green, acting apprentice, understudy and assistant director on Anton's Shorts. Read on for more on Joseph and his busy summer at APT!

APT: Hey, Joe! How has the start of your August been?
Joseph Green: The start of August has gone pretty well so far. It’s been fun to see the show we’ve been working on finally start to go up. Getting to see the Anton’s Shorts preview was a very rewarding start to the month. These amazing Core Company actors have been working their butts off in these pieces, really throwing themselves at the work again and again. Any hiccups met along the way have driven the whole creative process into building this really rich, deep and funny show. To see all of that hard work pay off was an incredible way to start the month!

APT: For those who might not know, you're acting as the assistant director on Anton's Shorts while also understudying several tracks in Romeo & Juliet. Care to share how you work on those two different projects simultaneously?
Joseph Green: Oh boy! It’s definitely a challenge. With assistant directing, you have to be in the room for all the rehearsals and see how the show works from behind the table. It’s great to see all the pieces collide and mesh together from that perspective. Being in the room for every rehearsal does take a lot of time, and so it’s a unique position of spending 12 hours working every day for the past 3-4 weeks. Since my tracks in the other shows this summer give me enough time to relax and breathe, I’ll find time during Merry Wives or Our Town to work.

Sam [Luis Massaro] is understudying Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet, for example, and since we both have downtime during Our Town, we’ll practice the Mercutio and Tybalt fight while not onstage. We work on it a little bit, go through the motions and just go to woodshed and hack it out together. Finding and making the most out of small windows of time when you can work is important, especially in a big production like R&J. There are so many moving parts, it’s such a dense and comprehensive project that every one has to be all hands-on deck.

You have to allow your time to become packed and find ways to fit those responsibilities within the small windows of time you’re given. It’s all about picking your battles and using time efficiently.

APT: You worked as an assistant director last year on Hamlet as well as an understudy in Stones in his Pockets. How has this year been different than last year working in similar roles on different projects?
Joseph Green: It was a great base. I came into Hamlet last year with a wider confidence of my craft than I have now. I came into Hamlet thinking that I was really ready for the professional world, and then I sat in on the first read-through of the script and during a break I just kept thinking to myself “I am nowhere near ready. What just happened?”

The whole process of Hamlet was just me starring at people who are at the top of their game, who are doing what they do best and who care a lot about the work. From where I was, it was overwhelming to a degree. Watching Jim DeVita and Nate Burger and all these incredible actors work was just an awe-inspiring experience. I had a journal I would scribble all these notes in at the end of the night and just fill it with all the thoughts I had from over the day because I knew I couldn’t fall asleep with everything bouncing around in my head. Going from a university setting to work of this caliber is not only daunting, it’s really inspiring, too.

I had a similar experience with my work on Stones, too, just in a different flavor. Instead of watching Nate Burger the whole time I was watching Marcus, who has a completely different way into the work. Getting to sit there and watch that for a month was fantastic as well.

So now, this year, I feel like the arc I’ve been going on is changing it from emulation and imitation to making it mine. The theme has been about asking myself questions like “what’s your depth here” and “what’s your music,” which can feel a little jarring coming from watching other people do their thing so well! Taking the tools I learned last year and applying them to how I can use them has been really soul-searching stuff. Any artist that works here becomes innately introspective because you start to look at your craft at a different angle because there are so many different approaches.

It’s been a season of learning to put myself into the work, in the short way, even though I gave it to you the long way.

APT: Can you share with us a little about what it was like being in the room while building Anton's Shorts from these separate Chekhov one-acts?
Joseph Green: It’s incredible. Watching that whole team work in full gear is honestly a real privilege and there isn’t a dull moment where I feel like I’m not learning something. I feel like I’ve been thrown into one of those phone booth-things that blow all the money up and I’m trying to grab onto as much as I can before it’s finished.

One of the first thing everyone in the process started talking about though was finding what the evening was about. Sometimes when you have five different short stories you put together for one night, if you’re not careful about that it can change into an evening of scene work, which is not what we wanted it to be. We asked questions about finding the spine of the evening and what it means to Chekhov in this order, at this time and why he is showing them to us. What is he trying to communicate with us? What do these pieces mean together in this evening?

I feel like, from where I’m sitting, we found some really poignant and interesting answers. Being able to watch this amazing cast and creative team talk about options and then go home and think about it, just to come back the next day and dive into another piece or their solo piece and follow the string helped us find the momentum. The whole team was fantastic.

APT: What's been your biggest take away from your time this summer - be it onstage, in apprentice classes or directing?
Joseph Green: I have taken away so many things. Each of them helpful in their own way. I think a lot about this.

The biggest thing I can take away is that I can do it. As an actor, you get used to performing in houses and black boxes and smaller theater settings, and you feel like your confidence is there. When you get on the Hill stage though, it feels like you go from benching 135 lb to 235 lb, and you feel the weight of that theater on you. I think the response for most people when they feel that is that you have to make it work and you have to push. No matter what it looks like from the audience, it’s such a hard and intimidating place to play in. You look at Jim Ridge and Jim DeVita and Tracy Michelle Arnold and they all just make it look so easy. And it’s not! How do they do that?!

During Hamlet and Stones, my time was spent trying to figure out “how can I do what they do?”, because what they’re doing fits in this majestic space. I found myself working away from how I usually approach work and my craft, teetering on pure imitation. This summer though, whenever I found myself moving in a direction that wasn’t my way into the work, it felt like the more of my foundation I lost. I had to catch myself a few times this season and get myself back to my basics. And then I found it working a little better for me, it just helped me remember what I do a little bit more naturally.

Basically, I’ve found that the answers don’t always live out there, but can sometimes be a little bit more about what’s in me. I just have to work on it so I can deserve to be on the stage. Because, for dramatic effect, it is a really hard stage to be on, let alone act beautifully on. It’s all about realizing that maybe it’s all a little bit more in me than I think originally.

APT: When you're not onstage or working on the next project, what do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Joseph Green: I love me some music! I’m a big singer, I’m a big piano player. Music theory fascinates me so much! Music has such a close part of my soul and always will. I love listening to Spotify and just go for a run or walk and listen. The new boygenius album has been a recent favorite, but really any kind of music is great.

For my day job I work as a personal trainer so I like to work out. I would like to brag a little bit and share that I’ve taken an inch-and-a-half off my waistline on top of dropping 15 lbs this summer, which was a lot of hard work! The quarter mile hike up the hill helps of course!

And then I do nerd out a little and play some video games, specifically Overwatch. I do that for more time than I care to admit, but it’s a guilty pleasure since I’m a naturally competitive person. Whenever I’m feeling that itch, I just jump in and play in that cesspit for a while.

APT: Wild Card Question: As a recent UW-Madison grad, what are three places you'd recommend to anyone new on campus this fall?
Joseph Green:

1. Ian's Pizza on State Street: Honestly, everyone is sleeping on the Ian’s salads. No one in this whole state thinks to go there for salads, but they have AMAZING salads. They’re so much more than just a place for pizza. It’s good all around. Dare I say, robust.
2. Insomnia Cookies: It’s a weakness, but I love it. They had at one point a red-velvet cookie with white chocolate chips drizzled with fudge. If I died while eating that cookie, I would have been okay with it.
3. The Cask and Ale: This one is 21+. It’s a popular but little bar on State Street that’s usually very quiet. I say usually, because on weekends it’s a lot of louder fun. The mood usually is quiet and the lights are dim with kind of a sports bar twist. I love the ambiance. It’s a great place to slip away and just be by yourself and write or work or journal or whatever! It’s a beautiful little spot that’s close to my heart.

APT: Anything else you'd like to share?
Joseph Green: Call your parents and tell them you love them! Get some good sleep!