Frank X

Frank X

Frank X is an actor from Philadelphia. He has also performed the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night with Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Audio Excerpt

Frank X talks about playing Malvolio

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Interview Excerpts

ON MALVOLIO

FRANK X: At the end of the play Malvolio is actually kept in a dark room and treated shabbily; he’s made to think that he’s insane, by these people who are playing a prank on him, and have sort of gulled him into thinking his mistress loved him and then that his mistress had him imprisoned.  And at the end he comes before her and in no short terms, berates her and demands to know why she would treat him the way she has – only to realize it was all part of a prank.

And his famous last line is that he’ll be revenged – on all of them.  And the question of tone comes in how he delivers that line.  Quite often it elicits laughs because people just sort of take it as a very silly thing to say.  And the wording can lead to that; “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” sounds rather childish.  So it can seem very impotent.  Or it can seem very weighty.

He’s been compared earlier in the play to a Puritan and we realize in a matter of years the Puritans are going to take over, in England, and actually close down the theaters.  So Shakespeare’s sort of clear-eyed view of Puritanism is sort of presaging what’s to come.  So to have that character say he’ll be revenged – indeed, they did get a bit of revenge on – certainly on the theater people.

ON THE GLOBE THEATRE

FRANK X: You know the way the theater was set up – the cheap seats were for the groundlings – they were the people who stood on the floor.  There were no seats on the groundling area.  And these were like Joe Schmo, just paying what he could to get in.  And then the higher ups, the lords or whatever, who would grace the theater then would be seated in more or less the sort of what we would call the balcony seating, around the edges.  And so he had sort of a dual audience:  there were the people who were actually sitting, who were very well educated, I would imagine; and then there were the groundlings, who probably had very little education at all.  So he had to please both — both audiences – with the same play, which is utterly amazing to me.

So, yes, you did have your high and your low humor, in the same play.  It’s not just like Hamlet was for the sophisticated people and Twelfth Night was for the unsophisticated.  They were both for the same audience.  And of course, he would take the plays later to the court, to the queen.  Elizabeth loved theater.  So it’s fascinating to think that he was trying to reach the greatest audience with each play he was writing.

I tend to think if Shakespeare were writing today he would be definitely writing for film, probably television, and he would probably have his hand in the Internet somehow.  [laughs]  You know, he would be finding and sort of nurturing audiences, the greatest audience he could find, I think.  You know, he wouldn’t be locked into simply theater, any more.  Which is an interesting thought.

ON PLAYING MALVOLIO AND BEING AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN

FRANK X: Being an African American of certain age, you can’t help but think of expressions that White America used to use, back in the day.  Expressions like, you know, “Know your place.”  And in fact, there is a line where Malvolio is imitating a lord, himself, and he says, “I know my place, as I would they should know theirs.”  And I wondered if people would sort of like really grab on to that.

The whole idea that the nobility is frowning on this servant that wants to rise above his place is, of course, nothing foreign in England, where they are so class conscious that that’s a weighty issue.  In America we don’t talk about class even though it’s important to us.  But the whole idea of the Black man wanting to rise above his place is – we have a history of that.  And I was wondering if people would bring that into the theater with them, which is – I mean, it wouldn’t damage the production at all, I don’t think, but people haven’t.  Haven’t mentioned it, anyway.

The other really potent image is, of course, Malvolio – Malvolio’s hands reaching through grating in the floor.  Which of course, to me, you can’t help but think of slaves, on slave ships.  But no one has mentioned that.  Yet.  I don’t think that’s a fault, either of the audience’s awareness, or even the production.  I just think it’s, hopefully, a sign of the times, that people aren’t mired in this sort of one-track thinking; that we are actually more open to an idea that we’ve been sort of speaking about for many years now – this notion of non-traditional casting.  You know?  But I wonder, indeed, if it’s lost on people, or they’re just not mentioning it.  Or it’s just not that important an issue.