鈥淓very play you do is a rehearsal for the next play you do,鈥� says Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays. If that鈥檚 the case, Mays has been in rehearsal for the last nine months.
Last spring, he began literal rehearsal for Off-Broadway鈥檚 Oslo, the new play by J.T. Rogers that goes inside the secret back channel meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. While performing Oslo by night, Mays rehearsed by day for the Nathan Lane鈥揓ohn Slattery-led Broadway revival of The Front Page as germophobic reporter Roy Bensinger. Once Front Page closed its limited fall engagement, Mays picked up Oslo again to bring it to Broadway this spring.
In Oslo, Mays plays Terje R酶d-Larsen, the real-life Norwegian visionary who brokered the underground meetings of representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in a peace process rooted in personal relationships. The stakes are stratospheric, the interactions intimate. In The Front Page, Mays鈥� fictional Bensinger added to the bombastic comedy of a Chicago press room while a fugitive runs AWOL. The premise localized, the physicality loud and large.
The incessant gear-shifting was 鈥渓ess exhausting and more invigorating鈥� for Mays. 鈥淭o go immerse myself into the rehearsal process at Front Page [during Oslo鈥檚 performance period] was like going to a spa in a way, to get to exercise different muscles. And then I would come over here and do [Oslo] and the demands were completely other.鈥� Mays, who won a Tony Award playing over 40 characters in the solo play I Am My Own Wife and was again Tony nominated for his portrayal of eight members of the D鈥橸squith family in A Gentleman鈥檚 Guide to Love and Murder, thrives on the diversification of his talents and the packing of his schedule.
鈥淚 think that a lot of actors are at the top of their game when they are overextended to a certain degree,鈥� says Mays. 鈥淭here is such a thing as spreading yourself too thin, but you鈥檙e operating out of exhaustion and more instinctive. I think all art essentially rises out of intuition and instinct.鈥�
Which is why Mays tries to find Terje鈥檚 unconscious habits, so he can operate out of impulse. 鈥淲hat I want to do is follow him around like Jane Goodall,鈥� says Mays, 鈥渁nd sit in his apartment and watch: How does he pick up a fork?鈥�
As for revisiting the role, Mays couldn鈥檛 be more pleased. 鈥淭his is an extraordinary luxury that you don鈥檛 experience very much in the contemporary American theatre 鈥� in which you get to rehearse a piece, perform it, go away from it for six months, come back to it, and do it again,鈥� says Mays. 鈥淚 never want to work any other way.鈥�
Look at some of the transformations of Jefferson Mays throughout his Broadway career:
