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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:15] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:17] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Michael C. Hall.

[0:20] Gordon Cox: The actor is best known for his work in HBO's Six Feet Under, and especially Dexter, Showtime's eight-season chronicle of a serial killer with a conscience. But he's been a theater guy all along, with some of his earliest work, including gigs in Broadway's Cabaret in Chicago, plus more recent stage outings in shows like Lazarus, the Off-Broadway musical inspired by David Bowie and the Man Who Fell to Earth. Now he's back on the boards in the Signature Theatre's off-Broadway revival of Thom Pain (based on nothing), Will Eno's Beckettian comic tragic monologue that's about nothing and, well, everything. Hey Michael, thanks for being here.

[0:53] Michael C. Hall: Sure thing.

[0:55] Gordon Cox: So Thom Pain is a pretty tough play to summarize. How do you describe it to people?

[0:58] Michael C. Hall: How do I describe it to people? Well, I've struggled to describe it to people. I heard Will describe it the other day in a way that I thought was really, I mean, not surprisingly, but that I thought was great. The guy who comes on stage with the goal of presenting the story of his life, but in the midst of presenting it, realizes that he's alive. It's a difficult thing to describe. I mean, I feel like we, and by extension, you don't know a whole lot for sure about this guy who's talking. Like, is his name Thom Pain? It's not clear whether or not that's actually his name. He does at one point say people ask about the name Thom Pain, but that could well be the name of the play he's presenting, or the event that he's MCing.

[2:03] Gordon Cox: Right, right.

[2:04] Michael C. Hall: And so then how do you think about creating a character when you only have to go on this sort of quirky, sometimes enigmatic monologue? I mean, that is what I have. I really allow the ride that I take with the language to dictate whatever experience I have from time to time. I mean, I don't have a lot of hard and fast rules about who he is. There's something about this piece that lends itself to somewhat liquid interpretation.

[2:51] Gordon Cox: Does he change night to night?

[2:53] Michael C. Hall: I definitely am open to the possibility of allowing some new idea, if it occurs to me, to get sprinkled into the stew of it in terms of where he's coming from or what exactly he's up to. I think the biggest change is, you know, it's a room full of about 300 people that for the most part is completely different from night to night. We've done it, I guess, what, 17 times now, and every time feels unique.

[3:26] Gordon Cox: And you talk very directly to us.

[3:28] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, it's not I'm not acting out scenes with invisible people in front of an audience. The audience are my partner.

[3:38] Gordon Cox: And did you have to make specific choices about where you are? Where the character you are playing believes he is and who he's talking to? Did you even need to, or did you have to think, okay, well, I'm in this room presenting this situation because...

[3:46] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, I definitely have thought a good amount about what his assignment might be. Who assigned it to him and who might have assigned it. But you know, I'm reluctant to say definitively, in part because I wouldn't want to, if someone comes to see it, plant some seed in their mind that maybe limited or unnecessarily colored their experience of it. And also I feel free to just kind of throw whatever that idea might be out the window and play with something else. But ultimately, I mean again, I'm thinking of something I heard Will say, but you know, if you really could try to break it down and not overthink it, you just imagine some invisible gun to your head and your assignment is tell the truth.

[4:46] Gordon Cox: Right.

[4:48] Michael C. Hall: And you sort of return over the course of this sometimes rambling monologue to a handful of stories. At least one of which is very explicitly about your character, a couple of others, you know, may or may not be. But why do you think what is it about those stories that keeps him coming back to them? And why do you think they are the kind of through lines for this show?

[5:10] Michael C. Hall: I think he's focused on two main things. One, a story from his childhood that has to do with a sort of initial loss of innocence, and then another story having to do with a relationship that ended in hindsight, maybe badly. And there's a lot of regret and unresolved feelings surrounding that. So I think he goes out to tell the story of his life. He starts with this seminal loss of innocence event having to do with his dog.

[5:55] Gordon Cox: Yeah, it made me want to hug all the dogs I know.

[5:57] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, I know. It's brutal. And then he gets a little lost, and in the midst of arguably at least vamping, he starts talking about this relationship, and those stories start to sort of intersect and talk to one another in a way. This also is very serious. We should say also that it's very funny.

[6:23] Gordon Cox: It's hilarious.

[6:24] Michael C. Hall: I mean, it never stops being funny.

[6:25] Gordon Cox: No, it's hilarious.

[6:26] Michael C. Hall: Will's, you know, he isn't sort of by turns funny and serious and absurd and profound. He manages to be like all those things at the same time, like in the same space of one sentence, all those things can coexist. It's a part of his brilliance.

[6:45] Gordon Cox: Right. The, some very specific choices were made about the set for the show as well. You sort of walk in and a friend of mine was convinced this theater was under renovation, which I mean, I was mostly not convinced of that because I knew how new that theater is.

[7:03] Michael C. Hall: Right.

[7:04] Gordon Cox: But no, no, this is a choice. But there was like, there was even the little hastily scrawled sign that said "Our Dust" or whatever.

[7:10] Michael C. Hall: Yeah.

[7:11] Gordon Cox: What can you tell me a little bit about how that choice was made and what that was?

[7:15] Michael C. Hall: No, it's no choice. It's totally, you know, I'm as I'm sure you can imagine reluctant to speak too specifically about the design elements in as much as they do or don't exist. But you know, I think that Will and Oliver Butler, our director, wanted to, I think the general sense is that Thom has this is a one-night only thing. He's rented out the place. It's in a space of transition between productions. You can see sort of remnants of other productions. But it's a very bare and somewhat damaged space. There's water damage on one side of the stage, there's a hole on another.

[8:03] Michael C. Hall: Definitely a giant hole in the floor, yeah.

[8:05] Gordon Cox: There's definitely a giant hole in the floor.

[8:07] Michael C. Hall: But I think the set design, the sound design, I think, endeavor not to be explicit but more subliminal in how they inform the audience's experience and how they support the piece, which is kind of how the piece operates as well, I would think.

[8:31] Gordon Cox: Yeah, it's a triple E, a triply subliminal affair.

[8:36] Michael C. Hall: And you had worked with playwright Will Eno before in a 2014 play on Broadway called The Realistic Joneses, or rather that was on Broadway in 2014 with Tony Collette and Tracy Letts and Marisa Tomei.

[8:48] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[8:49] Michael C. Hall: What was it about his writing that you responded to?

[8:49] Michael C. Hall: Everything. I mean, I was sent that play. I was still in Los Angeles at the time. And within a couple pages, I was just so completely taken with, you know, what I just described. There's something so singular about the way he writes and the words he puts in people's mouths and how people express themselves, but at the same time, something so delicious and relatable. It's his own sort of theatrical language. And I just, I don't know, my girlfriend at the time, she's now my wife, but she read it and she was like, "This is like this was written for you. This is how I often experience you constructing thoughts, you know, maybe not as artfully or concisely as Will does in his plays, but there was some sort of inherent affinity I had for his language from the beginning.

[9:52] Gordon Cox: And you first read the play you're in now when you were working on Realistic Joneses, you mentioned.

[9:57] Michael C. Hall: That's right, yeah. Will just slipped me a copy one day, and he didn't really, because he didn't really say, he just invited me to read it and I read it and I told him I thought it was incredible.

[10:16] Michael C. Hall: Um there wasn't any sort of explicit desire stated at least to do it one day, but I think we both kind of understood that maybe someday it would work out that I could do it.

[10:30] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, and so the first time around this show was in um this was in 2005, as it was the DR2, which is this teeny tiny theater. It's like you know, 99 seats tops, and uh uh the signature space that you're in now is the biggest one, and it's also just in addition to the additional seats, it's very spacious, like it's got this big aisle and it's got that how how does that influence the size of the crowd and the size of the auditorium? How does that influence how you interact with the piece and with I mean my experience of the piece begins and ends with that space, so I don't really have uh another space to compare it to. I do find that, you know, while it is um an airy space, I mean it's not a huge house, but it it feels substantial and um it feels like there's a lot of space, like you're not packed in there, but um it at the same time feels completely intimate.

I don't I don't feel like um I mean I would say people sitting in the front few rows versus people sitting in the last few are having a somewhat different experience of the piece, but not completely divergent, you know, and I feel um yeah, I feel able to hold the room.

[11:41] Michael C. Hall: Um it would be interesting, you know, when we were rehearsing it, because my scene partner is an audience, um, pretty early on we had people to start coming in. So in the rehearsal hall, I would do it for like, you know, 20 people. Um so and and the experience of doing it there in the rehearsal hall to go into the theater has not been as sort of big of a shift as I thought it might be.

[12:09] Michael C. Hall: Right. And you have been in theater quite regularly, and uh particularly in the last five years, um, but uh in general, you've always sort of made it a point to come back to theater, even when you know you were doing regular TV shows like Six Feet Under and Dexter. Wha why is that? What brings you back?

[12:24] Michael C. Hall: Um I you know, it's I mean, originally I wasn't coming back to the theater, I was just in the theater. Right. I guess you can only come back if that's where you start. But um it's yeah, it's it's you know, my first experience is like probably the vast majority of actors um performing uh were on stage. I've always loved the intimacy and immediacy of um live performance and um yeah, I love it.

[12:52] Gordon Cox: Do you have a sense of how your theater training and your work in the theater has influenced the way you approach screen work?

[12:59] Michael C. Hall: Um, I can't really compare my experience to anyone else's um in as much as you know, my experience is the only one I've had, but I do think that if you start out working on stage, then you maybe think about playing scenes or you think about a d a broader journey rather than just moments. Um it's just a way that you're sort of conditioned to think. Um which you know, if you're if you're making a film or or an episodic television thing, you you're sort of constructing a performance on the fly as you do it out of out of order. Kind of beat by beat.

[13:41] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[13:42] Michael C. Hall: But I I don't know, I think I think I do kind of keep that sense of of of uh an arc of a performance in mind to some degree. I mean, uh you kind of surrender to that as well. Um probably the more you trust your director, the more you can fully surrender to it.

[14:00] Gordon Cox: Yeah, it's interesting that Dexter was in many ways, it feels like kind of the anti because he's so he was such an internal character, he's kind of the opposite of a theatrical character, right?

[14:09] Michael C. Hall: Yeah. Yeah, it would be hard to uh do the stage version of it.

[14:13] Gordon Cox: Right, right. No, it would be a musical if you have a lot of sort of internal monologues on it.

[14:16] Michael C. Hall: Yeah.

[14:17] Gordon Cox: Um what are some of your favorite experiences on stage?

[14:19] Michael C. Hall: I'm really enjoying this right now. It's totally uh unique in my experience. Well, maybe not totally. I guess Hedwig was um uh a monologue. That sounds about right. And um Hedwig was really fun, rock and roll fantasy. Um playing the MC in cabaret was amazing way back when you know people can forget that you're a musical actor. I feel like despite the fact that you're always in musicals, uh sometimes.

[14:46] Michael C. Hall: Not always. I mean not but like pretty regularly. Um I've done yeah, cabaret, uh Chicago Chicago, Hedwig, Lazarus. Yeah. Um yeah, I mean you know, I mean I I understand that most people's exposure to me is through the TV shows I've done. Um but but yeah, I've done quite a bit of singing. I always uh I sang when I was a kid. I was in a boys' choir, so as far back as you know when I was a first soprano, I've been singing.

[15:16] Gordon Cox: And you've been in a you mentioned a handful of revivals and you were also in this show uh Lazarus that was inspired by David Bowie and The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was uh a new project and also you know, not traditional as uh as musicals go, right? Is that the kind of new work you tend to be drawn to, do you think? Or would you ever want to be in a sort of more traditional razzle dazzle, create a role in a more traditional razzle dazzle new musical?

[15:42] Michael C. Hall: Um I wouldn't rule out the possibility of of uh more traditional. I mean, if it's a traditional musical, I don't know that it would be a new musical, or for it's a new musical that that seems like a traditional musical, I don't know that it would be that interesting. Right. Uh but but yeah, I guess I do gravitate towards towards things that are maybe um I don't know if they're left of center. I just I don't know. I I I gravitate toward what I gravitate to. I don't have like some sort of um guidelines written down that I that I that I make sure things either fulfill or don't. Um but um but yeah I wouldn't rule out the possibility of anything. I mean I've certainly done things all the all the best things I've done are the things that I couldn't have imagined having done uh before they materialized.

[16:37] Gordon Cox: So your most recent TV outing, or at least the most recent that's come out for us was in uh safe, which was filmed in the UK and it was a co-production with Netflix and Canal Plus, right? Like it was this like funny kind of intersection of all these kind of international uh, you know, and you were playing a British man yourself in the show. How'd that all come about?

[16:58] Michael C. Hall: Well, I was doing Lazarus uh the Bowie musical in London. I was really enjoying being in the UK. I had a sort of ongoing kind of casual relationship with an agent who I knew in London, and I had lunch with him and told him how much I loved being there and asked if he knew of any other opportunities in that part of the world. And one of the meetings I had was with Nicolas Schindler, the producer and Harlan Coven. Yeah, uh, who uh whose story it was. Right. Um and it originally was Netflix wasn't involved. There was another network work involved, and then they fell out, and then Network Netflix came along and and um scooped us up. And uh yeah, I just you know, I was interested in in immersing myself into uh on uh in a in a set uh that was that was foreign, you know, the playing an Englishman was fun. It was sort of turning tables on the trend of British and otherwise foreign actors playing Americans. Um and um yeah, I I and and I and I relish the chance to play like a a regular guy. Right.

[18:10] Gordon Cox: And there was another it was uh it was a commitment that had a definitive end and so I was gonna say that's it's the that's it for that show, right? There is no second season.

[18:18] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, his other daughter's gonna be on the same.

[18:22] Gordon Cox: No, no, it's over.

[18:23] Michael C. Hall: Right. Yeah.

[18:24] Gordon Cox: And so you mentioned you were in London working on Lazarus. You worked with uh the director Eva Van Hova, who um is you know something of a hot shot director on both sides of the Atlantic and is uh both you know much praised and also highly controversial for some people in terms of what he does and how he approaches uh theater. What's he like to work with?

[18:40] Michael C. Hall: He's great, you know. I I guess because of his pedigree or um the the nature of his productions, I I thought he would be more um exacting um or or sort of uh more of an authoritarian in terms of how he dealt with performers and what he wanted, but he actually as much as any director I've ever worked with leaves so much to his actors and um and gives them so much agency over over what they're up to. Um and he really loves actors and and um so uh and and with Lazarus, I mean it was such a sort of abstract piece. We just you show up and uh there's no table work, you know. You just you're you're wise to be off book because you just start at the beginning and start staging the play. And there's no, you know, in the case of that show, it was all just like here we are in this kind of abstract, empty space with this abstract piece.

What are we gonna do? And he there were times where he literally just deferred to everyone else, and I don't know what to do here. Does anyone have any ideas? And um and I as I think is common with his his stuff, you know, we didn't really stage the end until a day or two before the first performance. And I think he likes to um put his actors in a situation where they're somewhat on edge.

[20:21] Michael C. Hall: Um and I there's something to be said for it.

[20:24] Gordon Cox: Right, right.

[20:26] Michael C. Hall: As I was looking back at uh you know all the roles you've played, I I noticed that you've never been afraid to play queer roles if you were in Hedwig, as you mentioned. But I I was thinking that back in you know 2000, 2001, whenever you were sort of just getting started with Six Feet Under, like was that a did that feel different at all to sort of because you were just really starting out uh back then, particularly in TV? Was that a thing that people approached back then with a different sense of trepidation? A sort of, oh, your biggest role to date is is this gay man who like did it was there some sort of uh or were you worried about there being some sort of stigma to that?

[21:01] Michael C. Hall: Or um I wasn't really worried. I was, but I wasn't, you know, I was aware that that the first uh thing I'd done of or would have done of any significance on screen would be playing a gay character and that I would be associated with that role. But it was the best role I'd read. Uh whether uh theater script, a film script, TV script, even a a play that had already, you know, uh some old chestnut. I mean, it was incredible. So you know, I I didn't really it didn't really give me pause and I didn't take the part in spite of the fact that he was gay, but because he was gay, the fact that he was gay and his relationship to his sexuality was such a fundamental part of what made him a great character and his inherent dramatic conflict, you know.

[22:02] Michael C. Hall: So yeah, and and I don't know. I mean I feel like the writing was on the wall. Yeah, maybe in 1985 it would have been a little more of a well, first of all, the character wouldn't have been drawn that way or presented at all. But yeah, I wasn't really I was more just like aware that the character was unique in the television and and broader landscape, and I just wanted to get it right.

[22:30] Gordon Cox: Right.

[22:30] Gordon Cox: And now you as I understand it, you initially came to Alan Ball's attention through Sam Mendes, who you worked with on Cabaret, is that right?

[22:39] Michael C. Hall: I I think somewhere in the midst of the audition process, there were like two auditions in New York and then a final sort of screen test at I day. Yeah, and and I think at some point during that process he might have compared notes with Sam. I don't know if S uh Sam and Alan worked together on American Beauty by the way. Yeah, and it all was kind of coincided. Yeah. Um it was around that time. Um but yeah, whatever conversation did have, I guess um he didn't try to talk him out of it. Or if he did, it didn't work.

[23:10] Gordon Cox: Right, right.

[23:12] Michael C. Hall: Yeah. And because this is the age of reboots, I have to ask you, is there any talk of a Dexter reboot?

[23:19] Michael C. Hall: But I mean people are always telling me about the talk of a Dexter reboot. But but people on the street.

[23:25] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[23:25] Michael C. Hall: Um people just like um yeah. Um you know, there have been there have been sort of little little percolations uh uh uh but nothing that's sort of felt worth pursuing. But I you know I would you even be interested in something like that?

[23:45] Michael C. Hall: Uh theoretically, if if if the if the writing took it somewhere um that felt compelling and felt new and yet honored where it had been. But I don't know. I mean I it's in a it's an amazing world and he's not dead, so it's a possibility, but I don't have any um immediate definitive plans to do any of that.

[24:09] Gordon Cox: What about Six Feet Under for a reunion or anything like that?

[24:11] Michael C. Hall: Or that'd be tricky because Yeah, that's that's a solid point, yeah.

[24:15] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, well but but you know, you could but no, I don't think that would I don't think that's gonna happen. But if if somehow all those people wanted to get back together, I would definitely be into that. It would be such a trip.

[24:27] Gordon Cox: Right, right.

[24:28] Gordon Cox: Yeah. When you were starring in Dexter, you underwent treatment for a form of Hodgkin's lymphoma. Um and do you find that that experience changed the way you think about the projects you do or the work you choose, or probably you know I I I or even your reaction to this play for Thom Pain?

[24:33] Michael C. Hall: Yeah. I mean I think I think that experience I was not uh I was I was very much in touch with the reality uh that I was a mortal human being before I got cancer.

[25:04] Gordon Cox: Um and because you were playing Dexter or being a bit more than...

[25:04] Michael C. Hall: No because because I'm a human being who will die.

[25:12] Gordon Cox: Right.

[25:12] Michael C. Hall: Um but but um I do think that that experience and I and a lot of the sort of um fruits of that experience I think uh have manifested almost retroactively you know when I was going through the treatment I was very much living just day to day and and you know just focused on doing what I needed to do to to get through it. Uh and you know it's only since then that I think I've maybe taken a wider view of it.

[25:45] Michael C. Hall: Um I think it made me more grateful more aware of how precious one's health is um and and yeah more more inclined to do the things that that turned me on and that I want to do um without being at least primarily focused with you know the right career moves and all that. But I think I already kind of had that approach so you know it's in in some parallel runo universe. I never I never had it and uh I don't know what I'm doing instead of what I'm doing presently as a result. I can't say but uh speaking of career moves, do you know what's next for you after Thom Pain?

[26:31] Michael C. Hall: I don't know for sure. There's um you know, there's some um there's a couple of independent films that I you know, those are the kind of things that I only believe are gonna happen when I show up on set.

[26:42] Gordon Cox: Sure.

[26:43] Michael C. Hall: Or actually when they actually are shown. Um so you know, I I'm not but but th those things might happen in the new year. Um beyond that, I'm not I'm not sure.

[26:56] Gordon Cox: Would you be interested in going back to series television, sort of ongoing series television?

[27:01] Michael C. Hall: Yeah, yeah. I I mean, you know, it would have to be I I have a sense of what that open-ended commitment can entail. So I would want it to be something that felt like it had the possibility for for real development and evolution, but I mean I mean I think an actor would be crazy to forsake the television world at this juncture.

[27:28] Gordon Cox: Right.

[27:28] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Are there any stage roles you are dying to play?

[27:32] Michael C. Hall: Um musical or play. No.

[27:39] Michael C. Hall: No. I mean I you know, there's certainly great roles that I would that I would um but but there's nothing I I c yeah there's not there's no part that I feel like w I won't be complete if I don't do um.

[27:55] Gordon Cox: Do you remember the role or the theater piece that made you sit up and think, Oh, I want to do that?

[28:02] Michael C. Hall: Um yeah, I went to see uh a community theater production of a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol when I was like five, maybe.

[28:17] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Where was this?

[28:18] Michael C. Hall: Uh it was at the Theater in the Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's a production that I that I actually appeared in as like a teenager. Um it's an ongoing it's like a Raleigh tradition. This guy Ira David Wood, who um who played the title role and wrote it and directed it. Um I went and saw it, and this was probably very early on in in the life of that show that that goes on, but I thought it was amazing, and I was five years old. I went with my dad, and I discovered when the show was over that the guy who played Scrooge was actually only twenty-one years old.

[28:58] Gordon Cox: Uh huh.

[28:59] Michael C. Hall: And I thought that was the most fantastic trick I'd I'd ever, you know. Maybe if I you know been older and and knew about prosthetics and age makeup, I would have I would have been on to him. But as a five-year-old with my disbelief completely suspended, I thought I was, you know, looking at this decrepit old lunatic. And uh and I I I think yeah, I think that was that was the the first seed of like wow, that's magic.

[29:33] Gordon Cox: Right.

[29:34] Gordon Cox: And so you don't know what it is that's gonna get you back to the stage, but something will get you back.

[29:39] Michael C. Hall: We know.

[29:40] Gordon Cox: So yeah.

[29:41] Gordon Cox: Well, we look forward to it, whatever it is.

[29:43] Michael C. Hall: All right, thanks, Mike.

[29:44] Gordon Cox: Sure thing.

[29:51] Gordon Cox: That was Michael C. Hall, now starring at Off Broadway Signature Center in Thom Pain, based on nothing. If you like what you've heard on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, don't forget to rate and review us on iTunes and subscribe wherever finer podcasts are dispensed. On the next Stagecraft, I talk to Joan Allen, the stage and screen actress now on Broadway in the starry revival of Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery. Until then, thanks for listening and see you at the theater.