Chautauqua Theater Company Guest Actor Brian Owen, playing the role of Johnson, and Conservatory Actor Hillel Rosenshine, playing the role Everett “Ed” Kavanaugh, perform during a dress rehearsal of Best For Baby Thursday in Bratton Theater.
SOPHIA ROOKSBERRY
Staff Writer
When Brian Owen auditioned for the titular role of Sharyn Rothstein’s Best for Baby, he had no idea what to make of the script. A surreal comedy centered on the wrongdoings of Johnson & Johnson — a corporation personified onstage as an adult-sized baby — was one of the most “astonishing texts” Owen said he had read in a long time.
After landing the role, Owen arrived on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution in mid-June and began to deepen his understanding of his character, Johnson.
“The metaphor of a corporation — and especially corporate personhood — as a baby is so apt for so many reasons,” Owen said. “One of them is this sense … that I was hoping to be able to create with the audience of something wonderful and precious and sweet, but that is also so wrong.”
Over the course of decades, the audience comes to see Johnson both as a conniving corporation devoted to his own self-interest and also as an entitled child, inspired by young minds of the modern age.
“We have a lot of friends with kids that are right now in the 3 to 6 range,” Owen said. “What I love about all of those kids is they are very, very independent and they are very capable … but the moment that they don’t want to be anymore and they want to be [a] baby again, they are immediately collapsible, tantrum [throwing] messes.”
Owen walks this line between arrogance and petulance while engaging directly with the audience. As the play’s narrator, Owen breaks the fourth wall and uses the performance art of clowning — defined by Backstage Magazine as portraying “exaggerated characters through a mix of comedy, physical performance and costuming” — in order to fish for audience sympathy as he pursues his infantile whims.
“Within clown, the relationship with the audience is 100% where it lies, and [I’m] trying to build a constant relationship with the audience, which really differs from traditional American acting,” Owen said. “… You cannot approach this role with, ‘OK, I’m going to hide behind an invisible fourth wall.’ It has to be a constant relationship of give-and-take immediately with the audience.”
Owen often finds himself drawn to roles where the relationship with the audience is “permeable” and he is encouraged to get under their skin. He also enjoys those moments onstage, sharing them with his fellow actors rather than members of the audience.
“The favorite moments that I get to do are just the audacious things,” Owen said. “… It’s wild and fun to get to confront an audience with them, or the things that I get to do with the other actors on stage … Because of the license that I have as a clown, I kind of get to be an asshole and make them break.”
In order to earn these moments of tomfoolery when the curtain rises, Owen enters each day by checking in with other members of the theater’s ecosystem. Due to the improvisatory and unpredictable nature of the role, these moments of connection are some of the only ways he can brace himself for a performance.
“I might have some of the more front-facing roles to do within putting on theater, but I don’t step into that theater without being able to do that work because of an incredible crew backstage, without people who are selling tickets, who are seating people from the house, who are running the light boards, designers who are no longer here,” Owen said. “… Each night, my goal is to come in and say hi to Larkin running sound, say hi to Savannah on spot, say hi to each stage manager, say hi to each actor, just kind of connect and [figure out] where we are starting for the day.”
Owen was also in frequent conversation with Rothstein, the playwright behind Best for Baby. As with any new work, the script was in flux throughout much of the rehearsal process, which was complemented by Rothstein’s willingness for Owen to play around with his dialogue.
“Within the first week of rehearsal, Sharyn grabbed me and she was like, ‘… You need to feel like you have a full rein,’” Owen said. “‘Do not stick to the text during these sections. You need to be able to go wherever the moment is leading with the audience. Feel free to just improvise and to go around the edges of the script.’ To have a writer who is that game … and that trusting and egoless about it was really incredible.”
In addition to maintaining relationships with these various players of Bratton Theater, Owen stays grounded in the turbulent role by acknowledging the sensitive subjects his character spends the duration of the play patronizing, such as Johnson & Johnson’s appropriation of Clara Barton’s American Red Cross logo for its own products.
“In my opinion, to be able to have the license to be able to go, ‘Neener, neener, neener’ on [Barton’s] entire legacy … I need to find some different ways to at least personally pay some respect to her,” Owen said. “… If I’m going to clown around on her legacy, how can I actually know what it was, so that way the point of view I’m doing it with can be coming from the right place?”
While researching the context of the play, Owen also made an effort to understand the mental implications of portraying a humanoid iteration of a company.
“One of the most fascinating things for me … trying to get into the psychology of what this character was thinking and why … was a website that is a timeline from the claimant’s point of view of what Johnson & Johnson knew, what actions they were not taking,” Owen said. “… There is a rebuttal website to it from Johnson & Johnson … and it is fascinating to go from a claimant’s point of view and then directly read the corporate spin about it.”
Chautauquans have four more chances to witness Owen in this multifaceted and challenging role: at 7:30 p.m. tonight and Saturday, and 2 or 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available online or at the Bratton Theater ticketing kiosk for $65.
