Kellams: TheatreSquared's 21st season is underway with a monument of the American stage. August Wilson's "Fences," the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning script, takes us to Pittsburgh, late 1950s. The play examines family, friendship, fidelity, the Black experience in America and much more. At the center is Troy, an early 1950s husband, father and friend. Troy's best friend and co-worker is Jim Bono. T2's Jim Bono is Avery Glymph. Glymph says Jim Bono is an exciting character to inhabit.
Glymph: First off, the name means, Bono means good, like bon, like in the Latin root. It's, all of the names mean something symbolic in the show, and that's what Jim Bono's name means. He is described in the stage directions as clearly the follower of the two. I put that in quotes, "clearly the follower of the two."
And he says it as much in the scene where things sort of take a turn and there's more to say. But he doesn't know how to say, "Troy, you're messing up," that kind of thing. So he does take a journey. He does take an arc. And that's what I love about playing characters in theater, is that you have an arc and there's a cost to them, especially for Troy, but for every character there, including Bono.
Kellams: So what do you do to kind of get ready for that character?
Glymph: I look at a lot of what's going on in the history of the time. I read the play five times. The first time, you're always reading it as an audience member, right? The second time, you're just trying to get every single thing that you can from the given circumstances of the play. This is Theater 101 right here. So you try to give yourself everything that the playwright has given you.
Then you as an actor get to make some choices. But they have to serve the playwright. They have to serve the play. You can't make an outlandish kind of assumption. You're not coming from Venus or something like that to do something to the human race or whatever. This is 1957 Pittsburgh. So your choices should fall within that kind of appropriate category.
And you see what it is that your objectives are in every scene. What do you want? Everybody wants something all the time. A very famous acting teacher of mine said, "You're never there just doing nothing. You want something. What do you want?" So you have to figure that out per scene. That's basically what you do to approach it.
And it's fun to do that. It's really fun to step into the shoes of someone else. And little by little, you get them into yourself. And then you sort of have to decompress after that. It's a whole process, but it's an art form that's thousands of years old that I'm happy to be amongst the traditionalists of doing.
Kellams: And of course, you're not doing it alone. You're doing it with your fellow cast mates.
Glymph: Your most important actor is the other one.
Kellams: Absolutely. Troy and Jim are friends, and there's an exploration of friendship here. But there's also, I think, an exploration, and maybe this is what we take away as audience members, what's our responsibility to a friendship, when to speak up, when to try to help and when try to be supportive?
Glymph: Absolutely. It's one of the obstacles within Jim Bono's character. Another important consideration when working on a part is, what are your obstacles? That's another thing that you have to figure out. Everybody has an action, but not all actions are just going to be accepted readily and right away. Drama inherently is conflict.
And so whether that's from another person, whether that person is being an obstacle, or whether that's from a moral standpoint or a general standpoint, a super-objective kind of obstacle, you have to find that as well. You really have to think about the entire world of the play.
And with Bono, it's about, "Should I step in here? Should I not step in here? What's that going to do to our friendship?" And the way Troy handles that is completely unexpected, which is another wonderful aspect of this play. You don't see it coming.
Kellams: I think it's one of those scripts. You'll have some people in the audience who've seen it, some who haven't, and I think that would be exciting to be on stage, knowing that there are some people there seeing it for the very first time.
Glymph: Yeah, it's done every year, multiple times a year. And always will be because it's a period piece. August Wilson did a play for every decade of the 20th century in that cycle. It's particularly special for me because it's the first show that I did as a serious, quote-unquote, actor. When I was 16, I played Cory at the Cape Fear Regional Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Yeah, exactly.
And I kind of had a feeling that I wanted to be an actor already, but that solidified it. I got to work with Mel Winkler, who played Troy in that production, and he was one of the original cast members of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone." And so his insight to August's work was very valuable.
And just to see it come full circle for me, and to watch Jay Westbrook play Cory, who was fantastic, by the way, everybody should take note of this guy. He's going to go places. And then for me all these years later to play Bono, to turn around and be like, "Oh my goodness. Yeah, well, I'm playing Bono now."
Kellams: What is that like to come back to a script when you're somewhat older?
Glymph: Well, the writing is so good that I'm sitting backstage and I'm still remembering that first production and the lines from it. And it's just been so popular that I've seen a few productions of it. And to see everyone's special take on it is incredible because, yeah, it's just like Shakespeare. It's American Shakespeare, if you ask me.
But every production of "Hamlet" is going to be different. Every production of "Fences" is also going to be different. But as long as you serve the playwright, as long as you go about it in that way, then you know you're going to have an incredible experience every time.
Kellams: There are certain scripts, "Hamlet," "Fences," I don't know, certain Ibsen scripts or ones that are just sort of timeless. Do you, as an actor, feel a vibrancy or electricity when you're putting on one of those scripts?
Glymph: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think that whenever you get the opportunity and the chance to sink your teeth into a good role, then you're going to feel that kind of electricity, as if it's a living playwright, that's great because you get the chance to maybe work and maybe collaborate with them. If it's something that's a little more classic, you don't necessarily get that opportunity, but it's a classic for a reason, you know?
And you can say, "Hey, I've got that in my toolbox. I've had that experience with this company, with this director." And yeah, it's the life. It's the life of an actor. It's their goals, certain goals that you want to do, certain plays that you want to be a part of. This is definitely one of them.
Kellams: And it's 1957 in the yard in Pittsburgh, but the themes are 2026 anywhere?
Glymph: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's love, there's death, there's family. There's everything there. It's a beautiful piece of theater. Everybody should see.
Kellams: Avery Glymph is Jim Bono in the TheatreSquared production of August Wilson's "Fences." It's on stage at T2 in Fayetteville through Sept. 27. Our conversation took place in the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio on Monday. This is Ozarks at Large.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
