Reed Birney played Uncle Vanya at SoHo Rep in 2012 in a translation by Annie Baker, with a cast that also included Michael Shannon. He joined us in December 2021 to discuss the character in depth.

You’ll hear Reed and I talk about:

• his ideas going into Chekhov
• what he discovered and connected with about the role
• trusting the script
• challenges in the production
• and playing trapped characters

We also learn lots more about Reed in our lightning round with a couple special New York questions!

This episode marks our third installment in our Chekhov series as we focus on Reed playing the role of Uncle Vanya. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out two most recent episodes of our Vanya workshop and Libby Appel’s Q&A. I suspect you’ll have an even deeper appreciation of and curiosity for the works of Chekhov.

This episode also concludes Season 5, which began way back in March! We’ve released a dozen episodes this year, from interviews to workshops to text work and Q&A’s. Thank you to everyone listening and I hope you’ve enjoyed this season as much as I have. I’d love to hear below if you have a favorite episode, guest, or moment. I’m also excited to share that we just passed 40K downloads and the show regularly appears in the top 100 of arts podcasts around the world! 

Reed and I first spoke on the podcast back in Season 2 about his life and career. He has over 130 credits on stage and screen over the past 45 years. He is a Tony Winner for The Humans, a Tony nominee for Casa Valentina, and you can see him in the film Mass (now streaming on Hulu and elsewhere), HBO’s Succession, Apple’s Home Before Dark, and currently in theaters in The Menu with Ralph Fiennes. He also just closed a production of Chester Bailey with his son Ephraim at Irish Rep in New York. This guy just keeps working!

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This is a wonderful follow up to our Chekhov workshop from last episode with an even deeper discussion with the director!

You’ll hear Libby and I talk about what she looks for in auditions, what she expects in rehearsals, her inspirations, what things went well, what scared her, and yes, we have another lighting round!

Libby Appel is the author and translator of Five Chekhov Plays, the former Artistic Director for Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Indiana Repertory Theatre, and former Dean of Cal Arts Theatre.

It was a great honor that she gave so much of her time to both the workshop and this Q&A. Gaining insight into “the other side of the table” is always valuable and few directors have accomplished as much as Libby, so I’m sure it’ll be a fun and very informative hour for you. 

Learn more about Libby @ theworkslibbyappel.com 

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We have our first workshop scene NOT from Shakespeare, and there’s a great reason! From October 2021, we present a deep dive into the first half of Act 2 from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with director Libby Appel - who wrote the translation along with our dramaturg!

• DIRECTOR: Libby Appel (Q&A)
• DRAMATURG: Allison Horsley
• VOICE: Ursula Meyer
• PROFESSOR: Alberto Isaac (interview)
• SONYA: Deidrie Henry
• MARINA: Jully Lee
• VANYA: Howard Leder
• YELENA: Sara Mountjoy-Pepka
• ASTROV: Corey Hedy

One final thing I’ll leave you with before we get to it is that Sara mentions toward the end that Libby asks such great questions, which is really the basis of any deep work, creative or otherwise. What questions do you need to be asking yourself, and as an actor, how far are you willing to push yourself to find answers?

Fantastic work after only a few weeks of rehearsals; listen in to the cast and director continue to discuss the process. Part of The Rehearsal Room series. Prefer to watch the session? Find it here on YouTube!

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The WAJ podcast is designed to show you HOW the work is done, WHAT the realities of the working actor life are like, and to share all the different ways actors have come to this career. There is no one path and no single answer. We want to learn from all of those further down the road, to shorten the learning curve and to discover what helps and what doesn’t when it comes to having a lifelong career as an actor.