Actor Spotlight

Want to best Dallas actor David Jeremiah? Challenge him to a game of Monopoly

David Jeremiah stars as Toby in A Behanding in Spokane at Second ThoughtTheatre.
Photo by Karen Almond
Van Quattro plays Carmichael, a man who has been looking for his missing handfor 27 years.
Photo by Karen Almond
Barrett Nash and David Jeremiah offered him an imposter hand. This was theirreward.
Photo by Karen Almond

Martin McDonagh is known for writing plays that most find provocative, shocking and even offensive (see The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lieutenant of Inishmore). For actor David Jeremiah, that's nothing more than a professional challenge.

In A Behanding in Spokane, produced by Second Thought Theatre, Jeremiah plays a small-time weed dealer who unwisely tries to con a disfigured psychopath (played by the icy-eyed Van Quattro). In between shows, he took the time to fill out our survey of serious, fun and sometimes ridiculous questions.

Full name: David Jeremiah

Role in A Behanding in Spokane: Toby

Previous work in the DFW area: Most recently Broke-ology at Jubilee — Kingy Tre Garrett!! And The Whipping Man at Circle Theatre — Kingy Monty Sutton!!!

Hometown: Oak Cliff

Where you currently reside: The B.A.D. (Bishop Arts District)

First theater role: Boy Beetle in the Butterfly's Evil Spell by Federico Garcia Lorca

First stage show you ever saw: The Lion King at Fair Park — Kingy Kelly Abbott!!!

Moment you decided to pursue acting: The moment I chose to do something positive.

Most challenging role you’ve played: There's not one in particular. It's more of my unintentional and automatic disability of finding über real-life parallels between my character's situation and my own. Because it becomes distracting. Not to the point of a method actor going off the deep end (I'm in no way method) but more of me wasting time in wonder of how eerie the connection is. Which causes me to major in the minor — focus on something that's not as reliable as lets say ... OBJECTIVE. It's the old soul in me.

Special skills: Some people say staring. Uh, .folding my ears inside of themselves then making them pop back out on command, being proud and loving my siblings way too much.

Something you’re REALLY bad at: Losing at Monopoly. Playing with my family is asking to be emotionally scarred.

Current pop culture obsession: Chicks that are half-rockabilly, half-punk — coined ROPUN by yours truly — Kingy David Ristuccia!!! Also, Rising Kneeeeee!!! and L.A.M. Projects.

Last book you read: The Nigger Factor by Gil Scott-Heron

Favorite movie(s): Paid in Full, The Bear, The War, Layer Cake, Vanilla Sky, Buffalo 66, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Dogville, Hurly Burly and Spanglish

Favorite musician(s): I listen to soooo many genres it ain't even funny. Old 50 Cent if I had to jam to one thing for the rest of my ride.

Favorite song: Lately, "Goldie" by ASAP Rocky.

Dream role: Ariel in The Pillowman, also by Martin McDonagh

Favorite play(s): The Pillowman

Favorite musical(s): Me no likey.

Favorite actors/actresses: Daniel Day-Lewis — if he can be considered an actor. He's more of a piece of art within himself. Also my boo-ski-boo Marion Cotillard.

Favorite food: My Granny's hot water cornbread. Anything my baby sis cooks for me.

Must-see TV show(s): The Wire and Boardwalk Empire

Something most people don’t know about you: I'm FLOCKIN' TERRIFIED of hypodermic needles, but I LOVE getting tattoos.

Place in the world you’d most like to visit: Africa. Show those lions my agility.

Pre-show warm-up: I take the textbook "red leather yellow leather" vocal warm-up and put my own little spin on it. I name a random item in whatever room I'm in and stick "leather" on the end of it. Then I hurl random insults at my fellow cast members and add "leather" to the end of those.

Also there's a part in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps where Shia LaBeouf's character tells Josh Brolin's character: "F@#* you, Brenton!!! I like to say that to the air for about three minutes with as many different inflections as possible.

Favorite part about your current role: Honestly, that I get to act black for an hour and some minutes.

Most challenging part about your current role: Playing the circumstances without JUST playing the circumstances. In a piece with stakes and farce this high, it's easy to slip into solely playing an emotional state and allowing the other elements to fall by the wayside. It's almost like acting twice, thrice, etc. It's a very welcome exercise in being completely submissive to the actual moment.

Most embarrassing onstage mishap: Audibly pooting onstage — seeing how gentlemen don't fart.

Career you’d have if you weren’t a performer: A fake performer?

Favorite post-show spot: Pizza Lounge off of Expo and Perry all day. I've got some kingin' memories there that I wouldn't trade for all the marbles.

Favorite thing about Dallas-Forth Worth: That it's ripe. And for all the caca that pretentiously unpretentious people talk about it, it's my city. So people have to ask themselves: Are they gonna barbeque or mildew?

Most memorable theater moment: Being a gentleman onstage.

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A Behanding in Spokane runs through January 26 at Second Thought Theatre.

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A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

dso luisi ring wagner recording concerts music symphony