I arrived in Clarksville on Sunday, extremely excited to be back at the wonderful Roxy, to see John and Tom and say the incredible words of one little known playwright William Shakespeare. As I started unpacking my stuff, after arriving at the actor’s house, and meeting the great cast of “Ain’t Misbehavin”, a loud siren sounded. Since I was in Israel during the Gulf war, my mind immediately associated that sound with a missile attack (they where very frequent during the war) though I knew it’s probably not an attack on Clarksville (who could possibly not like this city). It was unsettling. It was made clear to me this is a tornado alarm. We turned on the TV that had all channels showing whether maps with blobs in different colors. Being from New York I know very little about tornados and was intently watching the anchors (on all channels) explain the big pink blob moving towards Clarksville. Watching this play-by-play narration of the minute-by-minute movement of the system that could turn into a tornado at any second was a bit frightening. I didn’t really know what to do if it if we actually got hit. Some in the cast said we need to get in a basement, but since we don’t have one in the house I was weighing my options. A closet, the hallway, or just give up and go out side look at the thing, get my camera ready and take some great photos. Everybody was very calm and sure enough the storm moved to another direction.
This experience made me thing of our play Hamlet. Hamlet is like
a tornado, with his out of control anger and rage destroying everything and everybody in his path of revenge. Leaving death and destruction behind him. As an actor I find plays that I work on often consume my reality and color everything I experience with its characters and themes.
It’s really great to be back in Clarksville and work on one of the greatest tragedies of all times. And despite the tornado I am very happy to be here.
