John Shea (1/84 End of the World)
Excerpt from NY Times 1/20/84: John Shea
BROADWAY
By Carol Lawson Published: January 20, 1984
Linda Hunt, Barnard Hughes and John Shea will star in Arthur Kopit's new play, ''End of the World With Symposium to Follow.'' An autobiographical story of a playwright's attempt to write a drama about the nuclear-arms debate, ''End of the World'' will open on Broadway in April, with Harold Prince directing.
© New York Times
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 1/30/85: John Shea
Consequently, Shea chooses to alternate between the stage and movies. This past year, he starred in an Arthur Kopit play about the dangers of nuclear war, The End of the World.
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from The Modesto Bee 3/5/89: John Shea & Lakeland Ledger
In Step with John Shea
But they weren't all mistakes. He made A New Life, working with Alan Alda and Ann-Margaret; starred in a play that ran almost two years off-Broadway, The Dining Room; and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as best actor for American Days. Then he and Linda Hunt did a play called End of the World, and it nearly was. "Before that, I was batting a thousand," he said, "and then the pitcher threw a change-up. Linda and I were alone out there, like soldiers under fire."
© The Modesto Bee
Excerpt from Playbill Vault 4/28/98: John Shea
End of the World
Play - Original
Music Box Theatre
First Preview: April 28, 1984
Opening Date: May 6, 1984
Closing Date: June 2, 1984
Previews: 13
Performances: 33
Playwright: Arthur Kopit
Synopsis A mysterious man offers a playwright unlimited wealth if he will write a play about the nuclear crisis.
Opening Night Cast
Barnard Hughes Philip Stone
Linda Hunt Audrey Wood
John Shea Michael Trent
....
WHO's Who in the CAST
JOHN SHEA (Michael Trent) made his Broadway debut as the rabbinical scholar Avigdor in Isaac B. Singer's Yentl, a performance that won him the Theatre World Award. Since then he has established an international reputation in theatre, film and television. In New York he starred in Peter Parnell's Sorrows of Stephen and played Christ in Bulgakov's The Mastor and Margarita at the Public Theater. He played Paris in Romeo and Juliet at Circle in the Square. At the Manhattan Theatre Club he has done four productions, including his portrayal of the English punk rock producer in their production of Stephen Poliakoff's American Days for which he received a Drama Desk nomination as Best Actor. At the Playwrights Horizons he played in the Obie Award-winning production of A.R. Gurney's The Dining Room, that enjoyed a long run at the Astor Place Theatre and will be broadcast on "Great Performances" on PBS-TV at Thanksgiving. Regionally, he played Edmond Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Goodman Theatre; in Brecht's Man Is Man at the Yale Rep.; and starred in Phillip Barry's The Animal Kingdom at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. He made his Carnegie Hall debut as the Soldier in Tom O'Horgan's production of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. Mr. Shea has made two films: his debut as Charles Horman, the missing son, in Costa Gavras's Missing and his starring role in the upcoming Windy City. Television audiences have seen him starring in "The Last Convertible," "The Nativity," "Family Reunion" with Bette Davis, and last fall as Robert Kennedy in the award-winning British film "Kennedy" with Martin Sheen. Mr. Shea trained at Bates College and the Yale Drama School and is delighted to be back on Broadway.
© Playbill Vault
Excerpt from New York Times 4/29/84, on Don Shewey.com: John Shea
ARTHUR KOPIT: A Life on Broadway
The conversation above is from Arthur Kopit's new play, "End of the World," opening at the Music Box Theater nest Sunday, May 6, after a four-week commercial tryout in Washington.
....
A scene from "End of the World" -- the playwright Michael Trent is on the phone with his agent, Audrey Wood.
TRENT: Audrey, the idea is ternble!
AUDREY: Then don't take it.
TRENT: How can I not take a deal like this? . . . This is the deal of a lifetime!
AUDREY: Dear, what do you want me to do?
TRENT: Advise me!
AUDREY: Take the deal...
TRENT: I've used up the advance.
AUDREY: What?
TRENT: I've used up the advance.
AUDREY: Darling, I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood: I tbought you got this advance last night.
TRENT: I did.
AUDREY: Dear, it is 10:30 in the morning, what do you do up there in Connecticut?
In "End of the World," the playwright Michael Trent (played by John Shea), on commission from billionaire Philip Stone (Barnard Hughes), plunges into research on the horrifying effects of nuclear weapons. What he learns confirms the playwright's suspicion that a play on the subject would be impossible to write, let alone watch. Yet financial need forces him to persist. Affecting the manner of a detective (his office door reads "Michael Trent, Playwright -- No Domestic Comedies"), he goes to Washington looking for a villain among the hawks, hard-liners and "war-gamers" who promote the Government's pronuclear-arms policy.
© New York Times
NBC Universal Archives 5/3/84: John Shea
Title: LINDA HUNT & JOHN SHEA DISCUSS NEW PLAY END OF THE WORLD
Owner: NBC News Clip Name: 5112604279_s38 Date: 5/3/84
Production Unit: TDY Media Type: AS Media ID: T840503 Ardome ID: 1100100616463597622
Hit Time: 08:38:06 NA Duration: 00:04:39;00 Location: Today New York Studio;New York City;New York State Era: 1980s
Personalities: Shea, John;Hunt, Linda;Gibson, Mel;Hughes, Barnard
Short Description: LINDA HUNT & JOHN SHEA DISCUSS NEW PLAY END OF THE WORLD
Comments: Acc #: 119922;Unedited/Live;Edited;Reviewer: RMP;Created By: RMP;
Long Description: LINDA HUNT & JOHN SHEA DISCUSS NEW PLAY END OF THE WORLD
CLIP OF OSCAR WINNING ACTRESS LINDA HUNT & ACTOR MEL GIBSON IN THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY SEEN. HUNT & ACTOR JOHN SHEA DISCUSS THEIR CURRENT ROLES IN ARTHUR KOPITS PLAY END OF THE WORLD. PLAY CLIP FEATURES HUNT; SHEA; & ACTOR BERNARD HUGHES. SHEA DISCUSSES THE DEMANDING NATURE OF HIS END OF THE WORLD ROLE NOTING THAT HE WENT INTO PHYSICAL FITNESS TRAINING FOR THE ROLE. HUNT MAINTAINS THAT WINNING THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY HASNT CHANGED HER LIFE.
TA; LIVE IN STUDIO INTVU--EJ RUNS :52 Producers: NBC
© NBC Universal
Excerpt from New York Times 5/7/84: John Shea
STAGE: NEW KOPIT PLAY
By Published: May 7, 1984 FRANK RICH
Michael Trent, the dramatist played by John Shea, appears in a trench coat and establishes Mr. Kopit's guiding metaphor. ''A playwright is very much like a detective,'' the hero declares, promising to track down clues that ''lead to the solution of a crime.''
....
Mr. Shea, who was so good in ''The Dining Room'' and the film ''Missing,'' gives a highly stylized performance - part Philip Marlowe, part sensitive artist - that, like the entire evening, is apocalyptically cute.
© New York Times
Excerpt from Christian Science Monitor 5/14/84: John Shea
'End of the World': searching for clues to nuclear puzzle
By John Beaufort May 14, 1984
Mr. Kopit approaches the subject slyly by casting his playwright-hero Michael Trent as a sort of theatrical private eye, replete with trench coat and crushed felt hat. Trent (John Shea) explains that a dramatist is like a detective, always searching for clues.
....
Trent recalls an incident, years before, when he was left alone for the first time with his newborn son. It is a terrifying and eventually moving statement. With this speech, Mr. Shea brilliantly caps his tireless performance of a demanding role.
© CS Monitor
Excerpt from Christian Science Monitor 5/15/84: John Shea
Actor John Shea takes on another 'case' - as nuclear gumshoe
By Louise Sweeney / May 15, 1984
Right up there next to Bogie's photo on John Shea's dressing room mirror is a quotation from Einstein: ''We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.'' Both are clues to his starring role in Arthur Kopit's new nuclear whodunit, ''End of the World (With Symposium to Follow).'' In the play, Shea appears as a playwright who turns private eye when a billionaire commissions him to write a play about thermonuclear warfare. It was just another case for Shea, who played Charles Horman (the journalist-filmmaker in Costa-Gavras's film ''Missing'') and starred as Robert F. Kennedy in a British TV miniseries, ''Kennedy.'' So Shea gumshoes on stage in a trench coat with raised collar, a fedora with lowered brim, and the sang-froid of Bogart facing the Fat Man in ''The Maltese Falcon.'' Backstage in his dressing room before that night's Kennedy Center performance there is a different John Shea. He has the face of a gladiator who reads Plato: strong, fierce, and thoughtful, with a jaw so square it's almost clenched. The angles of his face are softened somewhat by a helmet of curly black hair and eyes so dark they might be onyx. It's a surprise then to find him dressed like a comparative-literature graduate student: mellowed-out brown corduroy pants, brown plaid shirt, brown argyle socks, and brown suede shoes. Tall and lean, he has a contemplative walk. Shea sits on an oatmeal couch with his back to the mirror and murmurs a line from the play we have been talking about: ''A playwright is like a detective. A crime is at the heart of nearly every play, a crime against the spirit, crime against the flesh.''
The plot thickens when we learn that playright Arthur Kopit, who wrote ''The End of the World,'' was actually commissioned by wealthy insurance czar Leonard Davis to write a play about a possible nuclear Armageddon. And Kopit chose to do it sleuth style. ''Arthur gave me that particular picture'' - he nods up at Bogart - ''as a reminder of one of the heroes of the genre . . . the downtrodden detective, who is tough but honest, trying to make the best of a bad situation, hired by a man who is like a Sidney Greenstreet character. . . . '' He slips into Sidney Greenstreet for a second with a dry, sinister laugh and a ''Well, sir, you're the one for me, Mr. Spade.'' Clearly he enjoys the role of nuclear gumshoe he plays in ''End of the World,'' although only a part of it is private-eye high jinks.
The rest is doomsday serious, as detective Michael Trent is drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of whether a mortal self-destructiveness will push the world into nuclear warfare. It is a demanding role in which he's on stage virtually every moment. ''I've never had a workout on stage like this before,'' says Shea, who's done Brecht, O'Neill, and Shakespeare.
Before the curtain goes up, says Shea, he doesn't have time to get nervous. ''I am cranking myself up to such a high pitch of (energy) that I can go out there and propel the play, project it for two hours out to 1,200 people.''
....
He has come to the stage via the drama department at Bates College and Yale Drama School under Robert Brustein. How does he surface the character he wants to play? Does he climb into the role like a pair of jeans? With a slow smile he backs into it: ''Usually Americans work from the inside out and the English work from the outside in. I've been involved, with other actors, in a mid-Atlantic approach that's neither one nor the other, but both. I am concerned with how the character walks and talks, moves and speaks, because the external characteristics provide clues to character. But I'm also concerned about how a character thinks, believes, feels - his inner life.
''The idea is to create a total character, so that while you are on stage (or camera) you are thinking the actual thoughts that character is thinking . . . this is where the actor's true act of creation comes in. It's called the subtext. The writer provides the text and the actor provides the sub-text, all the thoughts the character is thinking and all the emotions he's feeling. . . . it's an organic process, so that the thoughts you're thinking are leading to the lines the writer has given you, the way your own thoughts lead to what you say. That's why you can do a long run. . . .''
...
John Shea brings the same intensity to a conversation that he does to a role, and when he talks about acting he gives off sparks: ''I'll tell you something,'' about acting, he says with a rapt look. ''You're transported into another world. . . . I don't come back down to earth till after the curtain comes down. For two hours I am literally transported out of myself into this other character, this other world, where I have no time to even think about anything else. The audience comes because they are similarly catapulted out of themselves, and everybody gets lost in this make believe world. For two hours we live in a state of suspended animation.''
© Christian Science Monitor
New York Magazine 5/21/84: John Shea
Bangs and Whiimpers
John Simon
Basing his play on something that actually happened to him, Kopit tells the story of a super-rich philanthropist who comes out of the blue waving greenbacks and a four-page outline and asks the playwright hero to turn this into the anti-bomb play that might, in the nick of time, help save the world. The mysterious Maecenas, called Philip Stone, guarantees the writer, dubbed Michael Trent, a lavish, long-lasting, and remunerative production, most alluring to the younger man: "I'd been hoping to sell out for years. This could be it." Stone also informs Trent that they have met before, and eventually reveals that he chose Trent because of his knowledge of evil, all of which leaves the playwright, who remembers nothing, utterly baffled. But the real hitch is that the brief scenario is, apparently, no good, and Trent hasn't a clue about how to develop it.
....
Harold Prince has directed the farcical scenes well enough and the gravely introspective ones less well; above all, he has allowed the gifted John Shea to turn Trent into a collgiate smart-ass and has not elicited from Kopit more for the talented Barnard Hughes, as Stone, to dig his teeth into.
© New York Magazine
New York Times 6/5/84: John Shea
'End of the World' Closes
Published: June 5, 1984
''End of the World,'' the play by Arthur Kopit, closed after last Saturday evening's performance at the Music Box Theater. Directed by Harold Prince and starring John Shea, Barnard Hughes and Linda Hunt, the drama ran for 13 previews and 33 regular performances.
© New York Times