Mr. William Hoffmann Jr. - a school article

 

I slid into the seat across the beat-up folding table from Mr.Bill and placed my notebook and pen down. I was here to conduct my first interview and was hoping Bill would be a good icebreaker. I knew that he had a lot of experience as an actor and many other things related to the theatre. He now sat across from me sorting out plastic changeable sign letters
for the Theatre’s reader board out front waiting for me to pop the first question. It was always a joke backstage among the teens that he was working with, that he was born on stage... little did I know that we weren't that far off in our assumption. At age 6 Bill played in his first role as an elf in The Elves and the Shoe Maker. He fell in love with acting and all the attention and appreciation that the audience willingly give. From there he went on to bigger stuff, acting in High School and Dance school.He told me that his mom was very supportive to his love for acting, but his Dad was more of the Sporty guy, so Bill went into some sports to please him. When I asked him who helped him with his dream of getting better at the art of acting, he told me he was lucky to have a great drama teacher in High School, and that when he joined in a dance class he learned a lot about the stage and the professionalism that is used. So I asked Bill what he felt on Stage when he gets up there. With this question, he placed the letters he was working with down, leaned back and fazed out. A smile played around his lips as he thought about the question. Then he looked at me feigned alarm and said, “Terror!” After my initial disbelief then laughing it off, he re-answered the question and produced a smile, “ I feel good energy.” He then went on to give me a lesson in how you can have good energy and stress. That there is such a thing as good stress and bad stress, you just have to have the right one.  Many times, he said, you can get too tense with the character that you are playing. You might be worrying too much or trying to hard. Well this is a perfect example of the wrong kind of stress. He told me that the best roles he played were ones that he relaxed in and allowed himself to come out and play the role. Give it your all in auditions but dont allow your self to worry too much. Just be your self, that way you can focus on the character and not the outcome. Come prepared though for the show you are auditioning for. Maybe listen to the music if its a musical and research the show before you get onstage for your cold read.
     Bill went to Wayne State University then Oakland University getting a degree in the preforming arts. From there he tried Dinner Theatre, which is exactly what it sounds like Theatre while you eat dinner, but the pay is not all that great.   Bill told me a story about something that happened to him on stage and it taught him  one of the most important things about acting. Always stay in character. One day during a production of Arsenic and Old Lace he was supposed to look into the window seat that the old ladies dumped the “dead” bodies in and pretend to see a dead person. It was supposed to be empty, but some stage crew wanted to make him laugh, so they had one of the stage hands curl up into a ball in the box, making faces and trying to do any thing to make him laugh. Bill had to look in at the man, keep a straight face, look out into the audience like he had just seen a dead man, and then look back in the box. He knew there was some one waiting there to try and make him laugh, but he had to do it. He learned that you always have to stay in character at all times no matter what happens or who tries to make you laugh.
 After a while he dropped out of theatre for the Marine Corps, and after that he got what his Dad would call a “real” job of Automobile design. Because of his experience at his job he was able to use that knowledge to build great sets for theatre. After that he got back into acting and I wanted to know what his favorite play had been. I expected Him to say some thing big and fun that he had done, but he surprised me by saying that his favorite was whatever play he was in at the time.This made me feel better and I told him that I always thought I was fickle because my favorite play changed so often with whatever play I was in. He assured me that it was normal to have that opinion. He said it was because of how much we put into our shows. All the energy and thoughts. He did make two exceptions though. The most interesting character he played was Macduff in Macbeth, and the most challenging part was when he was Abraham Lincoln in 3rd grade and he had to memorize the Gettysburg Address.Speaking about memorization , he said the way he memorizes his lines is by highlighting his script, (how many times have we heard that before?) and recording his dialog and then listening to it. His inspiration for acting came from his sisters who both went on to become professional dancers and, because of his great focus on stage, the famous mime Marcel Marceau.
    “If you could tell a young actor one thing, what would it be?” I asked.
He answered positively and firmly, “ I would tell then to always be humble. The last thing that a director or anyone involved wants to deal with is someone who doesn't care, or is very proud and hard to handle.” he also said to always look on the bright side. Your not going to get every part you audition for but that wont be the end of the world. He said he always looks at not getting a part as meaning that there is something better coming and that maybe the part that he wanted wasn't what he was meant to do at the time.
     So in closing be humble, do your best in everything and remember to look on the bright side.


-Sara Furmato