But the idea of transformation has always been something that I romanticize in a work. I’m cautious of it but I also need it to connect my thoughts with the process of making. That’s really important.
—
Nari Ward
Timothy Britten Parker by Ron Rifkin
Part of the Editor's Choice series.
- Irvine Welsh by Jenifer Berman
- Janwillem van de Wetering by Stanley Moss
- Nick Pappas by Katy Martin
- Mark Eitzel by Michael Kroll
- Jeffrey Vallance by David Pagel
- A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde by Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson
- Tone Dialing by Ornette Coleman
- Cheick Oumar Sissoko by Manon Slome
- Lee Breuer by Michael Goldberg
- Martha Plimpton by Frank Pugliese
Interviews
- Day and Night, Part Two by Lynne Tillman
- Timothy Britten Parker by Ron Rifkin
- Carving Babies by Rupert Thomson
- Tiara by Stephen Beachy
- Two Poems by Ulla Hahn
- Carlos Reynoso: Diary of a Dissection by Laren Stover
- Diana Michener by Deborah Eisenberg
- Elliot Schwartz by Richard Milazzo
- From Bondage, Part I: Chapter 5 by Henry Roth
- Our Music Lesson #2, Or How We Appropriated You: An Imaginary Short Starring Elvis Chang, Rocky Rivera, and Jimi Hendrix by Jessica Hagedorn
- Two Poems by Joe Osterhaus
- John Laub by John Ashbery
- From Not-a-Superhero #8, August ’94, issue: Transformed! by Luca Buvoli
First Proof
- Timothy Britten Parker by Ron Rifkin
- Actors by Susan Shacter
- Beth Nugent by Patrick McGrath
- Mervyn Taylor by Kelvin Christopher James
- Mark Tambella by Roberto Juarez
- Graham Swift by Betsy Sussler
- Linda Hill by Anney Bonney
- Howard Shore by Amos Poe
- Helena Kriel by Roland Legiardi-Laura
- James Nares by Glenn O'Brien
- Ralph Hamilton by Robert Polito
- Steven Parrino by Olivier Mosset
- Mauro Restiffe by Allen Frame
- Jim Shepard by Amy Hempel
- Ben Kinmont by Bill Arning
- Steve Earle & Iggy Pop by Lynn Geller
- Erin Parish by Donna Tartt
- Lois-Ann Yamanaka & R.Z. Linmark by Jessica Hagedorn
- Per Maning by Marvin Heiferman
Editor's Choice
Naked Angels, the ad-hoc theater company of which I am a member, has been home/clubhouse to several notable young actors: Marisa Tomei, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Patrick Breen, Rob Morrow, and Gina Gershon. Not as well known, perhaps, but just as unique is the remarkably eccentric (Would he mind being so labeled? No actor should.) Toby Parker.
How to describe him? With his long, tightly wound spring of a body and a skeptical smile, Toby is the actorly equivalent of a banked fire that has been quietly smoldering, only to startle you by suddenly bursting into flame all over again.
Currently on Broadway in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent, Toby is one of those people who is bound to garner more and more recognition beyond the cult-like status he enjoys at Naked Angels.
Watching Toby come of age as an actor is an object lesson in the maturation of an artist. Some actors have a tough go of it when they’re young—I don’t know, the picture hasn’t formed fully yet (I include myself here). Perhaps you don’t realize just how good you can be without asking for acceptance or seeking approval. I suspect Parker has had to privately and painfully grow into his skin. (The horror of being a young actor is that you have to do this in public.)
At Naked Angels, audiences have been privileged to watch this amazing trajectory of increasing boldness, risk, and confidence. Toby has played, with more and more freedom, an astonishing range of characters from spleenetic lounge crooners in Jersey to broken businessmen and ruined romantics. I can’t wait to see what happens when the Establishment (directors, producers, and other power-devils), gives Parker his full due. Or when he claims it like the subversive he is.
—Ron Rifkin
Related
The actors chat about performing masculinity, transitioning, and Blackwell’s one-person show They, Themself and Schmerm.
“They said, ‘You’ll be in charge of the children and the dogs.’ And I said, ‘Okay! But what does that even mean?’”
“If there is a despairing quality to our work, it is despairing of the fact that once upon a time there used to be an earnest revolutionary spirit in this country.”
Originally published in
BOMB 56,
Summer 1996
Featuring interviews with Martha Plimpton, Irvine Welsh, Jeffrey Vallance, Nick Pappas, Mark Eitzel, Lee Breuer, Ornette Coleman, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Janwillem van de Wetering, and Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson on Audre Lorde.
