Patrick Ball on Doing ‘Hamlet’ by Night, Shooting ‘The Pitt’ S2 by Day

To sleep, or not to sleep? That is certainly a question for Patrick Ball, who will spend his nights during the coming weeks playing the title role in “Hamlet” at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles, even as, by day, shooting commences at the same time on season 2 of “The Pitt,” which will find him resuming the crucial role of Dr. Frank Langdon. If it should turn out that the actorly insanity of trying to pull off these stage and screen roles simultaneously happens to make him a little edgy, Ball laughingly says he’ll consider that “a feature, not a flaw” in doing both roles, since neither is exactly the model of serenity.

The “Hamlet” that opens Wednesday night at the Music Center will seem traditional in some ways at first, and not in others — faithful to the Shakespeare text, or at least a condensed version of it, in the initial going, even as the show takes place in modern dress. But under the helm of writer and director Robert O’Hara (who last directed “Slave Play” at the Taper), things take a sudden turn partway through, turning the play into a neo-noir detective story of sorts that puts a new spin on Hamlet’s story. One thing we can count on all the way through: this is one tortured prince. And Ball may be just the one to put in for the torture, as a Shakespeare buff going back to his Yale days who has long considered “Hamlet” the “white whale” he most wanted to tackle. If it’s a non-traditional “Hamlet,” all the better, as far as he’s concerned.

Ball talked a lot about this freshened-up “Hamlet,” and a little about the soon-to-be refreshed “The Pitt,” with Variety while rehearsals for the Taper production were underway.

How did you get involved with this production at the Taper?

I was in the middle of doing season 1 of “The Pitt,” and I got an audition. I was kind of rushing it together, so it ended up being a pretty cracked audition tape where I took some real chances. I had the camera on the move, and I was moving throughout the apartment and diving into the bed, treating the camera as if it were Gertrude. We did the whole bed chamber scene, and I made the camera Gertrude’s point of view and took some risks with it. I walked away being like, “I don’t know if I have the job, but I had fun doing it.” About two months later, Robert O’Hara called up and said, “You’re in.”

Sounds like it would be fun to see that video.

It’s pretty deranged.

How did you take to the ways in which this production departs from any kind of traditonal “Hamlet”?

Well, this particular production provides a couple of really unique opportunities. As I’m sure you’re aware, it is a Robert O’Hara adaptation, where the first act of our play is really a condensed “Hamlet,” where, as Hamlet, I never leave the stage. All the other scenes — all the Gertrude and Claudius scenes, all the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia and Laertes  — all those scenes are gone, and you receive the play of “Hamlet” entirely from Hamlet’s perspective. Then there is a frame break when we go into the second half of our play, which is original text by Robert O’Hara, where you all of a sudden see Hamlet from another perspective. In watching Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” as we’ve presented it in the first half, the audience comes to assume that this is an objective reality. And then when the frame shift happens, you realize, oh, no, that is how Hamlet would understand his own story for himself. So it gives an actor an opportunity to really play with: What does Hamlet mean to himself? What does his story feel like from the inside? And then we come back in the second half and reframe it: What does it actually look like from the outside, from the perspective of Horatio and Ophelia and Gertrude and all the characters that you only get to know from the point of view of his experience in the first half?

When you read the adaptation, were you shocked at how much O’Hara had played with it?

Oh, no. I was thrilled. Thrilled. You know, I am a big Shakespeare guy. At one point, I held the record for the most Shakespeare productions at the Yale School of Drama. I was the Shakespeare guy in school; my first-ever play was “Taming of the Shrew.” So I love the work of William Shakespeare as much as anybody. But I firmly believe that these plays are flexible and durable and that they are meant to be interrogated. I don’t think Shakespeare would’ve wanted his plays in a museum. And I don’t think Shakespeare ever did a four-hour “Hamlet.” Shakespeare performed these plays both for the queen in the court and for the drunk, syphilitic masses at the Globe. These plays were meant to travel across audiences, and I think they were meant to travel across time. And I think the reason why they have remained relevant for so long is because they are so flexible. So the fact that Robert made this adaptation that is pulling this play out of the museum and out from behind the plexiglass and bringing it into the here-and-now… You know, Hamlet has that line: “Hold a mirror up to nature to show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” I think that’s exactly what Robert O’Hara is doing.

Did you do “Hamlet” in school, then ?

No. I actually auditioned for Yale School of Drama with Hamlet’s first soliloquy, but I never got a chance to do it in school. I spent the last 10 years of my career doing plays, and it wasn’t until “The Pitt” that I really even got into television. In the last 10 years that I’ve been doing plays, “Hamlet” has always been sort of my white whale — the sort of ultimate peak to attack. And it’s pretty amazing that here, right after I step into the world of television for the first time, I get to return to the theater in kind of the most epic way possible. I could not have dreamed this up any better.

It sounds like you’re not sorry it’s not the four-hour version. Besides the fact that it is a very different kind of adaptation, is it just as well for you it’s streamlined all around?

Well, funnily enough, I’m going to be doing season 2 of “The Pitt” and “Hamlet” at the same time. I’m gonna be shooting “The Pitt” all day and then running across town and doing “Hamlet” at the Taper at night. And so, if it was a four-hour “Hamlet,” I don’t know if I would have the gas in the tank. But I think I might have just enough juice to do this “Hamlet.” And I actually think it is a very, very exciting take on the play, so I don’t feel like I’m being shortchanged at all.

The film noir influences that O’Hara is talking about making a blatant part of this production are intriguing. Were you part of the team that he had sit down and watch some of these films?

Yeah, we watched “The Big Clock” as a group, which was amazing and really telling as far as identifying the style of the genre and the speed of the genre. And then, outside of that, on my own, I think I actually came to this conclusion before I even talked with Robert, but I’m a big David Lynch guy, and I went back and watched “Mulholland Drive” shortly after getting cast. One of the first things that jumped out to me about that was that is a ghost story, and there is this kind of whodunnit journey against herself (for Naomi Watts’ character), as you have a heroine that can’t remember what happened. Something about the tonality of that and the eeriness of that and the creep of all of Lynch’s work and all of Hitchcock’s work, you know, I think that is something that is going to be very present in our production. And it was really great going back to “The Big Clock” and also seeing that you can make creep happen at a clip. It doesn’t have to be a matter of tempo, but it can happen at a clip.

Was “creep” the term you used there?

Yeah, the creep — like the sense of there being sort of a boogeyman under the sink or there being something just around the corner… that sense of foreboding that is so alive and so much of noir. That is something that I think is pretty definitive of the genre, and you see in “The Big Clock” that they are really successful at that, and they aren’t reliant on slowing things down in order to accomplish that; it actually can move quite fast.

As far as the sheer language of this adaptation, is there a lot of kind of original text left, or is it all adapted to be in a modern voice?

The first 90 minutes of the play is William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” But it is just following Hamlet. Normally, Hamlet doesn’t show up until 15 minutes into the play, after you’ve heard from Marcellus and Bernardo and they’re on the watch and they see a ghost, and then you have scenes between Laertes and Ophelia, scenes between Gertrude and Claudia… all sorts of other scenes that actually have nothing to do with Hamlet in the four-hour version of this play. But in our version, it’s all William Shakespeare’s play just pared down to Hamlet’s experience of the play. And then as I, as Hamlet, walk off at the end of Shakespeare’s play, to my doom, I walk out to fight — and in walks Fortinbras, who is now a detective. And that is when the frame of the play sort of breaks and we go into contemporary language written by Robert O’Hara, and it becomes kind of a “CSI” investigation of the events of the play. But the vast majority of what I do is I just do William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

How are you feeling about the Taper’s thrust stage, which makes things about as immersive as they get, at least in a major Los Angeles house? Do you enjoy the prospect of being that enmeshed with the audience? Some actors cherish it, but it’s not for everybody.

I love it. You know, Shakespeare’s Globe was a thrust stage. This is how these plays were meant to be received. And it creates all sorts of opportunities for me as Hamlet, who does quite a bit of talking to and with the audience; it gives me a lot of opportunity to really be with them and not feel like I’m hiding behind a proscenium.

Although it’s less of an ensemble piece at first than usual, your costars will obviously some juicy material to work with in both halves.

The cast as a whole has been one of the most collaborative rehearsal rooms I’ve ever been a part of. Everybody in the room has a real communal sense of ownership over this play, and it just feels like an incredibly brave space where people are coming in and making offers and supporting one another. Gina Torres, who’s playing Gertrude, who’s playing my mother, is just absolutely phenomenal. Most people know her from her film and TV work, but what she brings onto the stage, literally from the first day I met her, when we were still at the table, is just overpowering. She’s just a born queen, and to get to play with her every night is an absolute dream.

And then Horatio is one of those characters in this play that often kind of plays second fiddle, but is quite primary in this reframing of the play. The actor playing Horatio is a friend of mine from grad school, Jakeem Powell. We were at Yale together, and he graduated a couple years before me, but it’s been really incredible to come back into this story. You know, Hamlet and Horatio are best friends from grad school, from Wittenberg, and it’s incredible to have one of my actual friends from grad school in the room with me, similarly trained in Shakespeare, and similarly taught by our training to not handle Shakespeare with kid gloves but to come at it with a chainsaw if you have to. He’s very generous and very brave, and I think he has really shown an entirely new light on Horatio, and in doing so, has brought this play to life in a way that I think is really vibrant and new and relevant.

The regimen you talked about where you’re going to be going back and forth from shooting “The Pitt” by day and doing “Hamlet” by night — is that something you knew all along would coincide? It sounds like a dream in many ways because you’re having a hell of a year between these two things — dreams coming true probably on both counts. But to have both happening simultaneously, literally… there are some actors who might consider that a bit of a nightmare, too, to have to be in two headspaces at once.

Yeah. No, it’s an absolute dream. It’s all of my dreams that I’ve ever had all coming true all at once. And Scott Gemmill, the showrunner of “The Pitt,” and John Wells and Noah Wyle are just unbelievable class acts… I actually found out that I got the “Hamlet” job from Scott Gemmill, and he was like, “We are so excited for you. This is incredible.” Because they know who I am, and they went out of their way in casting “The Pitt” to hire theater actors. And Noah Wyle… Most people don’t know this about him, but Noah Wyle is a big Shakespeare guy. I was over at his house the other day and he literally has pages of the “First Folio” on his wall. And we would be on set throwing (lines from) soliloquies… We’d be quoting “Richard II” back and forth at each other.

So when “Hamlet” came along, Scott reached out and was like, “We are so excited for you. You have to do this. We’re gonna find a way to make this work.” Then there was a period of time where there was a lot of back and forth between the show and the studio and the theater and my team, and by a lot of work by everybody involved, they found a way to make this work. You know, it’s gonna be a lot of hard work. It’s gonna be some very long days. But luckily, I’m playing two characters that are quite out of sorts. And so I think they’re gonna support each other really well.

And, just a little, fun sidebar story. I was at a party in New York, and I ran into Chukwudi Iwuji, who I had just seen play Cyrano at Pasadena Playhouse. I went up to him and I kind of fanboyed out: “Hey, you don’t know me, but I just saw you on stage and you were incredible.” Me and him really hit it off, and we ended up getting into this two-hour conversation, and apropos of nothing, he says to me, he was talking — because he had played Hamlet himself at some point, I think at the Public — and he was like, “If you ever get the chance to play ‘Hamlet,’ it doesn’t matter how tired you are. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in your life. Take it, because it’ll change your life.” And I turned to him and I said, “Chuk, that is insane that you’re saying that, because I have a call with Robert O’Hara tomorrow morning to talk about this exact thing.” So I had had that conversation with Chukwudi Iwuji, and I came away from it feeling like, “Yeah, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Chuk said to me, “It is impossible to be too tired to play Hamlet. Hamlet is a guy whose father has died. He’s a prince, so the court is surrounding him. There are moves being made all around him to subvert his power and steal his crown, to steal his mother … He’s got spies monitoring him at all times, and he has not been given the space that a normal person would get to process the loss of a parent. He has not been able to sleep.” And in “to be or not to be,” it is “to die, to sleep.” To sleep. This is a man that wants to sleep! [Laughs.] Which is gonna be really perfect, because I, as an actor, am not gonna be getting a lot of sleep for the next month and a half.

And then on the other end, you have Langdon (in “The Pitt”)…  The precipitating event of season 2 is Langdon coming out of rehab. And so if I’m a bit out of sorts, I think that’s gonna be a feature, not a flaw. I think that’s gonna work in my favor.

Robert O’Hara did use the term “manic depressive” for Hamlet, so sleep deprivation would definitely fit in with that… When does production on “The Pitt” season 2 commence? Do you at least get to do the play for a little bit before you’re doing double-duty?

Uh, June 4th is our opening, and June 5th I start on “The Pitt.” [Laughs.]

All right, that is some certifiable overlap. To ask a bit about “The Pitt” and how people feel about your character… During season one, obviously events happened where people were like, “Oh, is this character just gonna go away?,” since Langdon’s drug habit and theft were discovered and he was sent home. But of course he did not stay away through the remainder of the season. And not only did he not go away, but the show creators have talked about a time jump prior to season 2 happening, after your character has been through rehab. So it must be flattering to know that Langdon is considered so pivotal that his time away and return is the reason for the time jump.

Well, I think coming back 10 months later (in the series’ timeline) and coming back on the 4th of July weekend is going to present the writers and the show a lot of opportunities to talk about a lot of things that are going on in this country, and that are going on with the healthcare system. There’s gonna be a lot of opportunities that pop up on July 4th weekend, which I think is exciting. And I think also having Langdon be away in rehab for this period of time and then reenter this workspace also presents the writers with a lot of opportunities… When Langdon walks back in the door, people are different and things have changed, and I don’t quite know what has happened while I was gone. That presents a fun new game for the writers, that the audience gets to learn about what has changed and transpired in the time away through Langdon. So my absence provides the writers with a really useful device, and it’ll be subjectively from Langdon’s point of view.

You know, it’s interesting. I’m in my prince era here. Langdon was the prince of this emergency department, and now he’s quite a disgraced prince, very much like Hamlet, in that he’s now reentering this workspace having been taken down quite a few pegs. And it will be very interesting to see how that workspace feels different and how he feels different in it and how other people handle him. Coming out of rehab, I think, will be a really juicy story to tell. I don’t know that much about what they have planned because the writers are still very hard at work. But I am just dreaming up myself what is coming, because I think there’s a lot of story to tell.