Actor Seth Numrich: “We’re All Complicated”

“We don’t share everything about ourselves. And of course, we move through the world trying to project an image of ourselves that has some relationship to the totality of who we are and our experience,” actor Seth Numrich recently told me. “But it’s curated, right? We’re always trying to put our best foot forward or show people what we think they want to see from us.”

It’s an intriguing concept going into an interview with an actor like Numrich who is currently appearing in Power of Sail with Bryan Cranston and Amy Brenneman at the Geffen Playhouse.

Written by Paul Grellong, Power of Sail is about a Harvard (Cranston) professor whose invitation to a White Nationalist to speak there stirs up a hornet’s nest of controversy amongst the staff and the students. Numrich plays Lucas Poole who is a grad student who is hoping to get a prestigious fellowship that has launched several other Harvard students into high-profile and well-paying jobs.

“We come to understand and make and form opinions and judgments about these characters early in the play,” says Numrich. “And then because of the nature of the journey that the play goes on, each one of the characters something new is revealed about them. Then the audience gets to learn something and then reassess the assumptions that they made earlier in the evening. And I just think that that’s so cool and exciting because we’re all complicated.”

Numrich is accustomed to playing complicated and complex characters. He’s appeared on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, Golden Boy by Clifford Odets and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. The 35-year-old actor also appeared opposite Kim Cattrall in a 2013 production of Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams.

“What I get really excited about is when the storytelling is truly happening through the characters. With the best writers you never feel like you’re being explained anything or you’re being taught anything. I appreciate plays that can find an entry into big, interesting, important – whatever that word means – questions about the human experience.”

Sometimes those roles require that Numrich do soul-searching to discover what he may or may not have in common with his character. When he appeared in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America and Kuwait by Daniel Talbott at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2015 he told StageBuddy.com that “I truly believe as an actor, as well as a person, that we all have the same capacities inside of us. We don’t like to look at the dark side of our nature, and we often say, ‘Oh, I could never do that. That would never be me.’ But in the right circumstances, you really don’t know.” It’s a perspective he brings to every role.

“I still believe that and it’s very important to me, in terms of the work that I do as an actor, that judging our characters makes it impossible to play any character. It’s never my job to sympathize with a character and their actions and beliefs. But it is my job to empathize with them as a human being. I feel like it’s kind of our superpower as actors is that we are professionally empathetic because we always have to be looking for and trying to understand, why is this person doing what they’re doing? Why are they behaving the way that they are? Why do they choose to move through the world in the way that they do?”

With Power of Sail Numrich says that exploration starts with the play itself.

“What I love about Paul’s writing is I think he does dialogue really well. When you’re speaking his words it never feels unnatural in any way. It always feels real and grounded, which is such a luxury. There’s so much to mine and that’s just exciting because I can just invest myself as the actor in the work I want to do there. And that feels like it naturally illuminates the text and vice versa. I don’t think I’m going to get bored by the end of this run. When I go into any scene I always have more to work on. And that’s not necessarily true of every writer.”

One of the producers of Power of Sail is Daryl Roth (a 12-time Tony Award winner for plays and musicals that includes War Horse in which Numrich appeared) which is fueling speculation that the play might soon set sail for Broadway. If it does, Numrich is confident it will be just as provocative in its next incarnation.

“There’s a lot that people can take from this play. I’ve talked to a lot of people after the show. What’s going on on stage is a mirror of what’s going on in the whole room. We’re asking people to sit for two hours with people living through these questions. It’s a nice reminder that [theater] does have something to offer that these other media do not have, which is that we’re going to all sit together in the same physical space breathing the same air. That feels like a radical, dangerous concept right now in the world. It also feels necessary and so I’m appreciative of this opportunity to do that in a way that feels really connected to the questions that certainly I have been experiencing and living through in the last couple of years.”

Power of Sail continues at the Geffen Playhouse through March 27th. More tickets and more information, please go here.

Photo: Seth Numrich in Power of Sail (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Geffen Playhouse)