Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Mark Rylance at the 2011 Tony Awards, where he recited a poem by Louis Jenkins rather than give a standard acceptance speech.Mark Rylance has cribbed from the work of Louis Jenkins long enough. Having twice recited compositions by Mr. Jenkins, the mischievous poet of Duluth, Minn., in lieu of more traditional acceptance speeches at the Tony Awards, Mr. Rylance will give him proper credit on a new play they have written together and which will make its debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis next year.
The play, “Nice Fish,” will be presented as part of the Guthrie’s 2012-13 season, the theater’s representatives said on Monday. It is written by Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Rylance, the “Jerusalem” and “Boeing-Boeing” star, who will also appear in “Nice Fish” and direct it with his wife, Claire van Kampen.
“There’s something unique about America that I find Louis expresses,” said Mr. Rylance, who has lived most of his life in Britain but spent part of his adolescence in Wisconsin. “And sales of his books always go up if I win a Tony.”
Mr. Rylance said in a telephone interview that he first encountered Mr. Jenkins’s poetry in “The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart,” an anthology edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade, in a chapter on zaniness.
Having memorized and recited three of Mr. Jenkins’s poems for a friend’s birthday celebration, Mr. Rylance returned to them during the Broadway run of “Boeing-Boeing,” when he found himself being nominated for – and winning – awards he did not particularly want.
“At the time,” Mr. Rylance said, “I felt there were so many things in the theater that were not acknowledged, that were really the valuable things: the space between the actors. The ability of the actors to play together. The ability of the people in a chorus to be there every night.”
“Until there was some kind of award for ensemble acting,” he added, “I felt I wouldn’t go.”
A reluctant Mr. Rylance nonetheless attended the 2008 Tony Awards to support his “Boeing-Boeing” producer Sonia Friedman. When he won the Tony for best actor in a play, Mr. Rylance recited Mr. Jenkins’s poem “The Back Country” in the voice of his “Boeing-Boeing” character, who he said he was playing “as a Midwestern Wisconsin farmer’s son.”
“If you said it with that kind of sincerity and literalness and very slow sense of humor where the joke arrives a week later,” Mr. Rylance explained, “then maybe it would work as some kind of acceptance speech.”
Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe actor Mark Rylance, who has written a play with the poet Louis Jenkins that will open next year in Minneapolis.Though it baffled many audience members and home viewers alike, Mr. Rylance’s recitation brought him in contact with Mr. Jenkins, and the two men began to work on the earliest drafts of “Nice Fish.”
When Mr. Rylance won his second Tony, for “Jerusalem,” last year, he felt he had to maintain his acceptance-speech tradition and performed Mr. Jenkins’s poem “Walking Through a Wall.” (“Unlike flying or astral projection,” the poem begins, “walking through walls is a totally earth-related craft, but a lot more interesting than pot-making or driftwood lamps.”)
By then, Mr. Rylance was pleased to see more theater groups rewarding entire casts, but said of the Tonys ceremony: “The whole thing’s very boring at the moment. At least this will be inexplicable. People will wake up again.” (He later gave away his Tony Award to a British man who helped inspire his “Jerusalem” performance.)
“Nice Fish,” which blends Mr. Jenkins’s poetry with new dialogue written by Mr. Rylance, tells the story of two men – one younger, one older – who are ice-fishing on a lake.
“It’s winter turning to spring,” Mr. Rylance said, “and other characters arrive who, as you would expect, provide a little bit of a challenge.” (The Guthrie’s official announcement mentions that “a construction worker roars across the ice on his snowmobile, spear, dynamite and fancy dress in hand.”)
A workshop version of “Nice Fish,” which shares its title with a poetry volume by Mr. Jenkins, was presented in New York last year, starring Mr. Rylance and Matthew Cowles and directed by Matthew Warchus.
For the Guthrie production, which will be presented at its proscenium stage from April 6 through May 18, 2013, Mr. Rylance said it has not been decided which role he will play or who will star opposite him, though it was “developing” that the two lead characters “are related,” mostly likely an uncle and a nephew.
Mr. Rylance said he also received assistance on “Nice Fish” from Mr. Hillman, a disciple of Carl Jung and founder of archetypal psychology, who died in October.
“I suppose he psychoanalyzed the characters, yes he did, from a Jungian point of view,” Mr. Rylance said. “We would meet on his illness bed, and he would give the characters therapy.”
Looking back on his Tonys victory for “Jerusalem,” Mr. Rylance said he felt a pang of regret for choosing showmanship over a more customary list of thank-yous.
“I struggled with not acknowledging the other actors,” he said. “That would have been maybe a more genteel and humble thing to do. But it helps me to get through these things.”
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