FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Jim Tharp, left, stars as Norman Thayer in "On Golden Pond," with Bill Carr as Charlie and Jan McGrath as Ethel.
Actor-director David Farmer
enjoys a busy year in both roles
"I really like both," David C. Farmer said as he weighed the relative pleasures of acting and directing. This time, Farmer puts on his director's cap for The Actors Group production of "On Golden Pond," opening this evening at the Yellow Brick Studio in Kakaako. It's his fourth show of the 2002-2003 season.
"It may be a cliché of 'left brain/right brain,' because it's not truly that, but I find a balance between the two," he said. "I think I use more parts of my brain and being (while directing) simply because the paths are more multiple, but I think that the dialogue back and forth between acting and directing for me is very satisfying because one feeds the other. For the acting, having a director's perspective gives a larger vision to it, and for directing, having some acting experience makes it easier to be sympathetic to the actors' challenges."
'On Golden Pond'
Presented by The Actors GroupOn stage: Opens tonight, with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays, through July 27
Place: The Yellow Brick Studio, 625 Keawe St.
Tickets: $10
Call: 722-6941
Farmer is having a big year, and all at TAG. He stepped forward to direct "An Evening of One Acts" (made up of "An Actor's Nightmare" and "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You") last fall so that Brad Powell could do "Death of a Salesman" at Hawaii Pacific University. Farmer also played the foppish art-lover in TAG's surprisingly funny production of "Art" and then served as producer of "The Weir."
Now, as "Golden Pond's" director, "I've wound up kind of wearing the producer's hat as well. The beauty about TAG is that you can do so many things that you can't do in more established places, but the cost of it is that you have to do a lot of it yourself ... but that's fun."
"On Golden Pond" was an acclaimed Broadway production before its successful, and more familiar, screen adaptation in 1981, starring Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn.
Jim Tharp and Jan McGrath star as the elderly Norman and Ethel Thayer in TAG's production. Victoria Gail-White, John Wythe White, Geoff Suthers and Bill Carr complete the cast.
Farmer describes "On Golden Pond" as a play that approaches life from several perspectives.
"It's very much about facing the inevitable decline and death that will greet us all, and also unresolved relationships in one's life -- and it's a comedy, but with all these serious issues in the background. That's a delightful mix of things to do in terms of material to work with."
Farmer, an attorney, got his first taste of the stage at the tender age of 9. After being "burned out" on the New York theater scene in the '60s, he enrolled at the University of Hawaii to study visual arts. Several degrees later, he returned to the stage, thereafter balancing his renewed love of theater with the demands of his legal career.
He was a cast member of Kumu Kahua's international touring company of "Kaiulani: A Cantata for the Theatre," which played Edinburgh, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Farmer has also done acting and directing work in productions staged by most of Honolulu's noteworthy theater groups, and even took a shot at running one of his own, Solange & Associates, in the '90s.
"I teach at the UH law school and at the Japan American Institute of Management Sciences in Hawaii Kai, and do (my law) practice and do theater. The combination is kind of like a short-attention-span person's dream because I'm able to shift gears and do a lot of different things. To me, that's the most stimulating way to live.
"This has been, not by design, a very, very active year, and I feel very, very lucky in the projects that I have been offered and been able to do. I'm a happy man," he said.
FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Director David Farmer, left, and Victoria Gail-White, who plays Chelsea, rehearse at the Yellow Brick Studio.
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