FPCT Spotlight - November 16, 2010

Harry Turner

What drives you to act?

Harry:  The cost of alternative forms of therapy.

 

What is the best live play you have ever seen?

Harry:  Circle in the Square’s 1974 production of Molière’s Scapino starring Jim Dale.

 

Is there a character you have played in the past that you would like to revisit?

Harry: No.  Once finished with a role, I leave him be … whether he treated me well or ill.

 

How is the character you play in this production like yourself?  How are you different?

Harry:  Some questions are better left unanswered.

 

What performance are you most proud of?

Harry:  Tie: 1) Norman, Sir’s dresser in The Dresser, because of the stretch; and 2) Elyot in Private Lives because of the sheer joy Cherie Weinert and I together infected the audience with.

 

Tell us about your life outside of the theater.

Harry:  I’m an associate professor of law at Stevenson University.  I just presented a paper on the contested election of 1876 at the Fall conference of the New England Historical Association.  

I’m working on a book on Charles Crane Leatherbee, who as president of the Harvard Dramatic Club in 1928, along with Bretaigne Windust, president of Princeton’s Theatre Intime, started a Cape Cod summer stock company to give college students an opportunity to develop their craft.  In its five years, the company launched Henry Fonda, Josh Logon, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Barbara O’Neil, Mildred Natwick, Myron McCormick, Kent Smith, et al. 

I have two children at Friends School: my daughter Dani acts and directs there and my son Jeremy acts up.  And in April I’m marrying my 3rd grade sweetheart.

 

What character would you most like to play that you haven't already?

Harry:  John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer.  I’ve played almost every other Gilbert and Sullivan comic lead, but Wells has eluded me.

 

What is your favorite food?

Harry:  Greasy cheese steak subs from South Street in Philadelphia.

 

List your top three favorite movies of all time.

Harry:  Casablanca, Duck Soup, and Cat Ballou

 

 

If you could back up twenty years, what would you do differently?

Harry: I would’ve given up smoking 15 years earlier.


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