Will Butler is pretty jazzed up about playing Eugene Morris Jerome in Circle Players’ upcoming production of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs which might be due, in part, to the fact that he’s pretty certain he’s got all the lines down pat. But the real reason he’s excited is that Brighton Beach marks his return—it’s kind of a comeback for the young actor—to the Nashville stage since his “senior capstone project” at Belmont University in 2010.
“Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first play I’ve been in since Extremities in March 2010,” he explains. “No one in Nashville has really seen me do anything since college. I’m excited to be making my comeback, in a way, and for some people, this will be the first time they’ve ever seen me on stage.”
It is, he maintains, “an exciting time in my life” and Butler can’t wait to share the experience with the rest of Nashville’s burgeoning—and altogether supportive—theater community.
After he closes Brighton Beach Memoirs, directed by Johnny Peppers (Nashville theater’s “hardest working man in show business”), he goes to work on Southern Fried Nuptials, the comedy follow-up to Nate Eppler and Dietz Osborne’s Southern Fried Funeral, which debuts in a production from Bethlehem Players in April (where Funeral debuted in 2010).
“I’m thankful to be getting to do what I love and hopefully as the year progresses, so does my career,” he suggests. “Here’s to many more shows in 2012!”
Butler graduated from Belmont in 2010, working as the In-School Suspension teacher at his high school alma mater (Portland High School), before becoming operations manager at Kaine Riggan’s Nashville Dinner Theatre. And after leaving NDT, he headed to New York City to pursue fame, fortune and a satisfying career.
He lived in Washington Heights—which is where Neil Simon grew up, perhaps presaging his role in Brighton Beach Memoirs—for six months before realizing that it wasn’t the right time for him to be there. Luckily, for his family and many friends back in Nashville, he decided to move back to Tennessee “to figure out what [his] next step would be.”
While Brighton Beach rehearsals continue and the company heads toward opening night (the show runs at The Keeton Theatre March 2-18), he found time to talk about his role and the process of bringing Simon’s award-winning play to life onstage.
When did you become involved in theatre? I was in my first play in middle school. However, I began taking tap, jazz, ballet and voice lessons when I was younger. I was a principal model for Caster Knott and the Boy Scouts of America, and a featured dancer in John Michael Montgomery’s music video, “Ain’t Got Nothing on Us” (look it up, I’m really adorable). It wasn’t until high school that I decided I wanted to pursue a career as an actor (Thanks, Mrs. Allen!).
What have been some of your roles prior to this? The first role I had in Nashville was Tommy Djilas in Circle Player’s production of The Music Man. Some of my favorite roles have been Jafar and others in Actors Bridge Ensemble’s production of The Arabian Nights, Rama in Ramayana, and Raul in Extremities, which was my senior capstone production at Belmont.
So how are you preparing to become Eugene Morris Jerome? With a lot of beer and ice cream. Seriously though, Eugene has been a fun character to develop. I’ve had a blast going back in time and recalling how a 15-year-old thinks and acts. Like most boys that age, Eugene’s attitude changes at the drop of a hat. It’s been a rollercoaster ride figuring him out. He is both naïve and bright, selfish and loyal. He very often goes from one extreme to the other, sometimes after only a line or two. From early on in the rehearsal process I wanted to figure out Eugene’s physicality; how he walks, stands, sits, lays on his bed, etc. I wanted there to be a certain amount of awkwardness infused into his physicality since he is still growing into his body at this point in the story.
