Dan Hiatt to other actors: Stay away!

Dan Hiatt is one of the Bay Area's great journeyman actors.
He's currently starring in California Shakespeare Theater's
"Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov. Last winter he played all
the roles in San Jose Repertory Theatre's one-man adaptation
of "It's a Wonderful Life."

The Bay Area has a fairly tight group of really great actors who have been around for years. In a way, it’s like we have an informal resident theatrical troupe of faces that pop up year after year in a wide variety of companies.

One of the primary members of that troupe is Dan Hiatt, an Idaho native who moved to the Bay Area in 1976 and has pretty much been working ever since.

“I tell actors to avoid the Bay Area,” Hiatt says. “We don’t need the competition. The big secret about the Bay Area is that you can do really good theater and actually make a living at it. There are many theaters that will actually provide a living wage.”

Hiatt has worked at just about every company of note around here, and often in the summers you can find him outdoors at the California Shakespeare Theater. Last summer he was in Cal Shakes’ “Richard III,” “Man and Superman” and “The Triumph of Love.”

He’s back at Cal Shakes this summer. This weekend he opens in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (he’s playing Vanya), and next up for the company he’ll play Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

A veteran of outdoor performance, Hiatt is somewhat ambivalent about theater al fresco.

“I like it on a temperate night,” he says. “The main thing is I don’t like fighting the wind vocally. But I do love that space, especially when the lights kick in. (Fellow “Vanya” cast mate) Andy Murray and I were joking the other day in the rehearsal hall that we’ve been indulging ourselves  in our vocal approach up to now, and that’s gotta end. You can’t be intimate and quiet outdoors. We realized it was time to discover what it feels like to be intimate and be heard outdoors, which means giving the impression of being intimate.”
First known as a comic actor, Hiatt has expanded his range to include some impressive dramatic turns.

“A few years ago, I’d have said I prefer comedy, but now I think a job is a job is a job,” Hiatt says. “There is something to be said for a more serious role, but they all have humor in them. It’s essential that you find the humor in whatever character you’re playing. I would like to play a good villain. I don’t get those so often.”

Hiatt’s 30-plus years acting the Bay Area have afforded him abundant opportunities to play his dream roles – to the extent that he can’t name a dream role he has yet to conquer.

“I’d like to keep working with (Cal Shakes artistic director) Jon Moscone,” Hiatt says. “And I wouldn’t mind traveling a bit more, working out of town. I’d love to work in New York, but I’m just a little more practical than that. I don’t know how to get there. I guess one thing that I haven’t taken any steps to work on is some kind of sketch comedy thing. I think it would be good for me if I could get the nerve. Improv or something. That might shake some of the dust off. You can get dusty as you get older. And if something strikes you as sort of scary, it might be worth looking into.”

This fall, Hiatt will have a rare opportunity: he’ll be a white actor in an August Wilson play when Berkeley Repertory Theatre mounts “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” in October.

To read Dan Hiatt’s thoughts on Chekhov, visit TheaterDogs.net.