Actors Jeffrey Lewis and Michael Glavan paint the Depot Theatre RED

Jul. 28—WESTPORT — RED. Rothko. Depot.

That's enough to intrigue audiences about what director Elliot Wasserman and actors Jeff Williams (Mark Rothko) and Michael Glavan (Ken, studio assistant) have been up to in Westport.

The Depot Theatre's production of playwright John Logan's 2010 award-winning play, "RED," transcends the depths of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko (1903-1970), art history and his real-life 1958 commission to flank New York City's Four Seasons restaurant with a series of murals.

"RED" is a riveting ride about aging, discovery and relationship viewed through the lens of Rothko's new assistant.

BEYOND MULTIFORMS

For this role, Williams did a lot of research.

"In that I do think it's important to the play, important to me playing the character, but I don't think it is as important to an audience viewing the play," he said.

"For me, I'd seen the play when it was on Broadway, which was about 12 years ago or so. I just started online, doing a lot of looking at his (Rothko) work. I read a large part of a biography of him, which was very dense, and I didn't quite get there because I had a lot of lines to learn. That took priority."

Williams frequented museums to view Rothko's paintings.

"The other thing that was really important is throughout the play I just sort of rattle off names of artworks, of writers, and other artists and things, and I felt like I had to know who they were," he said.

"So, I spent a lot of time creating a whole folder for myself of every reference that is made within the play. As we work in it, as I read it, and learned more and more about it, yes, it is about Mark Rothko and a very specific incident in his life with the murals for the Four Seasons, but to me more it's about an artist dealing with aging, dealing with a younger generation coming in to takeover, dealing with how long does your popularity ever sustain, what legacy will you leave, and things like that."

Williams said it's important for people to understand that they don't need an encyclopedic knowledge of Rothko or of contemporary art to access the play.

"It certainly helps out your understanding, but it is a human play about the relationship between these two men and how it develops over a several year period," he said.

Only Rothko and Ken exist in Logan's distilled sphere of the artist's studio. There are no wives or progeny.

Only canvas, brush, paint, and art's big questions. What it does it take to create? What is art's role in the world?

DISARMING DISRUPTER

Glavan glides in lovely freedom as his character is fictional.

"I'm enjoying this show," he said.

"What was cool about getting to process somebody that I don't necessarily have to pay homage to, who has no like historical definity, is that I kind of like to get to work my character backwards. So that I'm an interesting scene partner, right?

"You got two people onstage and they agree about everything, no real conflict or whatever, it's not very interesting."

Glavan examines everything in the script and analyzes the acclaimed artist.

"Like Jeff was saying, he has all these manifestos and rules and quotes like Nietzsche," he said.

"He goes to philosophy and architecture and history and all these things. I'm like okay, so that's like what builds him. What's like the opposite? How can I walk in and immediately build some tension? So as somebody who has a manifesto and rules for what art is and how to make it and all this stuff, flip it on its head. Here's like a young buck who comes in, and he has no idea what art is. Anything can qualify. He's so excited and sort of effusive about the ability to be touched by art."

Ken rebels against the Rothko's constraints and framework.

"It becomes about finding this balance instead of this rigid and strict nature to have levity and golden retriever energy around the room," Glavan said.

"Be the student who is willing to learn, and he does because towards the end of the show, the climax, at least for my character he takes all these one liners that he's been picking up. He's an intelligent kid. He's an avid learner. He uses Rothko's words right back at him. Oh, it's so very satisfying. and it's because these things now matter to him. These rules matter to him. He's able to do it in such a way, so he has learned and he has taken and appreciated these lessons."

Ken surfaces from a foster-home realm, unstructured, unsupported, a non-familial sea and shelters in Rothko's studio rife with artistic demands and intensity.

"He's got a place where he has landed and a place where he belongs and finds purpose and sort of comfort, intimacy, and love that that creates within him for this space, for this," Glavan said.

"Not just the studio, but the act of making art. The way that they can work together is comfortable in a way that he's never been. The idea of branching out, he's not there yet until Rothko makes him."

'HOW MUCH LONGER DO I HAVE?'

In the beginning of the play, Rothko says he and his "The Ten" peers — Ilya Bolotowsky, Ben-Zion, Adolph Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Ralph Rosenborg, Louis Schanker and Joseph Solman — stomped Cubism to death.

"We took what they did, and we took it to the next place, and we are the only thing that matters now," Williams said.

"The concern is someone like Ken going to stomp me to death. Learn from me and go in a different direction and make me no longer useful."

Williams is approximately the same age as Rothko was when the Four Seasons' murals were under commission.

"So, I understand," he said.

"To me, it resonated with the idea of how much longer do I have? Do I leave an impression? Do I leave a legacy of any type? Am I being superseded by a new group of people who have different ideas and different thoughts and things? So that definitely that clicked in my head."

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

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