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Anthony Zerbe To Bring “an Avalanche” of e. e. cummings to Town March 21

Zerbe Discusses the Show and His Attraction to Poetry

Story by Corinne Saunders

“If you read someone who expresses beautifully what you feel, you’re drawn to it,” Anthony Zerbe said. “I think people resonate with poets because [most people] can’t articulate as beautifully as poets what they feel.”

Zerbe, noted actor and winner of an Emmy award for his portrayal of Lt. K.C. Trench in the television series Harry-O, found himself drawn to the writings of beloved modernist American poet e. e. cummings (1894-1962).

Intermittently since the 1970s, Zerbe has passionately embodied the work and life of e. e. cummings, including some his favorite subjects—New York, the mOOn, Spring, first loves and the Circus—in a performance entitled It’s All Done With Mirrors, and he’s bringing the show to the Hayes Performing Arts Center on Friday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $26 for adults and $20 for students.

The title of the show is taken from e. e. cummings’ play Him, Mirrors, butZerbe’s nationally acclaimed shows are never exact replicas.

“I switch it around…there are a number of things I keep in my heart so I can speak them,” Zerbe said.

He presents cummings’ poetry, bringing the characters to life with their accents and wordplay, but also dramatizes the poet’s letters, speeches and plays. The compilation of works is “a thematic flow through him as I embrace him,” Zerbe said.

For those unfamiliar with cummings and his work, the performance will be a unique exposure to the American wordsmith; for those familiar with him, it may deepen their appreciation; and for those who already love him, it will be an opportunity to simply “lean back and enjoy,” Zerbe said.

“I think [e. e. cummings is] accessible without being ponderous. He’s just an avalanche of language, images and love for life,” Zerbe said. “He’s a rich part of our American heritage.”

Zerbe, born in Long Beach, Calif., has had a prolific acting career since the late 1960s that includes more than 100 movie and television show credits, as well as theatre performances both on and off Broadway.

He appeared in movies such as Papillon, The Omega Man, Cool Hand Luke, License to Kill and The Matrix Reloaded, and in television shows such as The Young Riders, Gunsmoke, Mission Impossible and Murder, She Wrote.

Zerbe’s love of language may be a far cry from the rough and tough characters he is so well known for portraying on screen, but he is a man dedicated to the arts.

His Broadway theatre performances include Terra Nova, Solomon’s Child, The Little Foxes and Moon Besieged. Along with Shakespearean and other theatre pieces, he has also frequently toured the country performing poetry.

“I like poetry for the simple reason that it takes ideas and expresses them beautifully,” Zerbe said. “An actor comes along and enhances it or makes it more accessible [to audiences].”

He and actor Roscoe Lee Brown toured for about 37 years, beginning in the late 1960s, performing a compilation of poetry entitled Behind the Broken Words, said Ann Patrice Carrigan, Zerbe’s agent.

Zerbe serves as a director of The Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, N.Y., and Brown also served as a director until his death last May.

Zerbe and his close friend, actor Laurence Fishburne, will announce the Roscoe Lee Brown Scholarship Fund this May. The fund will provide scholarships for African American students studying literature, theatre or French, and will also establish an annual residency for a poet at the Millay Colony of the Arts, Carrigan said.

Zerbe is very involved with teaching students; he regularly teaches master classes and one-week workshops of his design at colleges and universities, Carrigan said.

Currently, he is teaching an eight-week course entitled The Audacious Self at Stella Adler Studio in New York City. Zerbe studied under acting coach Stella Adler before his acting debut. In the course, Zerbe works one on one with students, teaching them Adler’s techniques and “my approach to working in theatre or film,” Zerbe said.

“I’ve been talking about acting for a number of years…this is the first extended course I’ve developed myself and taught,” he added.

Prior to his performance at the Hayes Center on March 21, Zerbe will impart some of his acting knowledge to ASU students in a seminar headed by Theatre and Dance faculty member Derek Gagnier. Zerbe will teach a two-hour master class for freshmen through senior theatre students in the Valborg Theatre where he once performed Behind the Broken Words, Carrigan said.

In addition to teaching, Zerbe lists touring the country with Brown and speaking on modern American poetry among his greatest achievements. Others include “the classical roles I’ve played on stage [and] the evenings I’ve devised,” Zerbe said.

Those “evenings” include the intimate Western Christmas theatre performances he created, where the seating of choice was hay bales, he told Christmas stories from Joe Henry’s novel Lime Creek and a noted musician sang holiday carols and songs.

John Denver performed with him one year in Aspen, Colo. and Garth Brooks teamed up with him for performances in Wyoming and Nashville. In Wyoming, the entire town population was fewer people than had attended Brooks’ last concert; it reminded Brooks of the beginning of his career—what it was like to perform in an intimate setting, Zerbe said.

His performance in Blowing Rock will likewise be full of the magic of an actor expressing subject matter close to his heart.

“I’m very aware of him,” Zerbe said of e. e. cummings. “The things he observes and experiences have not gone away.”

Tickets are available now, and special group rates are available. Purchase tickets online at www.HayesCenter.org or by calling the Hayes Center Box Office at 828-295-9627.

Want To Go?

Date: Friday, March 21
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Hayes Performing Arts Center
Cost: $26 adults/$20 students