Mount Prospect native jumps at chance to stage 'Daredevil's Hamlet'
Actor and musician John Pierson has always been a guy to leap out of the box - literally and figuratively. In rock circles, he is known for being a founding member of the critically acclaimed neo-punk band, Screeching Weasel. In the theater world, he is known for his intelligent, but intensely physical acting with the Neo-Futurists.
Currently, the Mount Prospect native is part of a team of actors who leap out of William Shakespeare's velvet-lined box in a show called "Daredevil's Hamlet."
"The show is a smashup of 'Hamlet' and 'Daredevils,'" Pierson says.
It's an odd combo indeed. "Hamlet," of course, is a Shakespearean tragedy, while "Daredevils" was a 2005 show created by Ryan Walters in which actors performed all kinds of bizarre, physically challenging stunts.
"Ryan Walters was obsessed with Evil Knievel," Pierson says. "He wondered what kind of stunts we could get away with in the Neo-Futurists' (small) space."
The first edition of "Daredevils" took about year to put together. It was created by the ensemble one rehearsal at a time.
"We would throw Ping-Pong balls and explore what that meant," Pierson said. "I did something based on Houdini's hanging upside down trick."
Pierson was recruited to be in the first show because he had proven long ago that he would do anything on stage, for the good of a show.
"Daredevils" was something of a success, and four years later Walters decided to tackle the great Shakespeare play about the confused Danish prince and his murderous uncle, the king.
Walter asked Pierson to join the show and he "jumped on it immediately."
"The first question we asked ourselves was did we want to do a literal interpretation of the play," Pierson says, "or just pull a few lines out of the play and build stunts around them."
They settled on a combination of the two, with the jumpsuit-clad cast performing stunt-filled sections of "Hamlet," but also pulling out pieces of the play to explore separately. Pierson, for example, is "taking on the idea" of Hamlet's girlfriend, Ophelia.
Pierson well play Ophelia, yes, but he will also be doing stunts that describe what that tragic character is going through. "I thought of showing the idea of Ophelia having all her passion pounded out of her," Pierson says. "In the play she has all these forces bearing down on her."
In the end she kills herself by drowning. Pierson shows this with a stunt where he holds his breath under water as long as he can.
"Right now I am putting my head under water for two minutes, 40 seconds," Pierson says.
• "Daredevil's Hamlet" runs through Sept. 25 at the The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, Chicago. For tickets or information, visit www.neofuturists.org or call (773) 275-5255.