When Mike Dooly takes on a role, he immerses himself in it, almost to the exclusivity of anything else. He wasn’t always so diligent. In fact, Mike was on the verge of dropping out of high school when his grandmother signed him up for acting classes at the Northwest Actor’s Studio. It was after an experience with a monologue class that things shifted for him. “I realized right then and there I knew what I wanted to do. I remember getting out of that class and running downstairs, finding a pay phone and calling my girlfriend at the time. We were kind of dropping out of high school together, and I called her and said ‘I know what I want to do! I know what I wanna do this!’ She didn’t have anything like that, and so she was just, “Oh. Yeah. Okay. Great…’ And I was like, ‘No, you don’t understand! I figured it out!’ And it’s true, ‘cause that was 23 years ago.” Mike plays Tullus Aufidius in Coriolanus.
Reading
“My research has me reading these really depressing books about the ethics of warriors and what it’s like for soldiers in peace time. Things like that are really taxing after a long day of rehearsal, so I chip away at those. Just to unwind, while I was working on Midsummer I started reading the Sandman comic books. Those are good. I’m hung up on those now. I only have so much room in my head, you know. And it’s probably not as much as most people have! When I’m working on a show, the best I can do is a magazine article. Like something out of Wired or The Source, because I need that space in my head for the show.”
Listening
“I listen to hip-hop and 60s or 70s soul. Hip-hop’s great. If you’re into Shakespeare, there’s no reason to listen hip-hop and not be fully in awe of it. It’s the same thing. It really bugs me when I hear people say, especially people in a Shakespeare play say, ‘Oh I listen to everything except hip-hop and country.’ It’s language! It’s everything we work on. It’s also great, especially playing a character like Aufidius, because it pumps you up. There is an element to hip-hop that is all boasting, but it can get you feeling good about yourself. Make you feel like you can get done what you NEED to get DONE. And nobody’s going to stand in your way. It’s also really great if you’re trying to work out. And podcasts… of course the best podcast ever is The Ricky Gervais Show or This American Life.”
Watching
(Laughs) “I’m watching HBO’s Rome, which I’ve never seen, but a couple weeks ago I was like ‘I might as well…’ It’s a few hundred years after our play. It’s been very helpful because I now understand what tribunes and patricians and consuls and all that stuff are…plus it’s a really fun show. And I’m watching I Claudius (laughs). Those shows feed the play, but I can’t get too involved with anything else because I don’t want it to pull me away from my job.”
Looking Forward to this Season
“There’s something that’s happening at Balagan, that’s cool. It’s called Theater Anonymous. It’s the first time they’ve ever done it. I think they’re doing It’s A Wonderful Life, but none of the actors know who any of the other actors are. They all rehearse with the director one-on-one. So the actors are just going to sit down in the audience with the audience and when their scene comes up, they’re just going to get up and start to act in the scene. Nobody’s going to know who’s playing what. I’m really looking forward to that. It’s the same folks behind 14/48. You can only do it one night. I’m also looking forward to Pygmalion, which I’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen a Shaw play, ever.”
Shakespeare Character That You Identify With
“More than any of the others? When I first came back to Seattle, I played Iago. And I loved that guy! I think he’s a great guy. Had things gone differently for him I think he could have been this really cool old man. I do know how it feels to be over looked and passed over. I think everybody knows that. And you wish you were somewhere else in life professionally or emotionally or whatever. I didn’t think I was going to identify with Horatio as much as I did. Terry Weagant just played Helena. Helena’s fucking fantastic! I relate to all the outsiders: Iago, Aufidius, Helena…that feeling of ‘Why not me?’ That’s something I like to exploit in myself because it’s a part of yourself you can share, that people don’t share. But everybody feels that way. So I like those guys. Edmund…Edmund the Bastard! All those guys, they’re all alright in my book. They’re cool.”