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ATLANTA—Actor Chris Kayser had a college major in French and
artistic urges in 1977 when he was dating an aspiring actress whom he drove to
auditions. One day both sat in the office of an Atlanta dinner theater, where
she had a role, as the director made phone calls in frustration trying to
replace a male actor who had just dropped out.
“He just literally looked up and said, ‘What about
you?’ and shoved the script over. I didn’t know anything about acting
so I said I’d have to read it. So I read and he just said, ‘Well,
you’re boyfriend and girlfriend—there’s some chemistry there and
I’ll show you what to do.’”
So Kayser took that part and then others, following people around
and observing them to learn his craft. “I was just bit. It was really fun
and exciting. I just wanted to do more.”
Kayser, a 13-year parishioner at St. Thomas More Church, Decatur,
has acted, sung and danced in Atlanta for over 20 years and is considered one
of the city’s finest—never having had an acting class.
And the humbug is one insect that keeps biting, as Kayser, 51, is
now in his fifth year playing Scrooge in the Alliance Theatre’s production
of “A Christmas Carol,” his 15th year in the play. The play has
become a family affair. His daughter, Noelle, 10, plays Belinda of the Cratchit
family. “After 15 years it’s part of my Christmas experience now to
do ‘Christmas Carol.’ It’s a great story that deserves to be
retold,” he said.
During the middle of the show, Scrooge, hunched over and wearing a
nightdress and night cap, observes scenes from his life.
“Sometimes I look around and think how this is all so
beautiful—the singing is wonderful, the set, the costumes, the beautiful
faces of the young people. It’s just great. I love my job,” he said
in an interview between matinee and evening shows Nov. 28.
“Every actor wants to play a part of somebody who
changes,” Kayser said. “This is like the greatest example of that in
all of literature. It’s a huge change and playing that wide arc is very
fun.”
While he never pushed acting on Noelle or his son, Jacob, 13, both
of whom attend St. Thomas More School, Kayser is pleased that his daughter is
trying it out. Noelle has appeared in “Casper: The Musical” with
Chita Rivera at the Fox Theatre and “Preacher from the Black Lagoon”
at Seven Stages.
“It’s a thrill . . . I don’t particularly want her
to be an actor, but she seems to like it. I did want her to do ‘Christmas
Carol’ with me . . . I just thought it would be something we would both
remember all our lives.”
Jacob is also an excellent student and likes building things, but
not in theater. “Our joke is we’ll all be living at his house in 20
years,” he added.
For her part, Noelle said she experiences not stage fright, but
delight. “It’s really fun—all the people watching you and
entertaining them and hearing them laugh on your line. It’s really fun and
exciting,” she said.
Together the father-daughter duo will perform in “Annie”
at the Fox in January, starting rehearsal the day after “Christmas
Carol” closes. But where’s Christmas break? “No actor is allowed
to complain about too much work. You have to be thankful you’ve got an
opportunity,” Kayser said.
Scrooge’s uneasiness during his ghost visits is reflected in
his shaky footing and his bent arms and spine. During his nine years with the
Academy Theatre, he recalled a conversation with director and founder Frank
Wittow, who helped him think of a vulture to physically manifest Scrooge. It
was Wittow who gave him his big break in the early ‘80s by hiring him at
the theater, where he was a resident actor and performed with actors like
Rosemary Newcott and Kenny Leon. Kayser credits his mentor with instilling his
core artistic values. “He really taught me respect for acting, for how to
respect yourself while being in that kind of an odd profession.”
Growing up in Atlanta, theater never crossed his mind. His parents
moved to a Brookhaven neighborhood with “70-something children on our
street” to be near Our Lady of the Assumption Church and School. Kayser
attended grades 1-8 at OLA. As the nuns spoke about eternity, heaven and hell,
an imaginative young Kayser developed the idea that life was a test for going
to heaven and that a surefire admission ticket would be to hide in a monastery.
So as his brother and sister went to Catholic high school, Kayser headed to a
Benedictine minor seminary in Arkansas with visions of the priesthood dancing
in his head. While he loved it there he saw “how immature” his
motivations were and changed his mind.
He started college at St. Louis University in Missouri and
finished at Georgia State University in 1978, spending a thrilling year in
France to become fluent. He worked as a tennis pro at area country clubs and
played in tournaments. He discovered dance, enjoying tap, ballet and jazz
dancing’s creativity and exercise and the ratio of “30 women to four
guys.” He met his wife of 20 years, Terri, a former ballerina, while
dancing with an Atlanta theater. She now runs a high school dance program and
owns the Cartersville School of Ballet.
Standing six feet with a lean physique, dance still helps Kayser
with balance, flexibility, body awareness and staying fit. Off stage, he fills
in doing radio voiceovers, industrial films and writing for the Atlanta Ballet,
and is now booked until fall 2002. His film credits include
“FreeJack” with Emilio Estevez and Anthony Hopkins.
“There comes a time when you think ‘am I going to keep
doing this or get a real job?’ I’m proud to say we’ve done all
right . . . we have a real adult life, houses, cars, insurance, clothes, food
and we still get to stay artists. I think it’s worthwhile for the children
to have a father who loves his work and thinks it’s kind of sacred,”
he said.
The actor has intentionally taken a wide variety of roles to
resist the industry tendency to be filed away as one character type, which he
calls the “death of artistic life.” And the strangeness of his craft
is a good thing. “You get to tell all these different stories and in
different voices and you get to visit different time periods, different
countries and its literature and its song and its poetry and pageantry and
there’s just a wealth of experiences that keep it from getting
boring.”
His roles have ranged from a sly seducer in “Les Liaisons
Dangereuses” and a homosexual who persecutes gays in “Angels in
America” to a poser-priest in “Tartuffe” and a dermatologist who
buys an expensive all white painting in the comedy “Art” with Tom Key
and Kenny Leon last spring. He has acted for the last six years in Theatre du
Reve, Atlanta’s French-language troupe.
Just down the road from his childhood school community of OLA is
another community which exercises his mind, body and spirit. He’s been a
resident member of the Georgia Shakespeare Festival at Oglethorpe University
for 13 years. While Shakespeare can be intimidating to anyone, he loves the
challenge of “taking the text apart and making sure you understand what
the heck they’re talking about” so the audience will.
“We have a company of actors who come back and that’s
invaluable for us both professionally and personally to watch them grow as
artists . . . It’s difficult language—therein lies the beauty of it.
It’s the same with classical music. It’s complex and it’s
difficult and beautiful in a way that not just anyone can do.”
Good roles have not always come easily to Kayser, who even decided
to quit acting for a brief time. He wasn’t offered a full speaking role at
the Alliance until 1990. Not until 1994 did he get his first lead there in
“Angels.”
A 1998 Atlanta Journal Constitution article called him “an
actor whose talent was always obvious but whose personality is too modest and
too subtle—refracted through dozens of diverse roles—for a typical
Star. He’s had to prove himself many times over to be fully appreciated in
his hometown.”
Wittow was impressed by his intelligence and movement from the
first day of rehearsal at the Academy.
“Then when I got to know him I was very much impressed with
him as a person. He’s one of my favorite people. He’s a very honest
person, tremendous integrity, just developed marvelously as an actor in terms
of being very versatile and I think he’s one of the most employed actors
in Atlanta. He’s just working constantly,” he said. “He’s
also one of the most universally liked and admired actors in Atlanta, for being
somebody that you can count on, that says what he means.”
While clearly he’d love to take on a challenging movie role,
neither has he desired to leave his hometown and pursue a film career in Los
Angeles. He spoke of “a downward cultural spiral for Atlanta” when
actors feel they have to leave if they’re any good.
“If you want to build a really vibrant artistic community
here, good people have to stay. In my small way, I hope to be a part of
that,” he said. “I’m proud to be considered in a class with
other good people. I think if people know you’re dependable and can do the
job they tend to give you the kind of challenges you hope for in artistic
life.”
As he speaks humbly, the light of faith softly shines through him.
At STM, Kayser tells the Gospel story as a lector and lector trainer—a
ministry that gets a bad rap as a “do-nothing ministry.” He’s
past president of the parish council, has led the youth group with his wife,
and helps lead children’s liturgy where he plays guitar and sings. In
lector training, “I try to get them to read expressively because it’s
the greatest story ever told, the Good News of Jesus Christ. We should be
proclaiming it that way. The writers were poets and storytellers.”
As he keeps creating characters and telling stories, God plays a
central role in shaping his own. Faith “makes sense out of your life. Your
life is more than eating, drinking, sleeping and dying. There has to be
faith.”
“Work is a kind of prayer . . . dedicating your best efforts
and trying to be kind of selfless . . . trying to be part of something which is
basically good and has a good influence on people.” |
