Click here to read an article by the New York Times about my private investigation work.

Shows

For Ecstasy…

[Len] could easily come off as a buffoon, but in the delicate performance of Mr. Heskett, Len is more than a joke. It’s a scene-stealing portrayal…
-Jason Zinoman, The New York Times

Special mention should be made of actor Stephen Heskett as Len. Heskett displayed a depth of character so great that an entire play could be made off of just one look at him.
-Le-Anne, Theatre Is Easy

Particularly strong in this aspect [is] Heskett, whose awkwardness detonates several of the play’s silences…
-Ellen Wernecke, EDGE

For Sideman…

…the very capable Heskett is sarcastic and sincere, but he does not and should not be too emotionally engaging. His narrative is the element that allows the audience to step back from the action and observe without judging.

For I Hate Hamlet…

This … role could easily melt into that of a bland, TV-actor straight man, but Stephen Heskett gently and masterfully keeps this from happening. He creates and holds a strong, fully dimensional character at the center of this drama, and we are all the better for it.
-Brooklyn Heights Press, Clark Gesner (writer of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”

Other Press

I haven’t been given official permission (just from the author) to post this, but here is an article in the Voices of Central Pennsylvania about me anyway.

Musketeer Duels La Langue and The Road Stephen dreads the moment when the Question will be asked. He has been on tour before, and the travel, the hotels, the ever-changing venues, none of these holds any fear for him. But he knows that sooner or later a high school student will look at him, fresh from his swashbuckling portrayal of D’Artagnan in the bilingual version of The Three Musketeers and ask, “Did you take French in high school?” Then Stephen will have to tell the audience he did, for one year, and got a D minus.
“That’s always good for a laugh,” Stephen says, sipping his coffee at Starbucks. “But I tell them I would have done better if I’d studied harder.” He has a likable, aw-shucks quality reminiscent of the young Jimmy Stewart, and the students believe him. It is important to be believed when speaking lines like, “And that is why you live only to die. That is why you trust no one. But I trust you, my friend. And I will bring back the Queen’s jewels.”
“The melodrama is part of it, sure, but you have to pursue through that without making fun of it. Otherwise, the students will kill you.
“I wasn’t going to go out on tour again unless I could go with my girlfriend Shelley. We’ve been apart for three of the four years we’ve been together. But the producer we worked for last year–we did separate shows–was stalling and stalling, and I got this offer from National, so I took it. I was a little worried about being the hero–I’ve never played one. I’m not the typical hero type. And of course, I didn’t speak French.”
“National’s shows are in English, except for these moments during the show when we rewind–we turn on a strobe and everyone walks backwards through the blocking very fast, then we do the scene again in French. You probably noticed that in this show, I say precisely three things in French, the famous ‘All for one and one for all,’ ‘la mort,’ where they had to coach me on the ‘r,’ so it didn’t sound like ‘l’amour,’ and ‘Good Afternoon, your Eminence.’
“I did have to pass a French test at the audition. They gave me a page to read, corrected me and saw if I could make the corrections. Porthos and I are not fluent in French. The King is from the French part of Switzerland and Constance is from Paris. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.
“National also had a fight audition. This is one thing my last employer didn’t do, so I ended up with one awful and dangerous fighter. It got so bad that another actor wouldn’t rehearse with him. When I called the home office for support, they said, ‘Re-choreograph the fight.’ Fortunately, no one was injured.
“During the National fight audition, I found myself paired with a guy who seemed familiar. When we stopped, he said, ‘I’m sure I’ve swung a sword at your head before.’ Turns out we had not only auditioned together, but had gone to the same theatre school at different times. He ended up being the Duke of Buckingham and the stage manager.
“On tour, each of the ten actors also has another job, road manager, French coach, fight captain, seamstress, and everyone has a set-up duty. Mine was setting up the lights.
“Also, almost all the men doubled parts. The masked thugs I fight are Porthos and the King. The Cardinal is also Lord DeWinter. The Duke of Buckingham puts on a hood and another dialect and becomes the Executioner.
“We rehearsed for a month, then hit the road for three. It’s an education, being on the road in the USA with four Europeans. Unlike my last tour, we started in Florida and came north as it got colder, through Texas, then up to Chicago, east to Maine and finishing in New York.
“National isn’t as lavish as my last year’s employer. The sets and costumes we use in Three Musketeers are the same ones used for last year’s tour of Cyrano. And on the back of our flats, you’ll find the set for Romeo & Juliet. But they’re good people to work for. They took pains to make sure that on the weekends, we were close to a city. Movie theatres and malls become very important when you’re on tour. The weekend we were in Chicago, I saw five shows, because I was starved for live theatre.
“A tour can get nightmarish if just one person is off. I was the only person who’d toured before–they used to tell us at school, ‘Do a children’s theatre tour, because you’ll learn more about yourself as an actor in three months than you’d learn in three years’–but everyone was OK except the Queen. I’d come in prepared and with a professional attitude–all of us had–and she hadn’t. She would be late. All the time, late, 45 minutes late to the first read-through! This meant we’d be sitting in the van ready to leave waiting for her, when we could have been sleeping. And she wouldn’t do her job as seamstress, either. When there are so many other actors who deserve to act…
“It all came to a head in Pittsburgh. She got out-voted as to where the van would go, so she hitch-hiked into the city. Then she called me at ten o’clock at night to come and get her, 30 minutes each way. Then she lied to management about it. With three weeks left in the tour, they fired her and brought in a new Queen, who learned the role in four days and was a seamstress, too. It was wonderful, like starting all over again, but you already know the show.
“Playing for audiences of high school French students is a… challenge, let’s say. The actor playing Cardinal Richelieu went out before the show to make an announcement about respect, and it usually worked. He’s a substitute teacher when he isn’t acting. The kids would ‘Ooooo,’ every time we kissed, and cheer when Milady got her head chopped off. They’d always ask, ‘Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend?’ One kid got up and asked the Queen, ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ But they’d ask questions about plot points, too. Why is is called The Three Musketeers when there are four of you? How Milady survives being hanged, which I don’t think even Dumas answers. It may astonish you, but between the sword fights and the kissing, the kids actually watch the play!
“The script may be melodramatic, but it tells in 90 minutes what it took Richard Lester twice that to tell onscreen. True, here decapitation is a blackout, and when we played natural light shows, it sort of spoiled the effect when Milady would get up and walk away after losing her head. Through everything, you have to have fun onstage. And if you can’t do it when you enter, draw your sword and say, ‘Stand off, scoundrel!’ you’re in the wrong business.
“You saw me step on the foil and bounce it up into my hand. I only dropped it twice in 56 shows. The first time I did, Milady, with whom I’m fighting, said, ‘You amuse me, D’Artagnan. I will give you another chance.’ So I did it, caught it, and the house went nuts.
“For three months, my job was acting, which is a lot better than doing legal proofreading on the midnight shift. I’d tell the kids I got to sword fight and kiss girls. What’s not to like?
“At every show, the Duke of Buckingham would open the box with the Queen’s jewels to show them to me. For three months, the box contained rude notes, pictures of naked women, stuff like that. But at the last performance, there was a picture of the cast and a note that read, ‘Adieu, my friend…’
“Some people do this stuff forever. There was a woman last year who had no home for eight years. She was always on the road. I’ll do another one, but only if Shelley can come along with me. We did a production of I Hate Hamlet in Brooklyn, and got a manager out of that. It would be nice to see the country together. Shelley’d be great as Constance, but she doesn’t speak French. Of course, I could get the sides and coach her, and then, if they wanted me, they’d have to cast her!”
He looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, seized by a dream. There was a time when Stephen would not have thought like this. But now he has played a hero, and heroes do heroic things for love. I would not bet against your seeing him and Shelley together soon at a high school near you, en Francais.

All part of The Life…

Copyright © 2000 Voices of Central Pennsylvania, Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.