From a rugby player ...

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 23

From a rugby player ...

KAY FORRESTER

talks to two new faces at the Court Theatre.

Geoffrey Dolan has a very simple reason for acting — he likes it. The 23-year-old new recruit to the Court Theatre company first broke into “serious” theatre as a rugby playing actor playing a rugby player. He had been involved in amateur theatre at school and enjoyed it, and when Wellington’s Downstage Theatre was about to stage Greg McGee’s play about rugby, “Foreskin’s Lament,” the opportunity seemed too good to miss. “I had been playing senior grade rugby in Wellington for three years so I figured I could act the part,” he says. The audition for Downstage 3>/ 2 years ago was the beginning of his career in theatre. His contract with Downstage was for two productions. The second, Chekov’s “Cherry Orchard,”

was something of a culture shock after “Foreskin.” “But I really loved it. After Downstage I went off to Auckland for a while seeking fame and fortune which didn’t come. So I went back to Wellington in debt. I’d only been back five minutes and I got a call from Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North.” He spent almost six months at Centrepoint in “Footrot Flats” and another production of “Foreskin’s Lament.” Dolan's particular love is musical theatre and he got the chance of a national tour last year as Duke in “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” the musical about Elvis Presley’s last hours. The show closed early in Christchurch but the actor had left four days earlier courtesy of a broken leg, acquired during a day off.

Early this year he began an eight month stint in Palmerston North doing four shows at Centrepoint: Roger Hall’s “The Share Club,” John Godber’s "Up and Under,” Robert Lord’s “The Affair” and a show called “Ladies Night” in which he played a male stripper. He came to the Court to step into a role in the popular season of Roger Hall’s “After the Crash” in place of Paul Barrett, who is in the cast of the second show at the Court, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” He will be staying for the Katherine Mansfield season, then “The Three Musketeers” and the Christmas show. “I’d love to stay after that as well. I want to settle somewhere for 18 months to two years and learn from a director.”