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Interview with the Artist in Residence, Mr. Dennis Green

 

 

 

April 11, 2000

 

Ms. Vitulano:  “Hello it’s a beautiful spring day in New York City and we’re happy to welcome Mr. Dennis Green who’s our artist in residence.  I’m Ms. Vitulano and my students are going to be interviewing Mr. Green.”

 

Fernando Chan:  “Hi I’m Fernando Chan.  How old are you?”

 

Mr. Green:  “Forty.”

 

Fernando Chan:  “My other question is – How long have you been working in the acting business?”

 

Mr. Green:  “Well let’s see, professionally since I was about twenty two, twenty two years old.”

 

Vanessa Cartagena:  “My name is Vanessa Cartagena.  I have a question.  Have you ever designed a stage?”

 

Mr. Green:  “Have I ever designed a stage like you mean like a set?  Ah no my expertise is really acting and writing, not really set design.”

 

Jonathan Marty:  “Hello my name is Jonathan Marty. I’m going to ask some questions of Mr. Green. Who was your inspiration of becoming an actor?”

 

Mr. Green:  “My inspiration for becoming an actor.  Well actually there wasn’t any one specific person  that I admired and made me want to become an actor.  I sort of, actually I decided that I wanted to be an actor when I was about nine years old, and because my brother was a musician.  He played the base guitar and stuff.  He got a lot of attention so I wanted attention too and I thought well I can’t be a musician so I think I’ll try acting.”

 

Elsy Salgado:  “Hi my name is Elsy Salgado.  I got a question to ask you.  Who is your favorite actor or actress and why?”

 

Mr. Green:  “Wow, favorite actor or actress, well let me see.  Well I have a lot of people that I admire very much.  I don’t have one favorite.  Let’s see actors, actually the contemporary actors I like actually like Sean Penn a lot.  I think he’s  very very good and I like Johnny Depp, and of course I like DeNiro.  That’s as far as film actors go, actresses well I like Angela Bassett a lot, and I like Meryl Streep.  Let’s see Angelica Houston, a couple of others I can’t think of.”

 

Elsy Salgado:  “All right and second question is, what is your favorite play and why?”

 

Dennis Green:  “My favorite play, well let’s see.  Actually my favorite play at the moment, is one that I just read.  It’s called “The Man Who Came to Dinner”.  It’s by a writing team.  It’s a comedy.  Writing team by the name of Kaufman and  Hart.  So it’s a very very very funny play.  This famous radio host comes to this family’s house for dinner, breaks his hip and ends up staying and turns the house upside down. So all of a sudden there are penguins, and craziness all throughout

the house.”

 

Fatou Ndiaye:  “My name is Fatou, the question is how do you get students to be interested in acting?”

 

Dennis Green:  “How do I get students to be interested in acting?  Well I don’t know if I get them to be interested in acting.  I think most of the time they start off with some kind of interest already.  Then from there hopefully by presenting them with the skills of the profession, they become more interested in acting.  So I think most of the people that I work with they come to it already with some interest.”

 

Fatou Ndiaye:  “My second question is if there was a part in a play what part would you want to play?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “Like what part would I really love to do?  I really don’t know, a couple of Shakespeare’s.  Actually I would really love to do, maybe Richard the III.”

 

Cindy Mei:  “My name is Cindy Mei.   Have you done any movies?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “Yeah I’ve been in a couple of movies.  One is called “Jacob’s Ladder”. Some years back I did a movie for a friend of mine, called “Murder Magic” and actually I’m going to do a reading tonight of a couple of screen plays by another friend of mine who’s a director and producer.  Hopefully those will soon get produced and do some acting again.”

 

Cindy Mei:  “Why do you like acting so much?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “Why do I like acting so much.  I think because I can get to be somebody else and the things you can’t, you usually don’t get to do in life, you can do in a play or in a movie.  It’s OK.  Like no one will come after you. 

 

Cindy Mei:  “Thank you.”

 

Cindy Gonzalez:  “My name is Cindy Gonzalez, and my question to you is what is your favorite role to play?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “My favorite role to play, actually I think I like comedies more than dramas.  I mean I like dramas too but comedies are kind of more fun.  You get to cut loose and be silly and be inventive and you know and really have a good time in a way that you can’t quite do when you are doing a drama.”

 

Cindy Gonzalez:  “My next question to you is, have you also studied singing, dancing as well as acting cause they kind of go hand in hand?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “I never studied singing really although I do sing.  I studied dance well in college and in graduate school we had like movement classes.  They weren’t really like dance, dance  classes.  But they involved like your using your body and your being aware of your body and all of that really does help you as an actor.  Helps you to be aware of your body as an actor so taking dance classes is a really smart thing.  Taking singing lessons helps you be aware of your voice and how to use it and how not to hurt it.  Like if you’re going to be on stage you how do you get heard night after night without hurting your voice.  So I agree I think these classes are very important.”

 

Justin Burgos:  “Hi my name is Justin.  What was the most fun or funny play you ever did?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “The most fun or the funniest play I’ve ever done.  Well actually two things.  One of them I have a one man show that I’ve written. So that’s a lot of fun to do cause you get to do all the characters and you get to write all the jokes and play all the jokes and get all the laughs from all the jokes and that’s a lot of fun.  And I did a play a couple of years back called “Tell Tale Hearts”.  This was at a theater called the Cross Roads Theater, just kind of a well known regional theater and that was a lot of fun.  I got to play a guy who had trouble finding; well he had trouble in romance.  So he’s very, very shy and that was really great.”

 

Justin Burgos:  “My second question is, after every play that you did like what do you do to relax yourself?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “What do you do to relax  yourself?  Usually you go hang out with the other actors.  Sometimes you go get a bite to eat or something else, but usually you hang out or you know take a nice nap.”

 

Krystal Serrano: “My name is Krystal.  Do you feel funny when you have to kiss someone in a play?”

 

Mr. Dennis Green:  “Only if you don’t like them or you don’t get along with them.  Then it’s not funny.  It’s just annoying.  But you know if you have to, you have to.  But you have to do, what you have to do, right?”

 

Ms. Vitulano:   “That was great.  Thanks you so much Mr. Green and we look forward to talking with you again.”

 

Anonymous:  “Yup.”