Playlist profile: Kate Guentzel

I met Kate Guentzel the weekend of her first previews for The School for Lies at The Sample Room in Northeast. Our conversation ranged widely from working with her husband to what’s keeping her awake late into the night. From her days at the U of M to her breakout role in the Illusion Theater’s My Antonia, Kate has built a reputation as an actor of uncommon intensity and bold choices. Her latest project finds her sashaying around Park Square’s stage in period dress and playing for serious laughs. But as I found out, all things being equal, she might just rather be in a Utah wilderness. How’s your show going? The show is going really well. You now it’s so funny, some people think it’s very funny, and some people, you can tell by the audience reaction, well, it’s pretty bawdy! But I think, all in all, it’s going well so far. What is it like to work with your husband onstage [John Catron, who is also in The School for Lies]? We were both looking forward to it because it hasn’t happened since My Antonia, and we weren’t married then. We met during that show and started dating halfway through the process. So we were really looking forward to it. It’s a lot though. He’s required to be my scene partner, and then help me get off book at home. This show has been really anxiety ridden for me. So he’s had to not only be an actor himself, but then also deal with the fact that his wife is really anxious. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is, and it’s total insomnia, total freak out. And it’s ridiculous, because it’s this really lighthearted, fun comedy. You know, it’s probably a lot of things. It’s probably that I’ve never really done a comedy before, especially one like this. I usually do drama. I’ve never worked at Park Square, it’s a really big part. Things like that. And of late we’ve had these sirens going off in our neighborhood which just heightens the anxiety, to be laying there in bed at night unable to sleep and just waiting for sirens to go off randomly. Other than that, working with John is awesome. He’s the best! What is your first memory of seeing a live performance? I have two. One was when I was a child and I went to see New Prague High School’s production of Grease. And I think the other was at Children’s Theater. It was the hat thing, the many hats? There were hats everywhere. [Presumably The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. – Ed.] How did you start as a performer? Well I started off as a dancer. My mom put me into dance lessons, I think when I was three. So I danced all throughout high school and then my sister Angela was in a musical. I saw her do it and I thought it looked really fun, so when I entered high school, I wanted to do a musical too. And now I no longer do musicals. But that was the first love, singing and dancing, and now I don’t do those anymore. Because I’m unqualified. When did you decide to make it your profession? When I went to college I wanted to be a doctor. I actually went to the college of St. Benedict my first year, and I was studying biology. And then I just couldn’t hack it, I guess. I think I got to organic chemistry my second semester, and I just couldn’t do it. I’m great at memorizing things, so I was good at biology. You just memorize things and take the test. So I transferred to the U. I was going to do journalism, I think. God, I don’t know how I walked into Rarig [the Theater department building at the University of Minnesota]. I look back on it and I don’t know what I was thinking. I just started auditioning for plays. Not getting cast. I wasn’t good, I don’t know why I thought I should do it. So that’s how it started. Why do you act? Well, there’s lots of reasons. I love it. [Self-mockingly] I love it. No, but I do love it. I think a lot of it too is maybe escapism, because I’m actually a pretty introverted person. So some part of me gets to experience what it would be like not to be me. Obviously! I don’t know why I find joy in that. But also I feel like I’m on this train of being an actor. I don’t know how to get off. That’s why I act: because I don’t know what else I would do. Well, I have one other thing I would do, but it doesn’t really fit into my world. I think I would like to be a park ranger. Yeah, in Utah. Specifically Canyonlands National Park. What’s a role, production or process that you’re proud of? My Antonia I think. We had worked on it for years. When Allison [Moore] was first asked by the Illusion to work on an adaptation of My Antonia, Michael Robbins called in 20 people and we all just would read excerpts of her drafts, and act things out, play around. And then throughout the course of the years, I think three years, every few months she’d have new pages. And every few months they’d have less people until it was just me and John Catron. So we worked on it for so long and it went through the Fresh Ink series. And it was maybe the first time for me as an actor where I could feel like, I’m doing good work. Like I’d grown. What’s a role, production or process that really challenged you? It was with Gremlin Theater, Burn This. Looking back I wish I could have another shot at it. I had just finished with two shows back to back at the Guthrie, and I was really looking forward to having this intimate theater experience. And Ellen Fenster wanted to do Burn This, and I loved it and I wanted to do it. But I had hurt myself doing Master Butcher’s Singing Club, I had broken my knee, and I had to have surgery. I had surgery the day before we started rehearsals for Burn This. So I don’t think I started the process well, coming from this damaged place, and I just never figured her out. At all. What keeps you going? I’m waiting for that one role that proves something. That I’ve not done this for naught. That it was worth all of this. And then once I get that role, I could maybe look at doing a different career or having a baby or… But it’s funny, because I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Not that that role won’t come, but I don’t think… Like this role at Park Square is incredible, I love the character so much, it’s one of the best roles I’ve ever gotten to play. And yet it’s not enough. So then maybe my next job, maybe that will, that’s got to be enough. Who are some of you favorite actors? At the national level, I love Jessica Lange. And I love Cate Blanchett. I also love Stephen Yoakam. What are some favorite productions or performances you’ve seen? Recently at Pillsbury House it was The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry, all of those actors, every single one of them. I was blown away by that show. I just felt so happy at that show and I think everyone else in the theater felt that too. I loved Venus in Fur at the Jungle. I thought Peter [Hansen] and Anna [Sundberg] were beautiful in that. And also the show the Jungle did before that, The Vibrator Play. Wonderful. What would your dream career look like? I think it would be here in Minneapolis. I think it would involve doing two fantastic shows a year. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Maybe to get paid enough that I don’t have to go back to Spill The Wine. And to be able to have a family while doing it all. What are some dream roles you want to play? Well, I think that I would be a really great Lady Macbeth. And I think that would be a really fun role to play with my husband. Sometimes John and I will sit up and drink wine and talk about doing that in 10 years. I’d like to play Gertrude. It’s funny that I’m naming all this Shakespeare, I don’t actually do it. I would like to play Maggie the Cat. I got to understudy it a couple of years ago at the Guthrie but never went on. I’d love to play her. What’s the best advice you ever received as an actor? Here’s something that’s stuck with me. It was my last year of college, a class with Kent Stephens, and I was doing a scene from Twelfth Night playing Viola. And it wasn’t happening. It was my first time with Shakespeare, and I didn’t get it. And I remember Kent saying that just being me onstage is enough. I don’t need to layer on anything. What I bring is enough and it doesn’t need any more than that. So sometimes when it gets so complicated, I remember that. If you could change one thing about the way things work around town, what would it be? Well, I don’t know how to do this, and not having this has actually served me, but I feel like so many theaters these days have closed auditions. And roles that you would have loved to just have a shot at… You know how it is, they pull in who they know and like or whoever just did the last great thing, and that’s who’s going to have the opportunity to audition. And where I am now, it has started to benefit me. But I have younger actor friends who will ask, how do I get in there, and I don’t know what to tell them. And it happens at every theater. So I think that, I would change that.