Actor and raconteur Carter Rodriquez goes under the gun with five questions this week, not all of which (I hope) have been answered with complete honesty. Rodriquez has appeared recently in Cafe Nordo, will appear in BASH Theatre‘s fall show, and is a long-time Freehold Theatre collaborator (including work with the Engaged Theatre Project, which brings shows to Washington State correctional facilities, as well as sponsoring workshops inside). Monday, July 19, his experimental comedy group Le Frenchword performs a pair of shows at the Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre at 7 and 8:30 p.m.
1. Where did you grow up, and how did you end up where you are now? I was raised in Fountain, Colorado, a small farming/military stronghold 20 miles south of Colorado Springs. Waaay back in the eighteenhundrend-and-somethings it was going to be the capital of Colorado, but somehow it was blown to smithereens by a dubious railroad-dynamite accident. Literally blew the place off the map. Some say jealous Denverites did it. In 1989 I was a two-time college dropout living in Colorado Springs. I was a small angry fish in a dumb, medium-sized pond. I knew I had to leave, and I had a couple of friends living in Seattle who just couldn’t shut the fuck up about how great it is. I moved here and applied to Cornish but decided to play in rock bands instead.
2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting, or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why? I was probably five or six years old when I first heard “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” by Jimi Hendrix. Up until that time, I had only ever heard country and western, ranchera, Lawrence Welk, Christmas carols, and children’s music. It blasted my mind into some otherworldly dream zone. The impression it left was so deep that I still have a lingering five-year-old’s fever dream feeling when I hear anything from Electric Ladyland.
3. What skill, talent, or attribute do you most wish you had and why? More self-discipline, the lack of which feeds the Demon of Unrealized Potential.
4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day. I enjoy a plethora of vocations: (a) Resident manager of a 24-hour musicians’ rehearsal facility; (b) Freelance SCUBA diver for Snohomish County Surface Water Management; (c) Two or six paid acting gigs a year; (d) One or three commissioned fringe art/construction projects ranging from theatre sets to business card design to paintings and found-object sculpture; (e) Teach and direct for Freehold Theatre’s Prison Residency Program and Echo Glen Juvenile Rehab Center; (f) I use a special power-thought technique that makes cashiers accidentally give me too much change or forget to charge me at all. It is so completely foolproof that I don’t even realize that I’ve done it, thereby avoiding all possible guilt.
My schedule changes weekly, routines are temporary.
5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome? In the late ’90s I had become quite disillusioned with trying to hold a band together (everyone wanted to be a millionaire), so I decided to take a (don’t laugh) real job. I worked my way up from barista to be the General Manager of a local coffee company. I went on salary and was working six twelve-hour days a week. I was making lotsa money, and I hated my life. I went in one day and beat the owner to death with an unripe pineapple and the VP broke down weeping so I stuck a whip cream canister up his ass and inflated him and he flew around the room squealing like a deflating balloon. Then I burned the building down. I drank a bottle of tequila, lit my balls on fire, and parachuted off the Space Needle screaming “Art saves, you fucking assholes!” I landed on the roof of the Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill, so I walked in to Freehold Theatre Lab and studied acting for five years.
“Five Questions” was originally developed by Andy Horwitz of Culturebot.org, a NYC-based website covering contemporary performance and culture.