With his boyish good looks and overall nice-guy aura, Chris Holcom may seem like an unlikely choice to play arrogant, self-obsessed Pablo Picasso. But Holcom (Titus Andronicus, Bloody Poetry, Look Back in Anger) thrives on playing against type, just as his sidelight in the theater — creating gruesome bloodbaths for violent, over-the-top plays — isn't at all what you'd expect from such a sunny personality.
I sat down with the paradoxical Holcom in a dressing room near the Shimberg Playhouse and tried to discover the secret of his double life. I'm not sure I succeeded: In conversation he came across just as genuinely bright and friendly as he'd always seemed in past encounters, and though he admitted to a youthful fascination with film monsters, it's doubtful that that qualifies as the key to his unconscious. In any case, we had a good talk about Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the play that he's starring in for Jobsite Theater beginning this weekend. And I learned a few things about how he got from Lakeland to Tampa and the Jobsite troupe.
"It's a fictionalized tale of a meeting between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in this very, very famous Paris café … around 1904," Holcom told me when I asked about the play. "This is right before Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is published, and a couple of years before Picasso paints the 'Demoiselles d'Avignon.'" Because the play was written by comedian Steve Martin, there are inevitably some zany hi-jinks, but the real subject, Holcom said, is "the nature of life, really, and reality." Still, don't expect Pirandello; instead "it's full of anachronisms, there's lots of zinger type jokes, some physical comedy, lots of puns, plays on words and such." And Holcom has had to stretch — again — to fit the role.
"I was a little bit concerned," he said, "because Picasso's 23 years old in this piece, and the Spaniard has a very, very definite body type and way that he acts and such, and I kept thinking, I turned 31 this past year, so this is really the first time that I've been worried about, 'am I too old for this part? Can I really do this?' But he's just a dynamo; just a very, potent, potent man and that's been a real challenge."
Holcom researched the role with a book appropriately titled Picasso and Einstein, given to him by director Kari Goetz, and studied Picasso's paintings for clues as to "who's the type of man who could paint these sorts of things?" He learned from his research about Picasso's "bravado" and "supreme confidence," and he even got into the habit of making cubist pencil sketches of his surroundings during rehearsal. His intent was to try to understand what it was to be someone who "mined those areas that have never really been mined before."
Holcom's own story is slightly less revolutionary. He's originally from Lakeland, started at Lakeland High School and then transferred to the Harrison Center for the Visual and Performing Arts after he surprised himself by loving his experience in a community theater version of Fiddler On The Roof. He found theater at Harrison utterly fascinating: "I said, this is what I'd like to do the rest of my life."
Holcom studied stage management, technical theater and set design at the University of Central Florida, then transferred to USF for acting. At a 1999 cast party for the Jobsite version of Spring Awakening, Jobsite co-founder Michael Caban told Holcom that he'd seen some of his university performances and thought that the actor should audition for Y2K. Holcom did and landed a part. What turned out to be a longtime tie had begun. Nine-plus years later, he's appeared in one Jobsite show after another, sits on the Jobsite board, creates special effects whenever gore is required, and has a say as to which shows are programmed in each season. At his day job (acting only provides about 10 percent of his income) he's the American Literature and Theater instructor for Academy at the Lakes day school in Land O' Lakes. He's married (to stage manager and schoolteacher Jaime Giangrande) and thinks the only option that might take him out of Tampa is graduate school in theater. Because "there's so much that I don't know."
Which brings me back to our paradox: How does such a cheerful All-American type end up in such dark roles? "Anything I can really morph myself into, I enjoy that," said Holcom. On the evidence of past performances, this shape-changer can morph himself into quite a few unexpected contours.
And now he's Picasso. This is going to be interesting.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2009.