INTERVIEW: ‘tiny father’ has West Coast premiere at Geffen Playhouse
Photo: Tiffany Villarin and Maurice Williams star in tiny father at the Geffen Playhouse. Photo courtesy of Jeff Lorch / Provided by the Geffen Playhouse with permission.
The Geffen Playhouse’s production of tiny father, written by Mike Lew and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, follows the journey of Daniel (Maurice Williams), a man who had a “friends with benefits” relationship that resulted in the birth of a baby girl, according to press notes. Now, Daniel must decide what his role will be moving forward, all while the baby struggles in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Helping him with some of these big questions is Caroline (Tiffany Villarin), the NICU nurse who is at the bedside throughout the ordeal.
tiny father is currently receiving its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Performances run through July 14 at the Geffen’s Gil Cates Theater.
“It’s a really beautiful play, and the cool thing about it is it’s really simple as far as set goes,” Williams said in a recent phone interview. “You would think that that would be an easy tech process, but it’s actually a lot harder because we have a lot of amazing design elements that are going on. So it’s really exciting.”
Williams, who is known for The Vince Staples Show, said he responded to Lew’s play because of its universality. So many people, including audience members at the Geffen, can identify with some part of Daniel’s journey.
“Birth and when life hangs in the balance for a newborn, that is something that is just really, really universal,” he said. “I always think that in the theater we’re at our best when you’re putting something on stage that multiple people in the audience from different vantage points can relate to, so that felt like a good thing to jump in. And you always want to be in water that’s a little murky where you have to ask yourself, what would you do in that situation? Have you ever been in that situation? And pray that you aren’t. That’s the most exciting part of doing the play, I think.”
To process the events of the play, Williams has considered different life experiences that feel so far away when one is growing up that they almost seem far-fetched, as if they would never happen to a young person. tiny father is about those experiences crashing down on Daniel, with decisions needing to be made. Will he become a biological parent or a father?
“You get these moments where you can relate to whatever point of the process you’re in life-wise,” he said. “For me, not having children, it’s easy to put myself in the position of the character at the very beginning of the play — the expectancy of something and then being kind of blindsided by a different circumstance. That’s what I mean by there’s different perspectives that you can come to. There are different entry points, and I think the audience is going to do that. As a performer, those are the fun places where you can slide in no matter what is going on.”
For Villarin, this project comes after many years of collaboration with Lew and von Stuelpnagle. The trio had been working together for more than a decade, and then on a random Tuesday, she received a message about tiny father in her inbox.
“I was like, what? OK, let’s do this,” said Villarin, who is known for Do You Feel Anger? “So actually I’m based in New York, and my husband and my 20-month-old baby we all just relocated to L.A. a few weeks ago and have been out here really enjoying working at the Geffen and being with Mike and Moritz again in a room, a really good reunion.”
Villarin said the show started as an audio play for Audible, with Ali Ahn and William Jackson Harper taking on the roles of Tiffany and Daniel, respectively. She is good friends with both actors. “When I was reading it the first time, I could hear their voices in the piece, and what I loved was Caroline’s directness and her empathy but also that she didn’t take bullshit,” she said. “I could hear Mike’s humor in that, and I knew that that was something that I could really play with. It felt like a piece that was fully supported with people that I know and love.”
This is Villarin’s first time in a two-hander, and she said the experience has been a wild ride. She greatly appreciates her time on stage with Williams, and they have talked about the trust factor that they both need to have with each other.
“It’s kind of the blessing and the curse of a two-hander,” Villarin shared from a conversation she had with Williams. “It’s just the two of us, so when it goes wrong, it’s just the two of us. So we can navigate our way out and try to work around what has fallen off stage or the lines we dropped on stage or what the new rewrites are. Maurice is a very, deeply story-oriented person. He’s very on the ball about what is the story we’re trying to tell and what is the most specific way we can do that given that we are also full human beings coming to these roles. I really appreciate his eye on the story and have come to deeply trust his take and his taste.”
She added: “That this has come to the table for me is really all that I was hoping for.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
tiny father, starring Maurice Williams and Tiffany Villarin, continues through July 14 at the Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theater in Los Angeles. Click here for more information and tickets.
