‘Star Trek’ to stage
In today’s Calendar, Matthew Palm talks with former “Star Trek: The Next Generation” cast member Michael Dorn about his upcoming performance in “Antony and Cleopatra” at Orlando Shakespeare Theater. Plus, a look at local poker and Scrabble clubs and movie reviews for “Power Rangers,” “Wilson” and more.
Michael Dorn is looking forward to playing a strong, charismatic leader who boldly goes in search of adventure and ends up in foreign lands.
That might sound like Dorn is returning to his best-known role, the Klingon Lt. Worf in the “Star Trek” TV and movie franchise. But instead of envisioning the future, Dorn’s latest role takes him back to the past — way back to the past, as in 40 years before the birth of Christ.
The actor, 64, will star in Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s production of “Antony and Cleopatra,” which opens March 31. Playing the general and politician Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s tragedy wasn’t on Dorn’s bucket list, but when opportunity knocked he couldn’t say no.
“It’s kind of a wild thing,” he says before a recent rehearsal at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Loch Haven Park, north of downtown. “I was looking for some change in my career.”
The role came about after Dorn and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” co-star Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi) attended a 2013 presentation at the center that featured Patrick Stewart, the show’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.
After the event, Dorn mentioned to Jim Helsinger that he really liked the venue. The Shakespeare Theater’s artistic director remembered that conversation. So when he was thinking about who could fill Antony’s sandals, Helsinger made a call. Done deal.
“He asked, I said yeah, that was it,” Dorn says.
It’s not Dorn’s first time performing Shakespeare; the Southern California resident played Duke Frederick in the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ 2012 production of “As You Like It.”
“It’s a challenge to get the words,” says the man who mastered the fictional Klingon language. “But you get to the plateau and then you start talking and thinking like Shakespeare.”
It helps that he’s a fan. “I love Shakespeare, so doing it was really important to me,” he says.
“Antony and Cleopatra” is Shakespearean tragedy, based on Antony’s rise to the highest heights of government in the ancient Roman empire and his passionate affair with Cleopatra, the exotic ruler of Egypt. Before the play is through, countries go
to war, governments fall and civilizations are rocked.
As for the title characters, well, they prove to be as star-crossed as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the couple for whom the playwright coined that expression about 20 years before he wrote “Antony and Cleopatra” in the early years of the 17th century.
Dorn has his own take on Antony’s inner struggle between duty and love.
“To me, he is a guy who has a lot of self-doubt,” he says. “If you said that to any scholar, they’d say ‘What are you talking about?’ But something profound has happened to him — he has fallen in love with Cleopatra.” The Shakes’ production is directed by Joseph Discher. Playing the Egyptian queen is Caralyn Kozlowski, a New York actress whose credits include Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” and numerous Shakespeare plays, among them “Othello,” “Love's Labour’s Lost” and “Macbeth.”
Dorn says he sees why Cleopatra appeals so strongly to Marc Antony, who has spent his life navigating the shark-filled waters of the Roman military and political scene.
“Cleopatra is spectacular,” he says. “She can move in and out of any political situation and is as ruthless as the next person.”
Dorn hopes “Next Generation” co-star Jonathan Frakes (Cmdr. Riker) will be able to catch a performance while he is in town next month performing with the Orlando Philharmonic. The entire “Next Generation” ensemble remain good friends, Dorn says. They see each other often and gather for an annual Christmas party.
“You just can’t describe…” Dorn says, trying to capture the vibe of the actors, who worked together on 178 episodes of the 1987-94 TV show and subsequent four movies.
“Imagine you got us all together in a room — with alcohol,” he starts again. “You’d get a sense of what it was like. All of our senses of humor and the way we look at things… they’re not all the same, but they all mesh. We absolutely love each other — it’s insane.”
Dorn holds the distinction of appearing in more “Star Trek” episodes and movies in the same role than any other actor. After “Next Generation,” he took Worf to “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” for four seasons. He has “put Worf to bed” now; an idea to revive the character in a new TV show didn’t pan out, and he last donned the makeup and prosthetics to turn Klingon in 2003.
Since his “Star Trek” days, he has appeared in movies and TV shows, including a longtime recurring role on “Castle.”
Dorn also does extensive voice-over work for animated series, video games and even two audiobooks — but don’t expect any more of those. (“They were brutal; I didn’t enjoy that at all,” he says).
So how does fighting aliens in a weekly TV series compare to mastering Shakespeare for the stage? Dorn grins. “That was a walk in the park, compared to this.”