Artist Interview: Actors Ian Merrill Peakes and Trevor William Fayle
A conversation with the sparring partners at the center of THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT
In The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell — onstage at Lantern Theater Company February 2 through March 5, 2023 — an essayist and a fact checker go head-to-head over the nature of truth in art. Lantern dramaturg Meghan Winch sat down with the actors taking on this high-spirited and moving debate, Ian Merrill Peakes (playing John D’Agata, the writer) and Trevor William Fayle (playing Jim Fingal, the fact checker). While they spend much of their time onstage at odds, they were all smiles during our pre-show interview. Here, they talk about a dream process and the experience of working on such a tightly written piece that goes for both the funny bone and the heart.
MEGHAN WINCH: This is a true story — kind of. Going into rehearsals, how do you prepare for something like this? How much weight do you place on the true story versus the “kind of” true story?
IAN MERRILL PEAKES: I’ve always believed that the script is the bible. So I try not to do too much research outside of the script unless it’s absolutely necessary. Having you as our dramaturg do as much as you did, I had a great resource to go to. But I never went and watched an interview of John D’Agata to try and do him — I’m a terrible mimic, so that would’ve been a waste of time anyway. But the story’s there, so playing the truth of what the script tells you is all that I’ve ever cared about, and that hasn’t changed pretty much since I was really young. Maybe it’s because I’m lazy and I don’t want do research, but I find that more times than not, people can get bogged down by the research and play something that actually isn’t in the script, because they’ve found something somewhere else. I will probably read the book — after the play.
TREVOR WILLIAM FAYLE: My general rule of thumb is I put as much emphasis on it as the thing itself does. So, for this one specifically, because it was such a derivation, just by itself, from reality, I very purposely avoided learning as much as I could.
PEAKES: Again, lazy.
FAYLE: That’s the short answer, but yeah. If it’s something where the accuracy of it is sort of central to the piece itself, then I’ll fill up my brainy bank. But for this play I purposely avoided learning just so my own spin would be all that’s coming in.
PEAKES: I also find that it has to do with the quality of the writing. If it’s a well-written piece, just do the piece.
FAYLE: Yes. Right.
PEAKES: And tell the truth of that thing. If it’s badly written, sometimes you go, “Let me go find some other stuff to try to feed this.”
WINCH: What were your biggest discoveries or challenges in this process?
PEAKES: This was a really smooth process from day one. I learned that I really like Trevor.
FAYLE: Right back at you, big guy!
PEAKES: That was a discovery.
FAYLE: We also learned we have the same size head.
PEAKES: We have the exact same size head! Again because the play’s well written and it’s not super long, and we had really good leader in Matt [Pfeiffer, the director] and Joey’s great [Joanna Liao, playing Emily Penrose]. There are shows you do when you’re like, “Oh, I gotta go to rehearsal now.” And I never had that feeling. I was like, “Let’s get to work and let’s get it done.”
FAYLE: This was a breeze. I mean, really, it flew by, the actual rehearsals. And every day was just such a joy. I just never thought twice about coming to rehearsal or doing the show. It’s just been a real joy. And, you know, this one’s — the question you always get after a show is “How do you memorize all those lines?” and I’ll allow it for this one. Because when it’s contemporary and sort of Sorkin-esque in the way that this show is, everyone says the exact same thing eight different times in slightly different ways. So that was a bit of a head scratcher. But other than that…
PEAKES: Well, for you too, you have those long Jim Fingal-y — Fingal-ing? You were all Fingal-y — I was watching you tie yourself in knots, you get into this thing and you go off this way, and you handle it incredibly, incredibly well.
FAYLE: Thanks, man.
PEAKES: And sometimes say it correctly, which I think is really —
FAYLE: Almost half the time I get it right!
PEAKES: No, it keeps me on my toes. It’s great.
FAYLE: We love it.
WINCH: This play has a very particular balance between comedy and pathos. How do you as performers balance those two things?
PEAKES: For me, the trick to doing plays that swing into both is that it’s like living. Because that’s what we do in real life. But to play it, you want to make sure all the jokes land, but you want to make sure that they’re landing in a way that allows you to get to the pathos at the end. So, you have to create a world that allows the funny, but that it’s a natural progression to go to that meatier stuff. And again, I think a lot of that had to do with all of us just having pretty decent instincts that way… You just need to figure out a way to exist in a world that allows both. Which is, I think, easier than we think it is, because that’s how we live, right? We can be laughing hysterically one minute and weeping the next, just by our day-to-day existence. So, I think allowing reality to seep in is helpful.
FAYLE: Yeah. The circumstances of the play are just so wild. We’re on such a deadline. Tempers are high. Like you say, it just creates an environment where actually it’s pretty easy to switch back and forth between the two because you’re just heightened emotions either way. And I love plays that do that. Romeo and Juliet does the exact same thing. It’s really like a comedy when it starts, until it really isn’t. And I think that that is just a powerful way to tell a story. So, I’ve been really enjoying striking that balance.
PEAKES: If a play’s well crafted, you just take the ride. And I feel like this one is sort of like, you just get into the machine and take the ride and you allow Trevor’s response to feed what I’m going to say next.
WINCH: You both play people who are very entrenched, right? You’re dug in on your positions. Do you ever find yourselves persuaded by each other?
FAYLE: You know, it’s funny, the first time I read the script all the way through, I was kind of on John’s side, at least to begin with. I mean, I think in reality, Joey’s character is the closest you get to the right answer in this show.
PEAKES: Sure. Right.
FAYLE: Just putting in the good faith effort and using best judgment. So I’m most convinced by her. But yeah, I think it’s tricky. When this play was first written, the actor who plays John D’Agata did not have the disadvantage of the Trump administration to fight against when this play was first being crafted. But even in our current climate, I think, I buy that. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, you know? In the right context.
PEAKES: Every night, I am somewhere in between. I think I agree that probably Joey’s character is the closest to how I feel. And as an artist, I think that if a fact is getting in the way, I would say just leave it out. And since he says, “I’m not a journalist” — he says it right in the middle of the play: “I’m not a journalist, I’m an essayist” — he can take some liberties. But he’s writing in a form that everybody else takes to be journalistic, and so he can’t. So I’m persuaded every night by some things, but it’s easy to hold to the truth of, you know, the charging at windmills, Quixote-like behavior that he has, like, “Goddammit, it’s what I believe in, and it’s not going to change.”
WINCH: Every play changes when you take it out of the rehearsal room and put it in front of an audience. Does this one change in particular ways, considering that you now have dozens of persuadable people in the room?
PEAKES: It raises the stakes, certainly. But we were so ready for an audience. I mean, the audience is like another character in the play. Because there is the persuasion part to it, but there are also a lot of laughs. You’ve got to find the rhythm — with the Sorkin quality, you definitely need to get the rhythm going. And what we found is that every audience is completely different. So trying to get the rhythm, you literally just have to roll with it every night. Which also makes it a lot more fun. I was as ready for an audience as I’ve been in years.
FAYLE: Me too. And it’s been really interesting. We were saying, all the way up until and through previews, that the performance will be different every time. Because things are going to ping differently for different audiences. They’re going to agree with different things, they’re going to find different things funny. And it really has been true — more so than for a lot of shows that I’ve done. You never know what you’re going to get, because of the nature of what the play talks about and the points that it makes. It’s just been fun seeing what resonates with people on any given night.
WINCH: What do you want the audience to take away when they leave the theater?
PEAKES: I mostly just want them to continue to talk. I mean, we come downstairs as we’re leaving, we can see people huddled together talking in the lobby. I think that’s the kind of theater that we need right now, the stuff that makes people talk and think and debate, because debate is gone in the discourse of America right now.
FAYLE: Yes, no, I agree...Whatever you come away with is just exciting — the fact that it just stirs ideas in people is really exciting.
PEAKES: I had two ladies come up to me, and they said, “Oh my God, that was so exciting. I just wanted to strangle Jim.” And then she said, “And my friend just wanted to strangle you.” We did it!
FAYLE: We’ve done our jobs!
PEAKES: If we equally annoyed half of the audience and still have them want to come and talk to us, then I think we’ve done our jobs.
WINCH: Is there anything you want to talk about that we didn’t touch on?
FAYLE: This production has been a really fun capstone for me in so many different ways. Working with [director Matt Pfeiffer] again was really exciting after all these years, because the first time I worked with him was The Whale [at Theatre Exile], when I was still right out of college. It was one of the first shows I ever did, really early in my career. That was eight years ago. So to come back and work with him again after all this time, and we were both in such different places, I don’t know. It was really cool. And then Ian — when I was graduating from college, I felt, “Man, I want to do a show with Ian Merrill Peakes.” And so finally, after all this time — it’s been a real joy.
PEAKES: It doesn’t happen very often, right? You have great expectations about every production you’re going to be a part of. And some of them meet it, some of them surpass it, some of them don’t even come close. And to just be in one that you — I had a good feeling about this for about eight months. When I was here for casting [in 2022]…and they brought in some actors and I said, “Why isn’t Trevor Fayle in the room?” And they were like, “We’re gonna reach out, we’re gonna reach out.” When I read the play, Trevor was just in my head the whole time.
FAYLE: Aw, shucks.
PEAKES: And so the fact that we’re here now talking about the work — you know, eight months ago I was in a room asking, “Where’s Trevor Fayle?” And now he’s here. And I was right!
FAYLE: Nailed it!
PEAKES: It’s great. And we can’t leave out Joey, too. She’s a freaking trooper. She came in as the one person that the three of us hadn’t worked together, didn’t know us. And now…she’s one of us. She’s just great. She’s smart, she’s talented, she’s funny. She’s ready to bounce and roll and it’s been just a treat. And it’s a good [play]. And it’s 90 minutes. All plays should be 90 minutes.
FAYLE: As soon as I start thinking about it, it’s over. It’s great. It’s such a dream.
PEAKES: My 14-year-old son said, “It was great from beginning to end.” If we can do that for a 14-year-old — now, he’s an exceptional child, but you know, if we can do that for him, then we’re doing something right.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Lantern Theater Company’s Philadelphia premiere production of The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell is onstage February 2 through March 5, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
