Behind Enemy Lines

Jonathan Groff insists that taking the role of Billy Noone in Craig Lucas’ new play
Prayer for My Enemy, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, isn’t part of some conscious game plan to make people think he’s more than a musical theater performer. In fact, Groff — who received a Tony Award nomination for his work in Melchior in Spring Awakening and strong reviews for his role as Claude in the Public Theater’s revival of Hair (a role which he has decided not to recreate in next year’s Broadway production) — isn’t one for career plans at all.

“I’ve never thought of doing this play as part of a career transition,” he says. “When I moved here from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I just wanted to be in theater — or really just to act. I didn’t think of myself doing any one thing, even though I had done musicals before I came here, so I just auditioned for everything. I even sent out mailings, from which I got one extra role on Guiding Light. And then Spring Awakening happened and then Hair, and now there are all these other opportunities coming at me that allow me to grow as an artist.”

Getting the part of Billy — an Iraq war veteran who is dealing with both his highly dysfunctional family and his sexuality — came about through a chance meeting with Prayer‘s director, Bartlett Sher. “He’s good friends with Kim Grigsby, our musical director from Spring Awakening, and one night when we were all hanging out, he asked me to do a workshop of the play, and then afterwards he offered me the role,” says Groff, who says he jumped at the chance to take the part. “This character gets to take an incredible A to Z journey — and in just 90 minutes. He’s effeminate, but he insists he’s not gay; his dad is a recovering alcoholic; and he has this complicated relationship with his sister’s husband — and, by the end of the play, he comes to a realization about what he wants from his life and his sexuality. Craig’s writing is so challenging and layered and alive. I just love it.”

Working with Sher, who won the 2008 Tony Award for South Pacific, has been a remarkable experience, says the actor. “Bart is this incredible director, who’s really good at communicating what he wants and also pushes you in ways you couldn’t imagine. He really watches and listens, and he makes you feel like you’ve come into his process one kind of actor and leave like another kind. But it’s hard work. Every day, I leave with a headache and go home and eat too much comfort food.”

Working with his five castmates — Victoria Clark, Michele Pawk, Skipp Sudduth, Cassie Beck, and Zachary Booth — has also proven to be what Groff calls a gift. “It’s such an honest environment, and it’s so inspiring, because the older actors are just as eager to learn from us as we are from them. Everyone shares advice about their lives and their process,” he says. “To see what Michele creates every night is just great, and Skipp is so amazing. And Vicki — whose character is basically isolated from the rest of us — has this one scene at the end of the play that she does differently every night, and just watching her is a master class. I can watch her burp on stage and feel how committed she is.”

Before starting rehearsals, Groff spent much of August and September shooting Ang Lee’s film Taking Woodstock (which is why he left the Central Park production of Hair before the end of its run. ) “I was a mess at first, because I was having so much fun doing Hair, ” he says. “And when I first started the movie, I was sort of upset I wasn’t singing. But by the end of the shoot, I didn’t want it to be over.”

In the film, due for release next year, Groff plays Michael Lang, one of the producers of the legendary Woodstock festival, He nailed the job through an audition tape without even having met Lee. But once the celebrated director sat down with his young star, he had plenty of homework for him. “He gave me binders of research, about 10 mix CDs from the music of the period, and all these movies that somehow related to the story from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Apocalypse Now, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Head, which I’d never heard of,” relates Groff. “But the best thing was I got to hang out with the real Michael Lang and his family for a weekend. I could see why he was the kind of guy who took Woodstock so spiritually, even though he was on the business end.”

The film also was full of singular experiences for Groff, from being surrounded by a troupe of naked actor-dancers, to wearing a leather vest (and no shirt) and afro-like wig throughout the shoot, to getting to ride a motorcycle, a helicopter, and best of all, a horse. “I actually grew up on a horse farm — my dad’s a trainer — but my mom didn’t want us to ride. So I had never ridden a horse, and I had to take two weeks of riding lessons in upstate New York in the summer. That was maybe the most fun I’ve ever had,” he says.

Groff hasn’t completely left Spring Awakening behind — he’s hosting and performing in a benefit concert of the show’s music at Joe’s Pub on December 15, has gone back to see both his replacements (Kyle Riabko and Hunter Parrish), and plans to be there for the show’s closing on January 18. But ultimately, he says, the past is the past and he’s only interested in the future. “I really haven’t had a break from work in years, but I don’t want one. I am just looking for the next challenge and taking it as it comes,” he says. “I think the best thing is for my career to happen in an organic way and to follow my heart.”