10 Questions
Take Ten - POMME KOCH
POMME KOCH says his mom took him to plays instead of baseball games when he was a kid, and we thank her! Koch, who spent the first few years of his career performing on the DC theater scene, went on to appear in Netflix's House of Cards and the CBS police drama Blue Bloods. Currently, he's back in our area, playing Itzik in David Yazbek's Tony-award winning musical The Band's Visit, about an Egyptian police band who find themselves stranded in a town in the middle of the Israeli desert (running through August 4 at the Kennedy Center). For this week's Take Ten, Koch tells how he's come full circle from his early days as an audience member watching Cate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya. He also recounts a thrilling early theater experience that would have left most kids with recurring nightmares, and tells us about the job he had standing in the "middle of Times Square holding a sign directing people to a financial advisors convention."
1) What was the first show you ever saw, and what impact did it have?
I grew up with a single mother who preferred taking me to plays over baseball games, so I really can’t remember exactly what my first play was. But I do remember going to see a production called Shockheaded Peter—based on a 19th century German children’s book about kids who are punished for bad behavior (a boy who can’t stop sucking his thumbs gets them sliced off, a girl who can’t stop playing with matches burns to death)—and thinking it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. It retrospect, it was kind of like a cross between The Pillowman and a latter-era Tom Waits album, and it dictated my taste for years to come.
2) What was your first involvement in a theatrical production?
When I was five years old I sang “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” (as made famous by Maurice Chevalier in Gigi) as part of a little revue. That song’s a little less creepy when it’s sung by someone who’s only just learned the alphabet.
3) What’s your favorite play or musical, and why do you like it so much?
I have a weakness for the great male-angst plays of the 20th century (Long Day’s Journey Into Night, almost all Arthur Miller, Glengarry Glen Ross...dear god, will someone please let me play Richard Roma, just once? College doesn’t count, although at the time we really thought we had mounted the definitive Glengarry). On a more contemporary front, I’ve maybe never seen anything more riveting than Brandon Jacob Jenkins’ An Octoroon at Theatre For A New Audience/Soho Rep. My favorite musical very well may be The Band’s Visit, and not just because the producers pay my bills.
4) What’s the worst day job you ever took?
When I first moved to New York and was desperate for money (and had convinced myself I was going to avoid waiting tables) I somehow got roped into standing in the middle of Times Square holding a sign directing people to a financial advisors convention...
5) What is your most embarrassing moment in the theatre?
Seventh grade, I was playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof for the school play. During “Sunrise, Sunset” I had a fainting spell, and when I came to I was sitting stage right watching the chair dance. Some parents handed me a Sprite from the wings, and the show never even stopped.
6) What are you enjoying most about working on The Band's Visit at The Kennedy Center?
Performing here is hugely poignant, since I lived and worked in D.C. for three years after graduating college. When I moved to Washington I had virtually no friends in town, and that first week was probably the loneliest of my life. Before I had even found a job in town, I went to see Cate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya at The Kennedy Center, and I remember sitting in the last row of the balcony in the Eisenhower and feeling like the prospect of someday working on that same stage couldn’t be more remote.
7) Other than your significant other, who’s your dream date (living or dead) and why?
Ginger Spice (circa Spice World), Catherine Zeta-Jones (circa The Mask of Zorro), Michelle Pfieffer (circa The Witches of Eastwick), and Elizabeth Warren (circa 2020).
8) What is your dream role/job?
Are you kidding? I play dress-up for a living. I have it. Well, sometimes I think investment banker would be nice. But I don’t love waking up before 10 A.M.
9) If you could travel back in time, what famous production or performance would you choose to see?
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in that meta-Private Lives from the ‘80s, Burton in any-thing before he went Hollywood, the performance of Hamlet where Daniel Day Lewis saw the ghost of his father and ran offstage, and anything at the Park Avenue Armory (including the recent Lehman Trilogy and Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth), and David Cromer’s Our Town, since no one ever stops talking about that bacon...
10) What advice would you give to an 8-year-old smitten by theatre / for a graduating MFA student?
I don’t know if an 8-year-old needs anything beyond encouragement and support for whatever they happen to be passionate about. But for a student preparing to enter the professional sphere, I think the most important thing you can do is set long-term goals and pace yourself accordingly. I think most actors probably harbor dormant or not-so-dormant dreams of being rich and famous, but we know it’s a ridiculous goal, so we subsequently end up stopping short of setting any goals at all.
POMME KOCH: In addition to The Band’s Visit on Broadway and the national tour, Pomme has worked regionally at La Jolla Playhouse, A.C.T., Shakespeare Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Theater J, Folger Shakespeare Library, Studio Theatre, Theatre Calgary, and more. TV work includes House of Cards and Blue Bloods. As a producer, he has mounted charity benefits featuring Tony Shalhoub, Katrina Lenk, John Cariani, and many more. www.pommekoch.com @pommekoch
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