Since seeing Birmingham’s Cathy Rye Gilmore fly high as “Peter Pan,” Jonathan Fuller has been a fixture on stage and screen, not only in Birmingham, but in Chicago, Los Angeles, London and other locations. Along the way, he wrote a play about John Wilkes Booth, and now he’s rewritten it. That rewritten “Booth” will get its premiere as a readers theater production of The Cahaba Theatre Group Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Clubhouse on Highland. In it, Fuller reads the part of Booth and also directs. Fuller talks about his play and his career here.
Tell me a bit about yourself.
Well, I was born and raised in Mountain Brook, and my parents exposed me to theater when I was 11 or 12. I saw Cathy Rye Gilmore play Peter Pan and fly! I remember turning to my parents and saying, “I want to do that!” Eventually I enrolled in the pilot program of the theater department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts and then attended the Goodman school of drama in Chicago where I starred in several productions and got all my union cards.
I was very ambitious, so I moved to New York, did a few off-Broadway shows and then traveled the U.S. with such regional theaters as the Guthrie and Actors Theatre of Louisville, playing roles as widely divergent as Austin in “True West” and Jesus Christ at the Crystal Cathedral, where I was surprised to land the role after a nationwide search. LOL Basically, in the 1980s I lived out of a suitcase, and I loved it.
Eventually, I realized that all I had to show for my stage work were some scrapbooks and memories, so I moved to LA to work in film. My first film, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” was shot in a castle in Italy where we lived and worked for a month. What’s not to like?! I made about 15 movies in Los Angeles, but after 9/11 my mother got sick, so I came back to Birmingham where my fate changed again. Within a few weeks I was hired at ASFA and eventually became the artistic director.
Meanwhile, I wanted to start a resident Equity theater here in Birmingham like so many other cities our size had. City Equity Theatre produced several shows over the next 10 years, including the highly acclaimed “August: Osage County.”
Soon thereafter I left “Osage County” to go to London. I was one of 20 professional actors from across the globe invited to perform at Shakespeare’s Globe. Since the pandemic I have concentrated more on writing some plays, which have been simmering in my mind for years.
Is this your first produced play?
I wrote a play about John Wilkes Booth back in the 1980s, and had it performed in New York. It was called “Sins of the Fathers.” After Jan. 6 when I saw that idiot walking across the Capitol rotunda with the Confederate flag, that spurred me to completely rewrite the play. This really started as trying to do a one-man show about Booth, but the more I got into it, the bigger the story was.
How did you research the play, and is it all factual?
I read the full trial transcript of the conspirators and pretty much everything I could get my hands on. I’ve had to bend the facts a little bit just to get them on stage. And of course, I’ve taken a few liberties for dramatic effect. I even visited the gravesite of Booth in Baltimore a few years ago.
What do you think will surprise audiences most about your “Booth”?
How there is a direct bloodline from Booth’s conspirators and the people who stormed the capital on Jan. 6.
What do you hope audiences will come away with after seeing “Booth”?
Unfortunately, the political hatred and intolerance has gone on for over 100 years and resurfaced with a vengeance now.
What happens next with the play?
I’m going to invite some producers to see it, and I hope to see a full production. We’ll see.
“Booth,” a production of The Cahaba Theatre Group at The Clubhouse on Highland, 2908 Highland Ave. South. Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2:30 p.m.
