Lee Massaro and Erik Tieze are one busy married couple: She’s the director of Firehouse Theatre’s “Some Girl(s)”; he’s the star of Modern Muse’s one-man play, “Thom Pain … (based on nothing).”
Tieze grew up in Summit County and met his future wife in her native New York. They moved to Denver 15 years ago and have worked with many local companies. Tieze was a member of the Denver Center Theatre Company; Massaro now teaches acting and works for Kaiser’s educational theater program. But with one exception, neither has appeared on stage in three years.
Q: Why is that?
Massaro: We’re busy having an actual life, I suppose. We have three beautiful daughters, and they come first. We’ve also had to make a living, so we’ve remodeled a couple houses, and that’s kept us alive. We’ve just had to prioritize, which I think anyone with children would get.
Q: Why return to the stage now?
M: They can make dinner on their own, so …
Q: How did you meet?
Tieze: In Shaw’s “Misalliance,” of all things, is where we formed our alliance.
Q: For a time, didn’t you run your own company?
T: Yeah, we gave it a shot … and it shot back.
Q: Erik, what the heck is going on in “Thom Pain”?
T: When we think of the historical figure, we think, ‘Oh, isn’t he that guy who did something with the pamphlet?’ And that’s about as far as we get … a fuzzy memory picture of someone we think we know. And in a way that’s what this play is. He’s an everyman we think we know and, I suppose, going deeper, it’s ourselves.
Q: “Some Girl(s)” is about a guy who pays a visit to four ex-girlfriends before getting married. Now, Lee, if you know playwright Neil LaBute, you know the guy has some issues.
M: Don’t we all?
Q: Not his kind of issues!
M: I’ve been describing this as Neil LaBute trying to redeem himself. I don’t think it’s quite as upsetting to people as some of his other shows, mainly because we’ve all experienced men and women like this. Every person in the audience is going to connect with somebody in it. This is not Neil LaBute pushing you away, or making you look so hard at something that you don’t really want to look back. It’s kind of pretty close to home for most of us.
Ticket info, “Thom Pain”: 303-780-7836; “Some Girl(s)”: 303-562-3232.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
To listen to John Moore’s entire interview with A. Lee Massaro and Erik Tieze,
To read John Moore’s three-star review of “Thom Pain … (based on nothing)”
