Actor Tim Mooney Performs His One Man Shakespeare Show in Molstead

“Testing, testing, testing! Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare!”

So began the show as actor, author, director, Timothy Mooney tested the impromptu microphone he decided to use as he faced an unexpectedly overflowing crowd.
The North Idaho College Theatre Department hosted Mooney’s performance of “Shakespeare’s Histories: Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace!” in the Todd Lecture Hall of the Molstead Library Monday night.

Advertisement for the show was only initiated about a week in advance, and the anticipated turnout was admittedly low.

However, walking into the room, which seats about 80, audience members were packed like sardines, with almost half of the audience being forced to sit on the sidelines, behind rows, on stairs, and giving some lucky people the chance to sit even closer than the front row, within the realm of Mooney’s performing space.

So close that Mooney was able to engage the audience not just emotionally, but physically as well, comically grasping the hands of audience members and gaining equally excited responses to the performance.

Mooney interacts with NIC student, Michael Kain, during “Shakespeare’s Histories”

“I thought the play was great,” said Michael Kain, who was approached by Mooney during the performance. “Zeroing in on somebody like that in an audience grabs your attention, literally.”

When asked how he felt about the overwhelming size of the crowd, Mooney was shocked.

“They were amazing!” said Mooney.  “I had no idea. I anticipated performing maybe for a dozen people or so, and I think we had close to 100 here.”

“We haven’t filled this space up before,” said Joe Jacoby, NIC Theatre instructor, who organized the event. “So to see this space filled up was really gratifying.”

“Shakespeare’s Histories” is an hour long show featuring monologues from seven different Shakespeare plays, and 26 characters, all performed with precision and emotion, at a “breakneck” speed, solely by Mooney.

There was a wide range of ages in attendance, from young children to seniors, with mostly students in between. Despite demographic differences, the entire audience was engaged from beginning to end. And for his true Shakespeare fans, Mooney stuck around for another hour after the conclusion of “Histories” to perform impromptu speeches requested by audience members, where he performed monologues entirely from memory, doing everything from “Taming of the Shrew”, to Winston Churchill’s, “Their Finest Hour” speech.

“I greatly enjoyed the performance,” said NIC student, Abraham Musonda. “As a one-man show, he immensely exceeded my expectations. I was enormously impressed with his ability to memorize all those Shakespearean speeches and the history pertaining to them.”

This kind of mega-memorization of course comes with years of experience, a background that Mooney has most definitely earned. He founded and edited The Script Review, was the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Stage Two Theatre, has produced nearly 50 plays, written 17 versions of the comedies of Moliere, and has written various books on topics ranging from acting to monologues.

But just like anyone else in the acting world, Mooney’s career required hard work and dedication from the very beginning.

“I did a lot of theater in high school,” said Mooney. “But every year kind of grew into more and more as I would do, you know, maybe two shows in high school my junior year, 3 shows my senior year; when I got away to college I did 4 or 5 shows a year.”

“I’m sure I was not the best actor in my high school class or in most of my college classes, but it was the only thing I wanted to do, so I kept working and working and working at it, I got better as time went on, and I grew into being a director, and a playwright of sorts, and doing my one man shows. So I wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I kept, you know, fighting to keep my hand in, to do the things that I love to do.”

When asked what advice he had for students pursuing acting here at NIC, Mooney spoke from experience.

Taylor Nadauld
Mooney answers questions about “Shakespeare’s Histories”

“Be stubborn and stick with it. You never know where the tree trunk of your career will branch into something and take you this way or that, which will lead to a new branch out there and a new branch out there to the point you find yourself way out there somewhere, never ending up where you anticipated you were going.”

“Either you choose what inspires you, or you choose to obey your fears, and go away from what inspires you, and that I think leads to a lot of kind of unhappiness, is when we let our fears rule our choices.”

Mooney says that despite the unanticipated crowd turnout, he will be “winding down on the touring.”

“I’m hoping to settle in Chicago or maybe even on the east coast, or on the west coast for all I know, and to do more kind of regional performing, local performing.”

Mooney is currently memorizing Shakespeare’s, “Hamlet”, Carlo Goldoni’s, “Servant of Two Masters”, and has a future show planned for the Portland area.

— Photo Credits: Taylor Nadauld