Matt Walley was “forced into” or perhaps “led toward” theatre in his high school days after pain and injuries to his body made playing football not such a good idea. He took to theatre right away, and those in charge took to him, casting him as the main character in his first play. Walley would go on to get an undergraduate degree in Theatre and would also heal and begin to refine his body. He became a weightlifter, a bodybuilder. He got big. But his acting career was kind of non-existent. He didn’t do much. Walley arrived in Tucson in 2001. He got a job in the stuntman show at Traildust Town. And also became involved in shows at Live Theatre Workshop, acting and later directing. For Walley, Live Theatre Workshop was a blessing - giving him much needed opportunity and experience as an actor, and later as a director. It was there at Live Theatre Workshop where he learned to really ply his trade on the boards. But he left Tucson, going on to New York and the prospects of more theatre work. Circumstances led him to apply for a graduate program. He got accepted and back out west he came, to California and his new studies at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. There his “loves” coalesced - theatre, physical activity and body work, martial arts, nature. He excelled at the school completing his degree and perhaps most important of all met Angela Horchem. Together these two talented people conceived of the idea for a theatre, one where they could apply their deep knowledge of craft and their keen eyes and instincts for artistic expression, while engaging their bodies in physical ways - theatrically speaking! And so they went searching for a place, a home, a city, in which to begin this new endeavor. The first choice collapsed under economic strain, literally leaving making a simple living impossible. This was just after the crash of 2008. Tucson “beckoned” and they came. A Grande Steal for our city! (I can go on a long list of attributes about their combined knowledge and skills. But lets just say we are glad they are here.) Before I get to their work as co-artists and creators (which surely will be a profile unto itself sometime soon), I have to get back to Walley for a bit. By now, his body which at one point was a bodybuilder’s mass and strength, and by Walley’s account couldn’t move much, had become refined and given to detail and awareness and definite movement and needs. One only need watch Walley work and move on stage, or see him teach a TaiChi class or hell, drink beer. He has style and elegance and charm and grace. I saw Walley act back in the “old days” at Live Theatre Workshop. At least once I did. And I have had the pleasure recently of working with him at the Rogue Theatre, seeing him create a character over a rehearsal period, listening to, watching his way of work. I can’t quite piece together the details or the difference in his work then and now, but I believe there is a profound distinction. I can see him standing there on stage in the little Live Theatre performance space as Tom in the Glass Menagerie. I was freezing cold because it’s always, or used to always be, about 28 degrees in there. So my mind was numb. Fuzzy. I remember the simple but actor-ly way he stood and carried himself, hands at his side, neutral, actor neutral. He was good though. I have no doubt the show was rehearsed a mere six weeks at most, and the cast was together that amount of time at most. I am not critical of the show and Walley’s work in an artistic sense in that regard - but no show, no cast of actors, can come to much of a mature artistic fruition in six weeks of rehearsal. As much as we would like to think it can and does, and go so far to organize our work in that fashion, it just ain’t so. It doesn’t happen and it won’t ever happen. But you can get the resemblance of a better staged reading in that time. Sounds harsh. It’s not, just true. But anyway…Walley was good, or it was evident he could be really good. But as I said, I can see a profound change in his work from then to now. He is aware and alive in much more specific ways now. He attempts more. Bravery is his. At a point in his life when others might have stopped progressing artistically, Walley zoomed! And is still going!
End of Part Two. In Part Three I will touch more on Walley’s current work, his Clown, his directing, teaching, and of course Theatre3.
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