Tales of the . . . Cast! Meet Richard Poe

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Meet Richard Poe, who plays Edgar Halcyon. Click here to read his official bio.

Check back tomorrow to meet another member of the cast of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City: A New Musical!


NAME Richard Poe.

CHARACTER Edgar Halcyon.

HOMETOWN Pittsburg, California.

FIRST THEATER EXPERIENCE Playing Scrooge in the eighth grade (magnificent!).

FAVORITE THEATER EXPERIENCE Hard to choose. Journey’s End on Broadway: nine guys in a dark World War I dugout talking for two and a half hours, and everyone dies . . . then winning every available award in New York, including the Easter bonnet competition. 1776 on Broadway: more guys, more talking, more light, same result. Cyrano de Bergerac at A.C.T. in 1973, playing Second Musician/Third Cadet, being a novice in the middle of all that wonderfulness. There’s more. Just ask me.

FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH TALES I lived in San Francisco until about 1977 (graduated from the University of San Francisco [USF] and started acting at A.C.T.). I had never read the books until this show came up. What a walk down memory lane! I had no money then and was always scrambling for odd jobs, but what a city! It’s really exciting and a little unnerving to come back for a while—like I’ll see my old self passing in the street.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE EDGAR? Though I’m told in the business that I have a patrician quality, I’m pretty far from the manor born. But I like to think I can fake it when need be, and Edgar knows he’s been faking it when he realizes his number’s up and that he’s denied himself so much. I have lots of me that would like to bust loose in new ways. I just hope I don’t suffer Edgar’s plight before I do it.

FAVORITE MUSICAL Sweeney Todd; 1776; The Drowsy Chaperone.

FAVORITE SONG TO SING Whatever’s in my head driving me crazy at the time: “My One and Only Love”; “Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair)”; “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

EDUCATION B.A. from USF; M.A. candidate at UC Davis. Some acting gurus: Erich Morris, Milton Katselas, Lee Strasberg.

PERFORMANCE RITUAL Pre-: stretch, vocal warm-up, speaking the entire first scene aloud (don’t ask me why—it’s a habit of 15 years that I can’t break for superstitious reasons). Post-: whatcha got?

FAVORITE ’70s WARDROBE ITEM Having witnessed the ’70s, I once owned a pair of shimmering blue velveteen pants. Hell in the rain.

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