Longtime Lionheart Friend & Client Ron Siebert On Playing King Lear "Tragic Heroes Make Fantastic Complicated Heroes-- and Terrible Boyfriends"

"To play King Lear is, for an English speaking actor, the last great role to assail.  It's the Mount Everest of acting." -Ron Siebert

"All the experiences that an actor has lived through in his life must be called upon and used in his portrayal.  

The play, although very dark in tone, is actually about enlightenment; about having gone through fire and having been burned clean of all illusions and misperceptions about who one is, and what others really are in relationship to one another.  It's one of Shakespeare's last plays and you can see what he experienced in his life, and how he was able to mold the events of his time into this horrifying and magnificent portrayal of man's endurance and acceptance of what fate has in store for him and to finally resolve the conflicts of his life before he faces his own ending, purified. 
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An Aristotelian tragic hero must possess specific characteristics, five of which are below:

1.  Flaw or error of judgment (hamartia). Note the role of justice and/or revenge in the judgments. 
2. A reversal of fortune (peripeteia), brought about because of the hero's error in judgment. 
3. The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the hero's own actions (anagnorisis). 
4. Excessive Pride (hubris).
5. The character's fate must be greater than deserved. 

It's a great privilege and pleasure for me to have the opportunity to play King Lear and the capstone of a career in which I've had the good fortune to have played Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Cassius and Bassanio, to name a few of Shakespeare's great creations.  I've never had to work so hard and long on a part as I've done for King Lear;  this includes daily, rigorous workouts as well as a constant examination of the text of the play along with vocal work.  How rewarding."

-Ron Siebert

Ron Siebert In "The Merchant of Venice"

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