Bashful student performs well on stage
For a kid who used to get embarrassed ordering pizza on the telephone, USU student Luke Bybee has come a long way – performing in more than 30 plays for crowds of hundreds.
“I was extremely shy. In high school I was a nervous wreck and I had a hard time talking to people,” Luke said. “Put me in a room and I couldn’t even speak.”
Mary Bybee, Luke’s mom, agreed, saying he was very bashful. Now, however, “He just gets up and shines and is a different person.”
While Luke didn’t consider acting until five or six years ago, Mary said as a child, he certainly had the look of it.
“I never noticed it before but when I look back at pictures now, at old pictures,” she said, “he was posing.”
It was Luke’s shyness, in part, that led him to begin taking acting classes after working for the Utah Festival Opera Company building sets. He worked construction but Luke said he realized that was not going to be the life for him.
“I wasn’t satisfied enough,” Luke said, then thinking, “There has got to be something better than this.”
That, he said, is when he started attending USU and became involved with the theatre department.
His roles have included Edmund in “King Lear”, Pablo Picasso and, most recently, Ebenezer Scrooge. In December the Caine School of the Arts and USU’s department of theatre arts performed Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” in which Luke had the lead.
Luke said Scrooge has been one of his favorite performances for a few reasons.
“First of all, it’s not that often that a 27 year old gets to play Scrooge,” he said. “I mean, you have to be Patrick Stewart’s age and British.”
Luke is also a Dickens fan, one of his favorite books being “Great Expectations.”
“I am a huge fan, huge fan, of Charles Dickens,” he said.
He praised the eloquence of Dickens’ writing and the messages conveyed, especially in “A Christmas Carol.” After reading or watching the Christmas classic, he said people always want to be better and it helps everyone appreciate humanity a little bit more.
“You don’t want to be a person who stands off in the wings and just watches,” Luke said. “You need that sort of thing at Christmas time.”
Luke did his own makeup for the production. He said the application took about an hour and a half.
“When I got it on though, it was super cool. It was part of the fun,” he said. “I felt like an old man.”
Not only did Luke look and move like an elderly man, he sounded like one, too, speaking the entire play in a raspy, spiteful, aged voice. Getting the right voice, he said, was a bit of a challenge.
“It took a lot of work. I was really nervous,” he said, adding, “It took a lot of experimenting. I’m a huge fan of that – always trying something new because that’s how you get good ideas.”
The role of Scrooge was his mom’s favorite too because it illustrated the versatility of the personalities and conditions in which Luke can act.
Mary said, “I really like it because you could see the diversity of what he could play. It is so different from Luke, playing that old man.”
Luke said he also enjoyed playing Scrooge because he got to work with a lot of his friends, including the man who directed him in his first play. Lee Daily, who played Dickens in “A Christmas Carol,” directed Luke in the children’s show “Blue Horses,” which was produced by the Unicorn Theater.
To prepare for a role, reading and studying are key.
“Just read the play over and over and over again,” Luke said. “The number one thing is research, research, research. You can never do too much research.”
When he first gets a script, Luke said he highlights all of his lines. Using another color, he highlights what other characters are saying about him and then, using yet another highlighter, he marks his character’s actions. By time he’s through, he said it looks like a rainbow. Then, he reads. Fortunately, Luke has a good memory.
“I’m really good at memorizing things. For me, it’s repetition. If you’re excited about it, you memorize it pretty quick,” he said.
To practice his lines, Luke said sometimes he’ll use method acting and rehearse them with other people. For example, if a scene takes place in a restaurant, Luke goes out to eat and tells his lines to someone. Some worry about people listening in but, “Nobody really cares,” he said. Adding, “It gets you into character, I think.”
While Luke may have good memorization skills, he admitted forgetting lines.
“It’s so funny,” he said. “It’s a fraction of a second but it seems like a million years. First, you just panic, ‘I don’t know what the hell I am going to do.’ Then you think, ‘Well, I’ve got to do something.'”
Then he’s got to think fast. Luke said he is also good at paraphrasing and is so familiar with the play, he can transition from line to line fairly smoothly.
“You’ve got to think on your feet pretty quick,” Luke said.
While performing a play by William Shakespeare, Luke said he and another actor were nearing the end of a scene when the other character started the scene over again. Knowing the audience wouldn’t want to see the scene again, Luke had to bridge the beginning lines to the end. He said it went all right but making up line in iambic pentameter isn’t easy.
Aside from memorizing lines, actors have to stay engaged in the scene. During “A Christmas Carol,” there are several scenes where Scrooge observes other characters without saying anything. Luke said he couldn’t let his mind wander by thinking about what the other actors were doing and how they were performing because, when it was his turn, he would forget his line, “Then I’m the one who looks like a goose,” he said.
He also has to avoid praising himself subconsciously. Luke said sometimes the brain will think, “Oh, I did something good.”
“As soon as you think that, you are out of the scene. You’ve got to just keep engaged, whether it’s good or bad.”
To prepare for “A Christmas Carol,” Luke said he read the book. He also did a lot of people watching, something he said he does for every role. For Scrooge, he observed older men he worked with and old men going about their daily activities, like walking into a gas station to pay the bill. He said he learned a lot about their attitudes and movements.
The most physically demanding role Luke has ever played was the narrator, a green grasshopper, in “James and the Giant Peach.” For the entire show, he said he had to keep his legs bent at half-mast.
“My thighs were on fire,” he said.
To prepare for the show, he would ride his bike up the path on Old Main Hill three or four times in a row.
The pain, however, was worth it. He said children who saw the show absolutely loved it and would just scream when it was over. That, Luke said, is the best part.
“There is nothing greater than having an audience laugh,” he said.
One problem Luke has with acting is that people do it for all the wrong reasons, like fame.
“I hate that,” he said. “I loathe that.”
He said it’s “not for the last trick, not for the last laugh. I get to do something. It’s a great feeling to have the last laugh. It’s a great pay off but there should be more depth to it.”
Not only should actors be in the business for the audience and the experience, Luke said they must also be willing to try new things and experiment with their roles.
“You never know but you’ve got to try it,” he said.
Luke shared a story about one of his favorite, iconic actors – Daniel Day-Lewis. The director of “There Will be Blood” wanted Day-Lewis to play one of the main characters but when he tried to contact him, he was nowhere to be found. Eventually he found Day-Lewis in Italy working as a shoe cobbler. Luke said that’s how acting careers and life should be led – trying everything, experiencing all walks of life.
“That’s a great sort of life thing,” he said.
–arie.k@aggiemail.usu.edu