benefit for the National Actors
Theatre. It was first announced
around the time he was fighting
to get his voice back after losing
a vocal chord due to cancer. A
voice teacher helped him recov-
er, but he grew nervous on stage
during the performance.
“Before the show, everybody
told me I had a voice,” he re-
called. “The guys all said don’t
worry about it, but before Oscar
comes on there are four poker
players getting big laughs with
normal voices. I come out and
say my first line and I was feel-
ing confident and then I heard
them moving in their seats. I
thought, oh my God, they can’t
hear me. How in the hell am I
going to get through these next
two hours? And I hated every-
body! Oh, I was so mad at them,
but about a minute and a half
later I had a line after ‘what do
you have to eat?’ I said ‘brown
sandwiches and green sand-
wiches.’ They said what’s the
green? I said it’s either very new
cheese or very old meat... And
Scenes from
The Value of Names
Photos by
T. Charles Erickson
NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 5
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