Coming Home to Mississippi

Marco St. John

161 MarcoSt.John Marco St. John has been a professional actor all his adult life, working in New York, Los Angeles, Europe, and most recently in Louisiana’s budding film industry. He has appeared on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theater, and has a solid background in Shakespeare, having played Hamlet when he was twenty-eight years old. He has had leads in soap operas (As the World Turns) and other network television programs and has appeared in around fifty films. M y mother was a Mississippi girl born and bred in the small coastal town of Ocean Springs. My dad came to New Orleans from Guatemala. They met over in Ocean Springs and moved to New Orleans shortly after they married.When they divorced some fourteen years later, Mom came back to Ocean Springs while my dad went to New York City. The coast was always the home place for me growing up.Then I went to college in NewYork to be with my father.My senior year I decided to be an actor after seeing a Broadway play, The Five Finger Exercise, with Brian Bedford. I felt I could do that and it was something I wanted to do. After graduation and a short stint in the army, I set about pursuing a career.After only two years of“struggling,” working as a furniture mover while going to scene study classes and auditions, I met my wife and got married. I started to get jobs—first summer stock, then off-Broadway, and after a couple of more years, Broadway. I was extremely dedicated and lived quite a full life, working hard to support us and making a life,going to classes and getting jobs wherever 162 marco st. john I could find them. The jobs came slowly at first.Two summers of summer stock, then getting plays here and there, one in a restaurant owned by the husband of my acting teacher, then several off-Broadway productions . Looking back, I see that they actually came in rapid succession , although at the time it felt like a snail’s pace. Then came my first Broadway play, Poor Bitos, by Jean Anouilh, produced by Hal Prince. From then up until the time just shy of my thirtieth birthday, I had what anyone would term a robust and very successful career in New York theatre, television, and film. All told, I was in eleven Broadway productions, all but one of them leading roles. In the last play I did, Forty Carats, I played the male lead opposite Julie Harris and it was a huge hit. That same year, I also had one of the starring roles in a soap opera, As the World Turns. I left the play and the soap opera and lost a six-picture movie deal about that time, so my wife and I decided to take our son and go to California to try the movies. We stayed there a year and I did some television, but then we decided to return“home” to New York. Things were picking up again; I did the play Timon of Athens, for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, and during the run of that play something happened that would change my life forever. I came off stage at the end of the first act and a stage manager came running up to me and said,“Your wife’s been cut; you have to go; the police called. I’ll get your understudy ready.” I was stunned and rushed to my dressing room and changed. No one ever leaves a play midway through a performance, especially a lead. I caught a taxi outside Central Park and after what seemed like an eternity got out in front of our five-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village on Perry Street. I ran upstairs and into our apartment; the door was wide open, all the lights were on, and there was not a single thing standing upright. It looked like a terrible fight had happened, or a wrecking crew had been there. I ran into the bedroom and there was a huge pool of blood on the floor of the antechamber. The bed had been put on its side and was leaning against a wall; on the floor was a chalk drawing of a body sprawled out. I remember thinking it was like in the movies, but this was real. [3.139.82.23] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 17:24...