To Kill a Mockingbird
Dion Johnstone on Atticus Finch and Susan H.Schulman
It takes a special man "to walk in Tom Robinson's shoes". Dion Johnstone's portrayal of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird is one of his most demanding roles.
Dion Johnstone says a prayer before every performance: his deeply personal way to find the strength night after night to play Tom Robinson. The other strengths for Johnstone are fictional hero Atticus Finch and passionate director Susan H. Schulman.
Did you do a lot of research for this role?
Young black men being wrongly accused because of circumstantial evidence (Walter Lett); well, that was a big thing that was happening in that time in the world that Harper Lee grew up in. A lot of those cases influence her writing.
Tom Robinson must be a very hard place to go as an actor.
Very, very hard… It’s the kind of situation where the stakes are so high that once in it, it is very difficult to woo yourself to go back into it time and time again.
It's been a long run for you ...
The trial scene does not get any easier as the season goes on. It’s a terrifying situation to be in. Certainly in my building of the part and the building of the stakes and trying to imagine as much of what it was like to really live in those times as a black person, I reached a point where I thought, I don’t know how I am going to maintain this.
I often say a prayer before each performance and just ask myself to be used as a vessel for that story for Tom Robinson, for the story of all those people who went through that kind of persecution. Use me as a vessel to speak this part. Whatever happens, happens.
Our production was crafted with such care by the director. We created a special script that doesn’t actually exist where our director Susan Schulman pulled from various scripts that had been out in publication and went back to the book to try to do things that would beef up the presence of the black community, which was the one thing that was really missing from the story.
In the book, the trial is not the main focus. In the play, it is. The thing that I loved was the Negro spirituals. I would guess that helped you to find the strength to play Tom.
It also helps remind us that it is not only Tom Robinson that is on trial. The tragedy of it is that if a person like Tom of grace, humanity and heart, and clearly unable to commit the crime, can be put on trial and convicted, then any single person in that (court) room could have just as easily, and were just as easily put on trial. It is the whole community that’s at stake. I think it’s important to remind the audience that this is about a much bigger issue, not just about Tom Robinson, but it’s about his wife Helen and the three kids that they have and what happens to them now.
And what about Bob Ewell? There are a lot of his type walking around these days.
...And the May Ellas... people who don’t have a shot in this world. Her situation is equally tragic.. “what my poppa do, don’t count.”
What is it that makes Atticus Finch so different from the rest of the town? He speaks to his children Jem and Scout like they are young adults. He accepts Tom Robinson, no questions asked.
There are those people who are blessed with the ability to just see people as people. In all times, in all history, and in all cultures, there are people that look at the struggle and look at the prejudice and go “Why are we doing this?”
We are all human beings. We are all on the same planet together. We all struggle for the same things – for connection, community, family, safety, comfort… love. Why do we see each other as being so different?
I think Atticus Finch is one of those people who had that vision. It makes him an oddball in the community that he lives in, but it also makes him a person that the community respects even though they have difficulty seeing beyond their shortcomings .It’s hopefully through people like Atticus that everyone can somehow make some kind of progress forward.
