Hamlet & Me (Part VII)

Thomas W. Cullinan
Promotional photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

Tom Cullinan and I met when he auditioned for a show at Dobama’s Night Kitchen. Having spent some time living in Chicago, he was returning home, so he told me, to look after his mother following the death of his father.

I sat in the house, he sat on a singular chair on the stage, wearing a long coat and, in my mind’s eye, smoking a cigarette. Was he? It is hard for me to imagine that he was not.

The audition in question was for a long-form improvisation inspired by MTV’s The Real World. As I had scant experience in improv, and that his resume said that he had, and in Chicago of all places, I was intimidated. But I have also always scorned men in dusters who smoke during auditions, and so we sized each other up and decided to become friends.

Besides, the fact that I was seated in the position of authority, evaluating him in a theater space he had practically grown up in, I had to respect his équanimité. He became an invaluable player in our late night adventure.

Over the next couple years we would grow close, but not too close. It was good to have a new partner in theater, someone I hadn’t gone to school with, someone with a broader experience than I had, an entirely different creative toolbox. Someone to push me out of my carefully guarded comfort zones.

I asked him to direct my first play, The Vampyres, about a goth coffee house. He suggested we visit New Orleans at New Year’s Eve. You know, as “research.” Goodness, I never would have dared.

Yes, we spent many evenings drinking and smoking, primarily at La Cave du Vin, and elsewhere. Tommy was the toastmaster, the speechmaker. I was always uncomfortable before crowds, he lived to be there. I asked him to be Best Man at our wedding.

Brian Pedaci, Tom Cullinan
Promotional photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

However, it was he who made getting too close impossible. I would invite him out for a private evening, just the two of us, and he would bring along one or two. There was a crisis in my relationship with Toni and he simply did not let me talk to him about it. He spoke too quietly in bars. He was pretentious – and not in the same way I am pretentious.

He was complicated. We’re all complicated, but Tommy was really complicated.

My time as Public Relations Director at Dobama Theatre was coming to a close. I’d never worked anywhere for three whole years and I was anxious to move on. I loved my time there, but I was turning thirty and feeling constrained, I guess. I had no idea what was happening next, what I did know was that I had a burning desire to create an epic, independent production of Hamlet, and I knew who I needed to build the company around.

My man is Tom Cullinan. The reasons for him are plentiful. I love him. I can work with him. He is an experienced actor with just the right everyman quality to his personality, but also the right amount of class, charisma and charm. And guile. And romance. And because he’s not perfect.
- December 23, 1997

To be continued.