Hillactor, playwright, novelist and, now, Socrates

by CLARK GROOME

Gregg Almquist, a Chestnut Hill resident, is currently starring in Outrage at the Wilma Theater through June 19.

When Gregg Almquist entered the University of Minnesota in the late 1960s, “My major was going to be theater,” he said. “I walked up to meet [my advisor], and I saw all these people prancing around in leotards and kissing one another on the navel and things like that. I thought ‘No.’ I went and changed my major to classics. “I thought I’d translate plays. But then I started acting.” And here it is 35 years later, and the Minnesota native who now lives in Chestnut Hill is still at it.

During his career he has worked for John Houseman’s Acting Company, been on Broadway opposite Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little in the original production of I’m Not Rappaport, worked at, among others, the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Denver Center Theatre, the Guthrie in Minneapolis and, last season, locally at the Act II Playhouse in Ambler.

Until the early 1990s, his home base had been New York City, where he had a five-room rent-controlled apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for which he paid $306 a month.

Then it was off to try L.A. This wasn’t his best experience, he says. “I was lost in Los Angeles for 12 years. I was out there to act. I’d pretty much done New York. I got lost out there because they didn’t need me, and they didn’t get me, and I didn’t get them.

“I’m not very good as a business person … I mean selling myself.”

Because of his agent’s financial troubles, “for the last two-and-a-half years I was in L.A. I no longer had any kind of representation. Commercially, I couldn’t get arrested out there. I’d made hundreds of thousands of dollars in commercials in New York,” including Tartar Control Crest and Alka Seltzer.

His last two years in L.A., he was teaching and working on a master’s degree in education.

Almquist, 56, has always loved language and ideas. Most of his favorite acting has been in the theatrical classics like Shakespeare and Shaw. Early on in L.A., he thought he might be able to make some money writing.

“My intention was not to be an actor, as I’ve said, but to translate and rewrite each Greek text for the stage. I was writing plays, most of which got produced.

“I was getting plays done, and the actors were making money, and the directors were getting paid, and I wasn’t making any money because I was supposed to be damn glad I was getting my plays done. That irritated me.”

Since his plays weren’t making him any money, he thought that what would make him some was “novels into film.” The result was two horror novels — Beast Rising and Wolf Kill — that have, he says, something of a cult following.

Almquist’s passion for acting never cooled, and he decided in 2001 that it would be a good idea to leave L.A. and head east. Since he no longer had an apartment in New York and his sister’s husband had recently died, she asked him if he would like to share her house in Chestnut Hill. He said “yes” and has been here ever since.

Since returning to the east coast, he has worked at GeVa Theatre in Rochester, N.Y., the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. and is currently in the Wilma Theater’s production of Outrage.

With his love of language and ideas, Almquist is thrilled to be part of this production. “This play’s fascinating. You don’t see plays like this too often. We’re talking about a play of ideas. To some that means ‘inaccessible.’ Not at all. It’s very accessible.

“It’s a play that’s not only fun, it’s perfect for [Wilma director] Jiri Zizka. It jumps around from Socrates’ Greece to Galileo’s Italy to Brecht’s Germany and Hollywood to contemporary academia.” It runs through June 19, and in it Almquist plays Socrates.

“This type casting is just ridiculous,” he opined. “A couple of months ago, I played Einstein in an indie [independent] film here. Now Jiri’s gone and cast me as Socrates.”