#Backstage: How James Lecesne Gives Life To His Characters in “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey”

Chuck DeSantis: “He’s a small-town detective, one of the good guys — my straight alter ego. Chuck’s center of gravity is so different from mine. Mine tends to be forward, but his is more grounded. More pelvic. And very matter-of-fact, so he’s always up front about his presentation. He doesn’t use extraneous gestures.”

Marty Branahan: “Chuck’s cop partner. So New Jersey — a brash kind of working guy that I knew well growing up. He has a very wide stance, which allows me to give the impression of somebody much larger — I try to take up as much space as possible. He has a tendency to flail with his arms, and his head is a little loose on his shoulders.”

Otto Beckerman: “German, early 70s; he runs the local clock shop. I did [Doug Wright’s] I Am My Own Wife, which has 37 characters, more than half German, but I’ve never had a dialect coach — I’m sure it’s all wrong. He’s probably six inches shorter than I am, almost like he’s weighed down by his past. He has a tremor in one hand, which is how I stay in touch with him.”

Ellen Hertle: “Early 40s. She runs the local beauty salon, a small-town Liz Taylor, with something messy about her. I get up on my toes, my way of being in heels — a little unstable. Something I learned from a Kabuki performer who plays women: A woman’s hips are wider than her shoulders, so as a man, you present hips forward, torso slightly tilted to one side.”

Phoebe Hertle: “She’s 16 — a really smart teenager faced with an adult problem. She’s incredibly self-conscious, yet she wants to be seen, so she’s fighting this desire to hide. She has an inner motor that is acting against these exterior gestures of, basically, ‘Oh my God, my hair, my socks.’ She’s always pulling at her socks. Her gestures are literally close to the vest.”

Travis Lembeck: “He’s 19; he’s troubled. He’s playing a video game, and he has longish hair, so he has a tic of whipping it out of his eyes. He tends to talk out of the side of his mouth — a physical manifestation of never telling the exact truth. When he’s standing, he has his hands in his back pockets, like having something behind your back, a secret.”

Buddy Howard: ““He is the leader of the Buddy Howard School of Drama and Dance. He has a posh accent but also a strange, distinctive lisp. So it would be hard to imagine him as a successful actor at home in England, but in New Jersey, he’s found a way. He’s filled with florid physical gestures. Everyone assumes he’s gay, but then he introduces his wife. That’s just his affect.”

Gloria Salzano: “She’s the widow of a mobster — she’s seen a lot of evil. There’s a pursed thing to her mouth, as if she doesn’t want the wrong thing to slip out. She’s lonely, and the binoculars indicate her desire to look outside her life. Her eyes are very wide, and for me that’s the thing about her. I grew up with those women — intuitively smart but intellectually not so much.”

Marion Tochterman: “She’s in her late 60s, lifelong smoker, probably had her heyday back in the ’80s. There’s a trick to doing her rasp so that you don’t destroy your voice, mostly in my facial mask. So much of Marion happens in the lower part of her face. Repositioning my jaw, pushing it a little forward, that creates her kind of old-lady neck.”