Grand Family Food cast members talk about how they view their characters and their roles.
Actor: Mac Hillocks Character: Kilroy
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? Kilroy has a wonderful outlook on life. While he lives from day to day and check to check, he is still a happy and resilient man. When faced with near insurmountable financial challenges he tries to resolve them on his own but is ultimately taken advantage of and it strikes at his core — his pride in being able to provide for himself by doing honorable work with just compensation.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? As a struggling actor, I experienced living from paycheck to paycheck and still maintained my positive attitude. To me, how you respond to adversity is most important. Kilroy has an overall positive outlook and for the most part he responds positively. When he is surprised by significant challenges, he must rely on others’ kindness and support. Having been in similar circumstances, I empathize with Kilroy’s condition.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? One of the core themes in the play is Rick’s support for the town, his empathy for its plight, and his willingness to resolve the challenges facing the town at whatever cost. Kilroy is the embodiment of the town. When Kilroy is met with a significant challenge that he cannot overcome, Rick does the right thing. Millburg, like most small towns, has a simple unwritten social contract: to support those who need help. Kilroy, after all, “comes with the territory,” as Rick says.
Actor: Jason LaCombe Character: Rick Erickson
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? The most memorable characteristic of Rick Erickson, owner of Grand Family Foods, is that he is a generous soul and he will give even when it might be detrimental to his own self. He is also so put-upon but still trying to keep everything else together.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? I am drawing on a few things to portray this character. The first is my own father who is the age of Rick and I carefully chose my appearance to pay homage to my beloved dad. The other thing I’m using to draw on is my own extensive knowledge of grocery stores and the science behind how they work and the product placement on shelves.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? Rick is as a highlighter and a spotlight. Things are happening around Rick that are the key elements of the story or of the town itself even when Rick himself is not the key element. It’s beautiful to see how the town folks attempt to weather the storm of modernity.
Actor: Mary Mikva Character: Jean Carleton
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods? Jean is fierce and nosy and can be intolerant when she’s defending her town.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? I am fierce, I am also a lawyer, like Jean. I am trying to draw on times that I have felt no one else is fighting hard enough in an important battle. When I was a judge in child protection I felt it was important to keep wards in the system from getting pregnant and repeating the patterns that brought them into foster care in the first place. I could not get anyone else concerned about it and I started to sound like a broken record.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? The theme she most helps illuminate is the need to fight back. In that way, she is the opposite of Robert, who has given in to the easy despair and bleak future of Millburg.
Actor: Troy Peterson Character: Robert Hodgson
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? While Robert is seen as perpetually out of it and unhinged, he often has accurate insights into the people and situations around him. Playing Robert as smarter than he might seem while in the throes of a drug addiction has been a challenge but I hope the juxtaposition comes through.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? As someone on the tail end of his 20s, I recognize how Robert can feel he’s at a dead end so early. Growing up in a small Midwestern town exposed me to many people who, by high school, didn’t have ambition or hope for a future. Integrating those experiences into the same desolation many opioid addicts face has been fascinating.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? I view Robert as the soul of the town in that he’s the one hurt most by the town’s decline. Unable to overcome an opioid addiction and do steady work, his life is spiraling downward just like the town’s future.
Actor: Nooshig Salvador Character: Kim Grand
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? Kim Grand’s character starts a scene with blazing fire yet she also comes from a place of immense emotional pain. It is easy to misunderstand an individual’s character when you experience only a snapshot of that person. It is important to give grace to the individual who appears to be hurting and withhold judgment until you know them.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? Since I work in healthcare, I understand how workplace stressors and burnout affects mental health and overall wellbeing. For instance, nurses experience higher rates of divorce than other healthcare professionals and deaths by suicide are almost 400% higher among female physicians when compared to females in other professions. Overall, I utilized many personal and professional experiences to draw an understanding of Kim, who is a nurse.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? Kim’s character highlights the themes of the economic, psychosocial and emotional stressors of surviving in a declining small town and how this affects family dynamics.
Actor: Jill Thiel Character: Cindy Crayton
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? Cindy Crayton is very self-assured.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? I know several women who have re-entered the dating scene after experiencing divorce, the death of a partner, and/or having children. I’m channeling their experiences through Cindy.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? Cindy demonstrates what it’s like to change direction in life and adjust your dreams.
Actor: Phil Troyk Character: Charles Woodman
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? Charles Woodman has good intentions but is insensitive to the culture and way of life of the town. This causes an inevitable clash of values.
re you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? We all have experienced situations in which what we intend is not what is perceived by others. Often it’s less about what is said, but more about how it is stated, that truly matters. Often it is the small things we say, or do, that creates an initial bias in a relationship which is then difficult to change.
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? Charles represents the threat of change for the town: change that the town people, themselves, often desire and eventually need to accept, if the town is to survive. Charles proposes pathways for changes that could help the town, but he does this with an outsider’s view which is often insulting, not truly wanting to understand the values of the people who live there. The town people categorically reject Charles, sometimes rudely, because he is an outsider. If they all would just listen to each other, the promise of a “friendly” small town would be realized, but neither can get past their own view of the world and how they think it should be.
Actor: Jean Waller Character: Linda Wolff
What is the most memorable characteristic of your Grand Family Foods character? Linda Wolff is the cashier in the store so frequently comes into contact with many townspeople. She tries to see the good in people so cuts them some slack but still sees the humor in the way our actions don’t always match our words.
Are you drawing on anything in your own life to play this character? I connect most with Linda’s sense of humor while I envy her even temper. I also enjoy her “opposites attract” friendship with the character of Jean. I have some of those friends myself though I am probably more like Jean in my own life than Linda. So I am lucky to have tolerant friends!
What role does your character play in illuminating the themes of the play? Linda is sort of “every person” example of what community is really about – helping your neighbors, exhibiting kindness, having an open mind – and how our lives and society are better when we remember that. She is also the commentator in the play – drawing the audience’s attention to certain points the play is making.
Midwest Players Theater 