Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest ARMIN SHIMERMAN who is about to release the final book, Imbalance of Power, of the Illyria Trilogy.

Armin is a veteran of stage and screen, and is widely known for his portrayal of Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

His other credits include notable appearances on TV shows from Hill Street Blues and The West Wing to CSI  and dozens of others.

His voice has been heard in many animated shows and popular game series such as Ratchet & Clank and BioShock. 

Armin is a renowned stage actor, having performed on Broadway and stages across the country. He is also a Shakespeare scholar and teacher, theatre arts lecturer, and former Associate Artistic Director of the Antaeus Theatre Company in Los Angeles. 

With his wife, Kitty Swink, Armin is an active fundraiser for the Pancreatic Center Action Network (PanCAN).

Norm: Good day Armin and thanks for taking part in our interview.

What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?

Armin: All of us have hurdles to overcome in life. Very few are born kings or queens.There were vast chasms to overleap in both my writing and acting careers.

In acting, I have continually faced the reality that I am a very charactery looking actor (short, bald, European looking) in an industry that prefers attractive people.

That is very much a criteria when roles are being cast. Getting people to give me a second look is only possible if I can prove my worth as a valuable interpreter of the parts I audition for.

But guessing at other’s artistic choices is a crap shoot.

More, everybody and their brother think that acting is easy. The competition is vast and only keeps growing.

My success in "the Business,” therefore, had minimal odds of success. Those daunting barriers are made worse by my intrinsic lack of self-confidence. \

I have never gotten over my small-town beginnings. I never think I am as good as many of the people I audition against. As an author, that character flaw is magnified.

I look at the literary mastery of Hilary Mantel, Frederick Buechner, John Banville, and others. I wonder how dare I compete with them for readers. \

Yet, as a historical writer, I feel somewhat sure-footed, trusting in the years of research I have put into digesting particulars, people, and dates.

In both arenas, I make myself blind to the odds and marshal my will to keep going despite the lunacy of how improbable my efforts are.

How did you get involved in acting? Where did you learn acting? 

Armin: While still attending High School, my family moved from New Jersey to Santa Monica, California. I had an English teacher, Mr. Jellison, who doubled as the school's drama director.

He asked me to audition for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and cast me as the lead, John Proctor. I went on to do several more plays for him.

Though I enrolled in college as an English major, I continued to compete and act at UCLA. After graduation, I was fortunate to go straight from college to an apprenticeship at the prestigious Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.

The actors there convinced me to follow in their footsteps, and I took their direction. I have been grateful for their and others’ support ever since.

I have had a handful of marvelous private acting teachers. But, nothing has taught me more about the craft than the opportunities to work with some of America’s finest actors on Broadway, in Regional Theatre, and on television.

I have assimilated their techniques, their work habits, and their wisdom. You learn to act from others and by investigating yourself; it is a constant education.

Norm: Could you tell us about a time where you had difficulty turning yourself into a character. What was the character and why was it challenging? 

Armin: All roles are complicated. Diagnosing the situation and the needs of the play/production are painstaking mental marathons. I am never satisfied with my opening nights, knowing full well that there is much more to learn and explore.

Even at closings, one wonders if there was more to delve into. Nevertheless, the challenge is to strive to fulfill your potential and hopefully have someone in the audience learn or feel something from your performance.

One person having a catharsis is the reason d’être for performing.

Norm: What has been your favorite role and why?

Armin: There have been so many. I have been lucky to be given such wonderful characters to explore. But the best roles are those where the writing is exciting and delicious to repeat every night. My favorites constantly change, as they are always those that I am performing at any given time. I’ve loved many of the TV roles that I’m known for. But having had the golden opportunity to revisit the roles of Lear’s fool, Polonius, King Claudius, and Costard makes them standouts in my memory.

When approaching them for a second or third time, I always strive to approach these characters differently; inevitably, the learning curve the second time around is more satisfying.

Norm: Why do you think theater is important? 

Armin: Theatre, unlike television, is meant to be a communal experience. It has its roots in clans of cavemen listening to tales around a fire. The result is a collective understanding of the world and, by extension, learning what it is to be human.

Further, unlike any other medium, Theatre is about the Word. Humanity listened to language long before it mastered reading. Gorgeous language catches the ear, and we thrill at the turn of a well-crafted phrase.

With people’s attention spans becoming shorter and people becoming more isolated by modern communication technology, I believe the theatre is gradually becoming a thing of the past.

Language is becoming more clipped, more abbreviated, and less noteworthy. Should we lose the theatrical experience, we lose the magic of tales well told. We lose the joy of getting together. We lose the power for change that the Theatre has always inspired.

Norm: If you could change just one thing about the theatre industry with the wave of a magic wand, what would it be? 

Armin: If I could change one thing, it would be to make admission free. The cost of going to the Theatre is often prohibitive, and many who are new to the Theatre feel uncomfortable about going.

The Theatre cannot be for the elite, wealthy, or intelligentsia. To fulfill its historical potential, it must be available to everyone so that all have access to the Theatre’s majesty and transformative powers. Massive auditoria should not awe but provide welcome.

Norm: How did you become involved with the Illyria Trilogy?

Armin: The idea of a Holmes/Watson partnership for Dee/Shakespeare was first suggested to me by an early writing partner, Michael Scott, a prolific Irish fantasy writer. My wife and I were on holiday in Ireland.

While sitting on a bench after a delicious lunch, Michael prompted that we might create a series of detective novels together. The catch was that each story would center around the characters and geography of each of the Bard’s plays.

Once I realized that Michael was not really interested in following through on that idea, I shelved it for many years. But it had its hooks in me, and one day I began to type.

Twenty years later, I sold the massive manuscript of Illyria —the first of the series — to Jumpmaster Press, who wisely suggested that I make it a trilogy. That prompted vast amounts of rewrites and reworking of the story.

The new version made me happier and allowed me to look deeper at the story that I wanted to tell.

Norm: Could you tell our readers a little about the Illyria Trilogy and its conclusion, Illyria: Imbalance of Power?

Armin: The Illyria Trilogy is centered around Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Imbalance of Power concludes the mission that John Dee was pressured into by England’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham.

 He must solve the mystery of whether Count Orsino is abetting revolutionaries to sneak into England in order to overthrow the British government.

Failure to determine the truth has the Doctor’s life hanging in the balance, and Shakespeare risks never returning to London. Because I am fascinated not only with Shakespeare’s plays but with the astounding period of Elizabethan England history, I endeavored to write a novel that accurately reflects the age, including its mores, language, people, and prejudices.

A major poet of the time, Sir Phillip Sydney, wrote that literature should both entertain and educate. I have followed his advice.

Imbalance of Power is not only studiously correct in its descriptions, props, costumes, and savagery but also is teeming with the humor of the times. Humor is an essential part of all of Shakespeare’s work.

No one knows how Shakespeare became the world’s greatest writer. But the Illyria trilogy suggests that WS learned to hone his craft under Dr. John Dee, the era’s most sought-after scientist, mathematician, and antiquarian.

Is that an impossible fantasy on my part? Perhaps. But books were expensive in those days; there were no lending libraries; Shakespeare started his career as a poor struggling actor with only a high school education.

He competed with other playwrights who were all University-trained, all more credentialed. Yet, as a fledgling poet who later wrote Histories and quoted the ancients and Montaigne, Shakespeare must have had access to countless books and manuscripts.

Many scholars believe Dee, who had the most extensive library in England, and Shakespeare would have known each other. More, it is one thing to have access to books; it is another to be able to appreciate them.

One needs a gifted tutor for that. Dee educated some of the most influential Englishmen of the realm and was an intimate of the Queen, the patron of the Globe Theatre Company.

If you think about it, my supposition is as plausible as the conjectures that Queen Elizabeth or Kit Marlowe wrote the plays.

Norm: How has your experience as an actor influenced the writing of the trilogy?

Armin: Having performed in so many Shakespearian productions, Shakespeare’s language and rhetorical figures have become second nature to me. I dredge up citations from many of the plays when feeling low or elated.

They seem to serve the moment. I have learned as an actor to fully explore the meanings of each of the words in the plays. I am rabid about figuring out for myself the arcane meanings of lines.

It is not enough to just know definitions; you must understand the ethos of the time. A masterful actor must know not only what Shakespeare wrote but why he wrote it the way he did.

Those countless investigations, getting ready for rehearsals over the years, have given me a Ph.D. in understanding what it means to be an Elizabethan.

 It is how I became introduced to the once-famous magus, John Dee, who may be the prototype for the Tempest’s Prospero. Speaking the Bard’s words, making them my own, has given me a love of language, and it is that love that quickens the thoughts and dialog that flow through Imbalance of Power.

Norm: Did you write the trilogy more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process.  

Armin: I’m not sure what you mean by “logic.” Certainly, all the persons had to fit together in a plausible manner, though I do fudge Shakespeare’s age by 3-4 years. I can guarantee that all the world happenings that I write about that I have surrounding 1583 and 1584 did indeed take place. My writing process was indeed prompted by intuition and even more so by chance. Often, while researching one thing, I would come across a fascinating event that begged to be included in the story.

So, I would fiddle with ideas until I could incorporate the new discoveries seamlessly. It was a painstaking progress that forced me to constantly rewrite and re-imagine where the story was going.

Plus, dividing the original story into three novels necessitated my creating two cliffhangers, which in turn necessitated massive reworking of the plot and the characters’ frame of mind.

I wrote sporadically, whenever I had some free time or when the muse spoke to me. In addition to the period details, I was constantly rereading Twelfth Night for phrases or scenes to give the readers familiar with the play enjoyable echoes.

At the very start, I knew how I would begin and how I would eventually end. The struggle was finding and refining the hundreds of pages in the middle.

Norm: What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish the trilogy:

Armin: Well, as my aim is to both entertain and educate. I hope readers will have a better understanding of the Elizabethan period, especially of the bitter schism between Catholics and Protestants.

In addition, I hope people will become intrigued by Dr. Dee and Walsingham and initiate in the reader a curiosity that will lead them to doing their own research into these monumentally historic characters.

If not, then I hope people will be entertained by my fresh imagining of the characters of Twelfth Night. Perhaps, people will hunt for the direct quotes from the play that I have scattered about as Easter eggs.

It is my fondest wish that people will pass the trilogy along to others and say, “Hey, here’s three books I think you will like.”

Norm: What do you think most characterizes your writing, and what was the most difficult part of writing the trilogy?

Armin: What people tell me most about my writing is that they are intrigued by the History that runs along with the plot line. Many of my actor friends complement me on what I have done with Shakespeare’s characters, and how I can incorporate them into the Historical happenings.

I tried very hard to mirror the language of the plays, and I believe my attention to authentic dialogue and sense of place enhances the story.

Both my dedication to history and the language were difficult hurdles to overcome, requiring constant research and rewriting. Everything had to be looked up and then looked up again.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you?

Armin: LOL! If anyone wants to find out about me, all they have to do is do a search online. They’ll get more than they bargained for.

You may check out my Publisher's Website.

Norm: What is next for Armin Shimerman?

Armin: There are several things in the wind. 1) writing another book, either about the Elizabethan period or a textbook for actors on the Shakespearian techniques that I teach

2) directing a production of Richard II,

3) more on-camera acting work,

4) more voice over works for interactive games

5) more teaching of my Shakespeare classes,

6) travel to some distant getaway.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, if you could invite three actors (dead or alive) to your dinner table, who would they be and why?

Armin: I’d start with William Shakespeare. I’d question him about how he meshed acting the roles of the Ghost in Hamlet, Old Adam in As You Like It, and Gaunt in Richard II with writing the roles. Did he improvise at times? Did he direct the other actors?

How was his relationship with the lead actor, Richard Burbage? Did he just let Burbage and the others interpret the roles as they may? And if I could get personal, why he left his family behind in Stratford while he galavanted about in London?

My second guest would be my mentor, Phillip Bosco, who I haven’t seen in forty-five years and has passed away. I would like to share with him how much I appreciate all he did for me in demonstrating to me what it was to be an actor. I did two Broadway shows with him and was awed by his talents and warmed by his generosity. I’d also pry into his techniques in doing Shaw. He was universally acclaimed for doing that playwright.

The third actor would be Mark Rylance. I’d love to find out how an American born actor managed to become this generation’s and England’s most respected classical actor.

 I’d beg him to tell me how he approaches the great roles? How was he given the Artistic Directorship of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre? Just wondering. If there were such a meeting, what would my wife and I serve for dinner?

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all your endeavors.