Clearly Canadian

He may perform a one-hour, one-man condensed theatrical version of the original Star Wars trilogy, in which he plays every role, sings from the John Williams score and recreates the special effects – but Charles Ross is a serious actor. A very serious one. And the most surprising thing is, he’s not that big a Star Wars fan.

Press releases might suggest he’s seen the movies over 400 times, but Ross is willing to admit that’s an exaggeration. “I know I’ve seen each of the films 50-75 times,” he says, despite his insistence that he’s not a Star Wars nerd.
“There’s obviously the geek stigma attached to Star Wars, and there are extremes – people have really, really strong feelings about Star Wars. I don’t give a shit.” Ross enjoyed the movies as a kid, but the idea of transferring the movies to the stage just seemed a fun idea. Or as he puts it: “this was just for shits and giggles.”
He’s never been embarrassed that Star Wars was a part of his childhood though, especially since this was down to a woeful selection of movies at home when he was growing up. “When I was a kid I lived in a remote part of Canada for about three or four years, and it was about the time the last Star Wars film came out, so it was really at the height of its popularity. Where I was living we didn’t have much in the way of television reception, so really the only thing we could watch was video tapes. Three movies, that’s all we had. Shogun, which was a mini-series which was boring as all shit, and a show called The Blue Lagoon, and Star Wars.”
For an entire year, Ross would put on Star Wars while he got ready for school. He wouldn’t watch every moment of the movie, it was more like a radio on in the background, and the clunky dialogue and thrilling space battles sound effects stuck in Ross’s brain. “6% of my brain was being used,” he says of the way it stayed with him after childhood, “and the rest was full of Star Wars.”
Before the One Man Star Wars Trilogy, Ross was a bit-part actor who took on the “simple, boring roles… wherever the work came up.” But four years ago he finally finished developing the dramatised version of George Lucas’s blockbusters, an idea that had been knocking around his head since 1994, when inspiration struck.
Albeit, financially motivated inspiration. “I noticed that the people who seemed to have the most fun, and who seemed to be making the most money, were the people doing one-man shows,” says Ross.
“And I guess the Star Wars thing kind of came out of Tom Stoppard’s idea of a 15 minute Hamlet… just that idea of taking something that’s huge and lofty and popular and reducing it down to its bare bones.” The show comes to Dublin this month, and Charles admits to being worried about performing here.
“To come to some place like Ireland is rather intimidating… the best of all things in theatre comes from here. I mean look at Beckett, and Sean O’Casey, and how can you be taking something like a one-man Star Wars show to a place like this – how can you expect people to take this seriously?” He pauses for a second, perhaps contemplating the artistic integrity of a show that sees him play a three foot tall green alien and an eight foot tall furball, often within the same breath. “And yet I guess this belongs somewhere in the food chain of all things, whether I am the crap or whether I am the shark.”
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Ross has gone from debuting the show at Fringe festivals to international tours and frequent television appearances. When we speak he’s in Jacksonville, Florida with the show, performing more sell-out shows in what he describes as “the biggest strip mall on the face of the planet… I wouldn’t say it’s the cultural Mecca of the US.”
Just talking to him it becomes obvious how busy he is, but it’s also clear that Ross is happy to be working. As he says, the show offers him “some autonomy with one’s career,” a luxury he craved in his early years as an actor. He adds that the exposure means it’s much easier for him to write something new now – if he ever gets the time to do so.
There’s not a moment’s rest during the show either, which keeps Charles fit to the extent that he needs to change his diet when he’s not performing. But the show’s full of laughs as well as adrenaline, even if he’s careful not to overplay the humour that he thinks isn’t far from the surface anyway. “Someone like Mark Hamill was a whiny guy, so if you just play it straight, there’s more of a laugh there than if you try to accentuate it.”
One of the most remarkable aspects of the production has been receiving the thumbs-up from the bearded King of the Geeks himself, George Lucas. Not only did he allow Ross the rights to perform the shows (something the copyright holders on Lord of the Rings are less willing to do), but he invited Ross to perform at an official Star Wars convention held last year to mark the release of the final prequel, Revenge of the Sith.
Star Wars fans have a reputation for their enthusiasm, with Charles admitting to regularly seeing Stormtroopers at the show, although Yodas and Boba Fetts are a rarer sight. But even though he doesn’t buy into the Star Wars myth entirely, he’s not scornful of those who do. “People who become members of costuming clubs are pretty much on the mark as regards being average, normal people,” he says. “Instead of having these pent-up desires to be part of the films, they’re dressing up and releasing it that way.”
Not that everyone reacts so positively. “I got an email from someone once, who obviously wasn’t the biggest Star Wars fan, saying that me performing this was the first sign of the coming apocalypse. I just didn’t realise that the end of the world would work out so well for me.”