Get to Know Lee Ordeman

Well we have met two of our three Marlowe murderers, why not the third and final men who ended our young playwrights life. Lee Ordeman plays Mr. Poley and he is another of the shady characters that peoples our Elizabethan world. See what Lee has to say about working at Rorschach and the Patron Saint of Bad Taste and Balitmore in this another edition of Get to Know.

1. What is your position, role or roles in Kit Marlowe?

I play Robert Poley, a bet taker and an actor.

2. Is this your first go around at the Rorschach rodeo? If no what have you done for us before? If yes, what has surprised you the most about working for us?

This is my first go-round with Rorschach. I am most impressed by the low-key professionalism that gets things done, keeps the objective in sight, while not squelching the opportunity to have a laugh and keep it light. When things do go a bit haywire, as they do in live theatre (thank God, actually), these little challenges are greeted with equanimity and handled with calm, grace and a laugh.

3. If this play were a Beatle which one would it be and why?

Maybe John Lennon. At least, I suppose Marlowe was a bit like Lennon -- brash, talented, iconoclastic with a sense of the zeitgeist and his place in history.

4. What feature of Marlowe's London should Rorschach duplicate to really enhance the audience's experience?

The smells perhaps. I have always admired John Waters, a fellow Baltimorean, for introducing rude smells via scratch-n-sniff in one of his films. Why not waft a little b.o., sewage and slaughterhouse aroma in the direction of the audience occasionally? Rachel our dramaturg would have her work cut out for her: just what does a bearbaiting pit smell like?



5. If you could go out for a wild night on the town with Kit Marlowe, where would you go and what would you do? Kit Marlowe living up the night life?

I guess I'd take him to New York and just stay out all night, or maybe have him over for dinner and pick his brain about life in Elizabethan England.

6. Can you think of worse way of being killed than being stabbed in the eye? If so how?

I can't, actually, or I'd rather not.