Bar Talk Ep. 24: Two Actors Talk Shakespeare & the Shah, Theater vs. Film, Buster Keaton’s Best Gag
Tehran, 1979. You’ve spent the day teaching workshops to Iranian theater troupes, but now you’re all at a local bar, sipping strong brew and trading war stories. Do they ever perform Shakespeare here, you wonder aloud. Nobody responds. Did you say something wrong? “You see, brother,” one of them finally answers. “We can’t do plays,” he says, “about the death of kings.” You walk home a few hours later to your hotel, which overlooks the bulwark of the American embassy. Revolution is in the air.
Meet Omar and Roger, two actors whose sprawling careers in film, theater, and education come straight of the history books. Whether it’s teaching abstract art to young Egyptians in the wake of Nasser’s dictatorship, or an old family yarn about the arrival of Indian blood on the Sinai peninsula, or Buster Keaton hamming it up in a deep-sea diving suit on the lam from a tribe of cannibals, Omar and Roger have heard the artist’s call. And of course, they know how to light up an evening with lore! Put your hands together for Episode 24.
Roger Simon is an American theater and film actor, producer, and director. He is best known for his roles in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) and Love in Kilnerry (2022), and has directed performances at London’s Royal Court Theatre, Dublins’ Abbey Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, the Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and the Juilliard Opera. For the last 45 years, he has taught acting, writing, and directing classes at his celebrated workshop, The Simon Studio, at the American Theater of Actors in Manhattan.
Omar Bakry is a painter, filmmaker, and playwright. Born in Sweden, raised in Egypt, he attended the Faculty of Fine Arts (Cairo University) before moving to New York in 2007 to study directing at the School of Visual Arts and the New York Film Academy. In 2014, he and his wife started Timewormz production company. Their films include Aggression (2008), His Man (2014), and Abdo and Saneya, a silent, black-and-white saga following the journey of an Egyptian peasant couple who comes to New York in hopes of finding a cure for their infertility.
Follow Roger on IG @thesimonstudio
Follow Omar on IG @omarbakryart
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00:00 Teaser
00:14 Intro
00:29 Mentor or Mentee?
00:53 Life as a Schoolteacher in Egypt
04:07 When the Army Took over
05:05 What Do You Feel You Are?
06:23 Shakespeare in Tehran
10:00 Nasser’s Egypt
11:37 Roger vs. Peter Stuyvesant
14:16 How Did You Find Me?
16:18 The Simon Studio, est. 1978
22:55 Bar Brawl: The Artist vs. The Human Being
25:15 Indian Blood in Egypt
27:10 Writing This Role For You, I Knew You Could Do Anything
31:25 Abdo & Saneya
33:05 Film vs. Theater
34:23 Tennessee Williams, Anton Chekhov, and Edward Albee
36:00 The Genius of Buster Keaton
40:47 Shout-Outs
Intro Song: "Brooklyn" by Glass Vaults
