FEATURE: Pioneer Press

Now, imagine you're an actor in a play that was written by the guy it's about -- and that the same guy is in the theater, watching you rehearse. And that guy is an entertainment icon.

Pearce Bunting doesn't have to imagine any of that because he's living it in the History Theatre's production of "Radio Man."

Bunting plays The Host in Garrison Keillor's "Radio Man," a "host" who sounds a great deal like Keillor and who presides over a radio variety show that is an awful lot like "A Prairie Home Companion."

"He told me from the very beginning, 'You're not me.' But he writes in a vernacular and with a rhythm and cadence, this music that he speaks. I guess I'm finding those helpful in some ways to find a way into the character," Bunting said last week just before a rehearsal.

The real breakthrough may be not what Keillor sounds like, but what he holds.

"We're moving onto the stage now, so I haven't been working with a live microphone so far and I think that'll be a big deal," Bunting said. "Everybody says the ('Prairie Home') show is for these millions of listeners around the world, but it is a live show and when I listen to it, I hear him with this intimate way of talking."

Bunting has had to make voice choices. In some ways, his voice should suggest a memoir, as The Host looks back on bygone days.
Sometimes, the voice needs to have a flat, "not acted" sound, when The Host is doing commercials or reading from a script. And there are other times when The Host sounds more like a traditional character in a play or when he's simply interacting, off-mic, with the cast and crew of his show.

Posters advertising "Radio Man" make it look like he's playing another local media personality: Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray, a resemblance that came as news to Bunting. But he acknowledges that he is not a dead ringer for Keillor.

"He's completely different-looking than me. We're roughly the same height and we both have a little bit of slumping at the top of the back, the shoulder shrug thing," said Bunting, who adds he's finding the most success when he doesn't over-think the resemblance. "His writing has such ease and his manner is so easy, as in easy-going. That's really helpful. You can just slide into that."

Apparently, it has gotten easier over the course of the rehearsal period, to the extent that Bunting (who, a glutton for punishment, will play dramatist Bertolt Brecht in his next gig) sometimes does Keillor even when he doesn't mean to. Recently, when Bunting was writing something to be read at the funeral of a beloved teacher, he suddenly thought, "I'm sounding a little bit Keilloresque in a turn of phrase or two."

It's an occupational hazard lots of other actors have faced. At least three other plays on Twin Cities stages this fall -- "The Heidi Chronicles" at the Guthrie, where the title character shares many characteristics with playwright Wendy Wasserstein; "Middle Brother" by Mu Performing Arts; and Illusion Theatre's upcoming "Jeffrey Hatcher's Hamlet," in which the playwright re-creates his own youth -- fit in with the grand tradition of plays in which writers show up on stage.

What: "Radio Man"

When: Through Oct. 26

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul

Tickets: $45-$15, 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com

Chris Hewitt can be reached at 651-228-5552. Follow him on twitter.com/ChrisHMovie.