‘FOREIGNER’ KEY ROLE FOR S.D. ACTOR

Chance Hunt’s first professional acting job in San Diego is at a theater that didn’t even exist when he left the city to travel in Europe in June, 1986.

When the Gaslamp Quarter Theater Company announced its schedule for the new Deane Theatre (now awaiting a new name) at 444 4th Ave., he had never even seen the place. But when he heard that Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner” was on the list, the only question in his mind was how soon he could audition for the part of Ellard.

“I knew the show would be really great,” he said.

He hasn’t been disappointed. The reviews for this madcap comedy about a man pretending he can’t speak English have been excellent, and the run has been extended through Sept. 6. Not a bad debut for an ambitious 23-year-old actor who graduated from UC San Diego a scant two years ago.

And Hunt is ambitious. While at night he may be simple Ellard, the blond and bashful country boy whose idea of a good time is chasing chipmunks that he never catches, during the day he is hard at work pursuing his dream of becoming an actor who can actually make a living at what he likes to do.

So when he isn’t earning extra cash by working in the box office of the Gaslamp Quarter Theater, he takes voice lessons at Grossmont College, rides his bike to keep in shape, pursues agents (he’s trying to get one to come down from Los Angeles to see the show) and ruminates about how he is going to get an Equity Card, a Screen Actors Guild card and his next job.

It’s a side of the business that is new to him.

“In college I was working with people who taught me how to get good at theater. Now what I’m finding out is that they didn’t teach me how to make a living,” he said.

Still, he said, what he learned in school from directors like Alan Schneider and Robert Woodruff has been invaluable.

He worked with Schneider on the stage of the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts just a few months after the theater was built in 1982.

Referring to that and his appearance in “The Foreigner,” he joked, “I guess I kind of follow new theaters throughout California.”

The show was “Our Town” and Hunt was cast in the small double roles of the paper boy and his brother.

He soon learned that to Schneider there were no small roles.

“He started to work toward perfection from day one. One of the first things he said to me was . . . ‘What you need is more colors in what you are doing.’ ”

When Hunt pantomimed delivering papers, Schneider corrected the way he folded the imaginary sheets.

“There was no little bit of anything that went without criticism . . . It taught me to be ultra-critical of myself.”

In contrast, Woodruff encouraged him to keep trying new ways of doing things.

Hunt said that on the first day of rehearsal for “Heat,” also at the Mandell Weiss, Woodruff told the cast, “I don’t care what you do as long as you take it as far as you can go. Then if we don’t like it we can throw it out.”

“That’s what happened in this show (‘The Foreigner’), too. Acting is a series of discoveries and solving puzzles. You look at the play, you think of what will work and then you have to figure out how to use your hands and legs and what comes from the other actors.

“It’s like always being a student. I enjoy that aspect of it.”

Just how much puzzle-solving goes into a character who can spend hours staring with fascination at a light bulb?

Hunt points out that Ellard is not particularly stupid, even if it does seem that way at times. It’s just that “he goes from goal to goal and then tosses them away . . . When everyone is looking at one thing, he is looking at another. He is always curious. He’s willing to climb down in the mud to observe things a little more closely.

“It’s a fun state of mind to be in for a couple of hours. You can roll with the punches and if you don’t roll the right way that’s OK, too. He (Ellard) tends to make out OK.”

Ellard’s optimism is a quality that Hunt finds not only refreshing, but infectious.

It makes him segue swiftly back from his career concerns to his career ambitions, goals that, unlike Ellard’s, he has no intention of tossing out.

“I’m still in contact with the people in school who will be the next group of Kevin Klines and Meryl Streeps. Give us 10 years.”

He grins boyishly.

“That’s the plan, anyway.”