Star Wars in 60 minutes, thanks to Charles Ross

This weekend, Milwaukee has the opportunity to spend an hour in a galaxy far, far away, thanks to Canadian actor Charles Ross. He’ll be performing One Man Star Wars Trilogy, a tribute to the original Lucasfilm trilogy, at the Marcus Center. The show is an insanely condensed retelling of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with Ross performing as all the characters (with clever voices to match) and providing all the sound effects and musical elements.

We spoke to Ross about the origins of his galactic tribute, his ties to Lucasfilm and his thoughts on the recently announced new trilogy, courtesy of new owners Disney.

Third Coast Digest: What initially inspired you to begin performing the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy?

Charles Ross: Well, I think it was probably trying to get over unemployment.

I was trying to write something to kick-start my career. I hated having to go to someone else and audition. Trying to write something autobiographical seemed a bit pedestrian, so I thought, “Well, maybe something with a hook,” and I had to hearken back to years before when I was talking with my friend TJ Dawe, who eventually became the director of my show.

He and I were quoting Star Wars back and forth, and we really couldn’t out-quote the other so we realized we were total geeks. We didn’t think we were completely alone in the world, but we felt kind of alone in our stupid knowledge of Star Wars. And we joked about how we could do a show that was just about movies, and obviously Star Wars would be a good one to start with.

That was the end of the conversation, and it wasn’t until years later that I remembered, “Well, there’s that idea to do a movie kind of show.” I tried to start writing Star Wars into a five-minute bit, and the more I wrote it, the more I realized it needed to be longer. And it worked out to be about 35 minutes.

TCD: So since then you’ve added in the remainder of the trilogy to the show?

CR: Oh yeah, the original time I tried it, as a 35-minute bit, that’s probably one of maybe half a dozen performances I ever did doing just [the original] Star Wars. I expanded it over a couple weeks. When I rehearsed it, I started cutting the crap out of it to work it down to an hour show. In three months, there was a show that’s extremely similar to what you see now.

TCD: Was there something about Star Wars in particular that piqued your interest? I assume you saw the films as a kid?

CR: Well, I knew Star Wars very well because, for a period of time, I lived on a farm in northern British Columbia. We didn’t have any radio reception; we had a couple of films on video. And the one that appealed to me the most was Star Wars. I ended up watching it a stupid amount of times. I mean in the range of like 400 times – not because I was obsessive-compulsive; it was just the only thing we had to watch.

Charles Ross plays all the roles in “One-Man Star Wars Trilogy,” from R2-D2 to the Emperor.

TCD: How did you condense all the content from the three films down into an hour-long show?

CR: When I sat down and wrote stuff, I kind of wrote whatever I could think of off the top of my head, the idea being that in theory whatever I could remember should be what the average person can remember.

When I worked with my buddy TJ, there were bits that I had to cut out of the show because they didn’t really forward the story. They were just there because I liked the bit. It’s rather weird, that whole – I’m sure you do this yourself – the joy of editing, how you have to be cruel.

TCD: Now this began as a show you’d do at fringe festivals, and since you’ve taken it to larger venues. Did you ever expect it to develop that way?

CR: You know, I didn’t have any expectations. You can’t really plan for something like this. You could try to. I just don’t know if it would be as interestingly organic.

I think if I was part of some think tank that went and asked for permission from a movie company to do the show, they might just go, “No thanks, we’re not really interested.” Instead I already had a developed show, so when Lucasfilm found out about it and they invited me to submit my materials and kind of do an audition of sorts for them, I had a show that had worked out all the kinks. At that point I thought it was a pretty kickass show to bring to them.

CR: Yeah, I have a license with them. Originally, they just tolerated the fact that I was there, but eventually, when I went to New York City and did the show Off-Broadway for five months, it got to a point where if it took off, they wanted to have control of what was going on. So we decided to do the license thing. And I was really happy that we did – it certainly made things easier – but then when you license something there’s a royalty involved. It was a pretty hefty royalty, and it still is. So there’s goods and bads about going in that direction.

TCD: One last question, which is a bit more topical: What are your thoughts on the recent announcement of Disney buying Lucasfilm and greenlighting a new Star Wars movie?

CR: I feel really good about it – I’m not sure what other peoples’ reaction is. These guys [Disney] have been entertaining us since we were kids, and they were entertaining our parents when they were kids, so I’m thinking when you have a company that has such a long history of knowing how to entertain people, in a family way – and the Star Wars films themselves are family entertainment – I can’t think of better people to take over.

Charles Ross’ One-Man Star Wars Trilogy will be performed Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased at the Marcus Center box office.