Jack Holmes: Becoming Bobby

Jack Holmes has long admired the subject of his acclaimed solo show, RFK: A Portrait of Robert F. Kennedy. The playwright/performer proved to be a dedicated researcher, who threw himself into becoming Bobby Kennedy. Holmes' previous New York theater credits include The Pot of Gold, John Gabriel Borkman and Roman Candles. His regional credits include In the Boom Boom Room, The Time of Your Life and The Zoo Story. RFK is his first full-length work, and it played both in Sierra Madre and in Los Angeles at the Court Theatre before heading for the Big Apple. Here, Holmes reveals how he decided to focus his talents on Kennedy and his sometimes-loopy research process.

"Who do people tell you that you look like?"

It's a relatively standard theatrical agent question, and she put it to me immediately upon entering her Madison Avenue office. Without waiting for my response she said that when I walked in I reminded her of Bobby Kennedy. I found myself blurting out what would become a commitment of many years of my life, "It's funny you should say that. I'm going to write a one-man play about Bobby Kennedy." I had never given it a moment's thought. She looked at me seriously and said that I should do it.

And that was how the idea of writing a solo play based on the life of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy 1925-1968 came about. Out of the blue. The truth was, however, that Robert Kennedy had always been at the top of my list of people I admired a list which includes Oscar Levant, Jim Morrison and John McEnroe, so make of it what you will. The idea stayed in the back of my mind for a few months when one day I happened to be in a used bookstore in Hoboken. There was a box on the floor and I asked the storeowner what was in it. He said he had no idea. I opened the box and it was filled entirely with books about Robert Kennedy! Sounds strange, I know, but it happened. I already had read Arthur Schlesinger's Robert Kennedy And His Times I swiped it from my mother--yes, it's true, playwrights/actors will steal from their mothers if they have to, and in this box were many of the other great books about him by writers such as Jack Newfield, David Halberstam, Dick Schaap, Edwin Guthman who worked closely with Robert Kennedy in the Justice Department and who, to my great honor, came to see my play in Los Angeles. I bought the whole box from the storeowner and my research had begun.

There are many threads of a person's life. I have chosen only one of Kennedy's for my dramatic purpose. There was a solitary, private quality to Bobby that made him an excellent subject for the form of the solo play. A form filled with pitfalls and dramatic challenges. From a playwright's and actor's point of view, the elements of drama were there: a life filled with pain and loss, happiness, fulfillment, achievement, sadness, exultant highs and terrible lows. A character committed to action, who was an object of intense love and equally intense hatred, shaped by the events and forces surrounding him as he hurtles toward an inescapable destiny. A young man personally involved in some of the most significant, controversial and politically charged events of the post-war 20th century: Joseph McCarthy, the Senate Rackets Committee; Civil Rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, South African apartheid and Vietnam. I did not know Robert Kennedy in his lifetime, but there was something so contemporary about him. To see photos and footage of him during the Senate Rackets, as Chief Counsel when he was only 30 years old, with his unique and compelling combination of youth and intensity, there was a James Dean quality to Bobby. The sensitivity covered by toughness; a cover that slowly began to come off after November 22nd, 1963.

Being the actor as well as the writer was a great advantage during the years it took to write and develop my play. As I wrote I could get up on my feet with the material and try it out in character. I studied Robert Kennedy constantly, the voice and mannerisms, watching documentaries and listening to recordings. It's a fascinating voice. A mixture of the many influences on Bobby as he grew up, a sensitive child in every sense of the word, moving around from Massachusetts to New York to England, going to six different schools in the period of 10 years. Early on, a breakthrough for me was figuring out the key difference in how Robert and John F. Kennedy spoke. How they formed their words and where their voices emanated from. Bobby's voice changes as he becomes more emotional--a quality that did not happen to John's.

That meeting with the agent was quite a few years ago, so it's been a long road, but when I meet men such as Edwin Guthman and Paul Schrade, who knew Kennedy well, and who have come to see my play and responded the way they have, and when I meet young people after a show who didn't know anything about him and who respond how they have, I realize it has most certainly been worth it.

Of the historical American figures we now refer to only by their initials--FDR, JFK, LBJ--Robert Kennedy is the only one of them who was not president. I believe it's an honor that history has bestowed on him and so, after having been previously called The Awful Grace Of God, my play is now simply titled RFK.