An Open, More Mature McKinley Belcher III Revisits 'A Guide for the Homesick' Off-Broadway

EDGE: There's a lot of physical intimacy on the stage. Is it at all awkward?

McKinley Belcher III: When you're initially in front of an audience, there's a little bit of awkwardness, just burying your body in that way depending on the level of undress. But if you're really comfortable with each other, and you feel safe with each other, that awkwardness actually fades away really quickly. When it's going well, I'm not thinking about how I look, what people see, or are all the things in the right place. I'm focused on him, he's focused on me, and we're going through something together. It's actually quite an intense moment for both characters. If things are happening the way they should, I'm not thinking about it at all.

EDGE: Does the intimacy translate to a friendship off-stage?

McKinley Belcher III: It better, because we share a dressing room, we're together all the time. [Laughs] One of the things we joked about early on is that we're going to get to know each other really well, both in the terms of physical proximity – we have to touch each other everywhere – and then the ability to trust each other on stage. If something goes wrong, we're really in each other's hands. And the beauty of it is that we're both humans, so sometimes things do go wrong, but the audience would never know because we take care of each other.

It [the friendship] was not instant when we first met, but over the time we've been working together it's a thing that's grown. We're both actually quite fond of each other. It's a special thing. We're not in love with each other, but we've grown to know and appreciate each other in a way that is atypical to a creative experience.

EDGE: Are you sick of each other at the end of each week?

McKinley Belcher III: No, not sick of each other, but we do crave that one day off to just not do the play, to not be in that space. We talk about this. Sometimes when we're in the dressing room before the show we talk about what a gift it is to get to do this kind of thing on stage. But it's also really taxing, so there are days when your body is, "I don't want to do this."

EDGE: How do you keep the intensity of the play show after show?

McKinley Belcher III: Some of it is building the muscle over the course of rehearsal. You teach your body what's required, and then you just have to jump in. I get myself in a place where I'm good to go, and I just kind of jump off the cliff at the beginning. It kind of works itself out. I'm not thinking deeply about it, I'm just jumping.