Meet the Cast: Brian Hastert

We’re pleased to introduce you to the actors in our World Premiere production of A FUTURE PERFECT.  The play centers on four friends whose relationships are put to the test when a pregnancy forces them to reexamine what they want from their lives and from each other.

Actor Brian Hastert plays Max in A FUTURE PERFECT. Find out more about him below.

How would you describe your character?

Max is a good guy. He has ideals, or at least he had them. He’s stuck somewhere in between doing what he wants with his life and not doing anything at all with his life. He hasn’t opted into the typical system of American success, but hasn’t found a way to contribute something meaningful outside of that system – at least not meaningful enough to allow himself to feel valuable. He is aging into a place where he doesn’t feel his dreams are sexy and alive anymore, they feel increasingly like the albatrosses of lost youth as the important people in his life, his wife, his best friend, grow up and develop new dreams. Or at least new priorities.

What parallels can you draw between yourself and your character?

This one hits almost a little close too home. Being in my thirties, being an artist, wanting to contribute to the world and finding that “world-improving artist” doesn’t necessarily pay as well as a job title. Being uncomfortably aware that fully pursuing my passions can actually make me burdensome to the people I am closest to. And being a child of divorce, with all the beautiful weirdness that can bring.

What is your favorite quote from the play and why?

There are so many great lines in the show, but I’m going to go with this one for now:

“I’m 100 percent happy. But. The money thing.”

Man, if that isn’t a microcosmic rendition of the confusion of America’s soul, I don’t know what is.

What do you feel is the draw of presenting new works?

Ya gotta do new works! Life is evolving! The world is different today than it was yesterday, and that will be true tomorrow, too. There are infinite stories to be told. Hamlet is great, All My Sons is great, but there are vastly more dark and bright recesses of the human experience yet uncharted than there are classics in existence. What if Tony Kushner had been like, “Whatever, Eugene O’Neill already wrote a bunch of great plays. I’m good.”? Or, worse yet, if artistic directors were like, “I mean it’s good, Tony, but it’s unusual and therefore risky. We’re sticking with Oscar Wilde again this year.” A world that doesn’t support new work is a world less rich.

When was the first moment where you realized that you were officially an adult?

…I’m officially an adult? My badge must have gotten lost in the mail.

If you were to create a playlist representing your character, what would be on it?

The playlist that describes my character sort of gets heard during the show. So I guess I’ll let that one be a surprise for the ticketholders!