Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Few likely noticed, but before a Q&A session at King’s College Tuesday, Martin Sheen turned in the shadows and subtly made a sign of the cross with a thumb on his forehead, lips and chest. He wasn’t being particularly furtive, but clearly didn’t feel a need to make a show of it.
During the event a student asked how he retains his Catholic values in a secular profession, and he answered by explaining the ritual, demonstrating the motions familiar to many church-going Catholics as prelude to the reading of the Gospel. Sheen told the crowd he meant it as something of a prayer.
“May the truth be in my mind, on my lips and in my heart,” he said.
Theater, he continued, can be a “sacred” thing, “if it is honest, if it is nurturing.”
In scripts, that little sign of the cross gesture would be known as a “character beat.” Beats are small moments that help reveal something meaningful in the unfolding story, that move the plot along, that explain something without hitting you over the head with an exposition “pipe.” Well constructed stories use character beats the way they happen in real life. Sometimes you can understand a person or a situation by the unspoken bits as much — even more — than you do through what is said.
Sheen brought obvious star power to the Wilkes-Barre campus. The actor’s IMDB credits list is at 259 and counting, from his portrayal as Jack Davis on “As the World Turns” beginning 1965 to his role as Robert Hanson on the TV series “Grace and Frankie” that ran from 2016 into 2022.
Most people likely remember him as Capt. Willard hunting for Marlon Brando’s Col. Kurtz among the deadly jungles of Vietnam in 1979’s “Apocalypse Now,” or as President Josiah Bartlet in “The West Wing” TV Series created by Aaron Sorkin — a man who could teach a master class on scripting effective beats (“It was music,” Sheen told the students when asked about performing the lines).
But even if you don’t remember, odds are that you’ve seen this Hollywood legend in something. His TV credits include the original “Outer Limits,” “My Three Sons,” “Flipper,” “Mission Impossible,” “Ironside,” “Mod Squad,” “FBI” (the 60s-70s show, he was a kidnapper), “Columbo” (a victim), “Medical Center” and even “Love, American Style.” He played the title role in “The Execution of Private Slovik,” a 1974 TV movie about the only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the Civil War. He was Uncle Ben in the 2012 version of “The Amazing Spider-Man.”
Yet despite credentials that set him apart, the man who came to King’s at the request of longtime friend and retired judge Joe Cosgrove was affable, accessible and as “regular guy” as you could want. You saw it in the beats.
Quick to pivot 180 degrees to shake hands with a stranger. Gleefully leaning and waving to a curious infant in the arms of a faculty member. Graciously accepting a small gift from one student. Repeatedly deferring to the budding actors around him: “These are my friends … a great source of energy.”
Sheen’s official performance was as Judge Vaughn Walker in the play “8,” based on transcripts from a real court hearing that overturned California’s Proposition 8. That ruling made gay marriage legal. But it was an impromptu musical interlude during the Q&A that demonstrated much of what he imparts.
Prodded to tell a story of a little singing done Sunday following celebration of Mass at King’s chapel, a student somewhat timidly recounted how Sheen said it was his favorite hymn. Unprompted, the actor began an a cappella rendition, many of the crowd joining in.
“No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging. Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”
When troubles rise and things get hard, he suggested, think of those lyrics and remember “That’s just the first wave, and I’m in a sturdy boat.”
And —
Scene!