You might remember a couple of weeks ago I posted about the HBOimagine cube that was in Philadelphia, and I heard quite a few of you actually ventured to check it out. Well last week I had the great opportunity to have a chat with Matthew Jaeger who actually appeared in the project. You might recognize him from the Art Heist vignette shown on the cube, as Mr. Luther the gentleman in the wheel chair. Matthew gave me a fascinating look into the production of this interesting project and his experiences working on it. If you haven’t checked it out, I highly suggest you do. It’s a great example storytelling in this day and age when you have so many ways to tell a story at your disposal.

Matthew is currently on stage in the 30^th Anniversary production of Children of a Lesser God, running at the celebrated Deaf West Theater in Los Angeles and touring the festival circuit with his film Just Say Love. Just Say Love is the story of an openly gay man struggling with love and spiritual connection, directed by three-time Emmy Award winner Bill Humphreys. I had a great time chatting with Matthew about his appearance in the cube and his other projects as well.

I always like to start my interviews with, can you tell me a bit about your background and why you decided to become an actor?

Well I guess it depends on whether you ask my mother or me, my mother was sure that I did it my whole life. Apparently when I was young, I used to perform at my father’s company picnic and I would walk around collecting nickels in my overalls from everybody who watched. So I guess I was training early, but when I really started getting into it was high school. I had some older friends who were all in drama club and they convinced me to audition for the first show. I did just to kind of try it out, I got a role and had so much fun with it, that I auditioned for the next one, and the next one and I actually was in every play that they put on while I was in high school. I even started branching out and started learning a little bit about the technical stuff. I started helping out hanging lights, running sound and building sets, anything anybody would let me do, and that’s pretty much how I got into performing and the entertainment world I guess you could say. It wasn’t like a lightning strike moment where I decided I wanted to become an actor. When I went to college I did double major in broadcasting with an emphasis on video editing, which is something I enjoy doing and then also acting, theater arts. It was less a sudden moment when I was like “Oh my gosh! I have to do it!” Just by the end of the first semester I wasn’t signing up for any more broadcasting classes and I signed up for whole bunch more theater classes.

More with Matthew after the jump!

Our readers might know you as Mr. Luther the gentleman in the wheelchair from the Art Heist segment on the HBOimagine cube, how long did it take to shoot one of those multi-angle scenes?

The four-sided scene actually, well nobody had done anything like it before. The producers, who were planning it all out, were kind of figuring it out as they went along. When I booked the job my agent told me, “Ok you’ve got these three days that you will be shooting, with the potential for three extra days.” So they were going to hold three extra days just in case they needed it, and they knew what they were doing because they ended up using all six of those days. We found we needed that time because getting the timing of everything right, because it all had to lineup perfectly with the other sides of the cube, was not quite that easy. Actually we had those giant time clocks they use in high-school gymnasiums, all over the set. So we could see there were certain actions to be done at certain times. They actually had it so you could see them as you were doing what you’re doing, “Oh! I am coming up to 36 seconds, okay I’m going to do this.” It actually helped a lot.

What they ended up doing was, because if you think of all the people who are in the vignette, and everybody is doing something a little bit different. Trying to get all that to lineup four times in a row was just so hard. So if you remember from the cube: the two angles that really match up, where you see a lot of the same stuff, they ended up setting and shooting both of those angles at the same time. So that you get everything lining up perfectly. They really went out of their way to make it complicated, to make their job harder. So that the finished product would be as cool and interesting as it is now.

The fact that we have the delivery system now, like the Internet -10 years ago what they did, and the way they presented on the web would have never happened. Because you can’t do that on TV, you can’t do that in a movie theater. Where you control which angle you’re seeing of the story. Just realizing how fast things are changing, and how exciting it is that you can do what they did on the web, the spinning of the cube with your mouse as the story is happening so you can see all the angles. Not to mention having a 3-D sort of interwoven spider web like they have on the Internet, is something that 10 years ago you never could’ve done.

I enjoyed your performance in the piece as Mr. Luther; can you fill us in a bit more about your character?

We were actually we are given a lot of freedom to create our own characters, and my guy Mr. Luther he was part of the group involved in the art heist, obviously. Every little piece of the puzzle, every vignette that you see kind of starts out as one thing and turns out it’s really something else. What we were encouraged to do was find that in our own characters and I had a very obvious one. In the art heist with being in a wheelchair, and then when they brought me back for the final episode The Teddy Bear Chase that was something that really for me kind of brought out who my character was.

The very short episode, with the cell phone, and the ransom call you can see I’m getting ripped on because I’m very sort of brown nosing to Mr. Yamamoto. It turns out that was all just a set up, and I had my own plans for the diamonds, my own plans for things. It was something that while I shot each one of those episodes, was sort of created as we went along. It was really exciting as far as my guy goes he’s somebody who definitely looks out for himself first, and is also very good at making people believe he is a team player. He is very good at misdirection, although he’s not the master, because a 10-year-old boy outsmarts him. He is good at getting people to trust him and using that trust to his own advantage, for me that was sort of the aspect of the character that I explored and had a lot of fun with

It was such a unique project, what was the pitch like for it?

The funny thing is we really didn’t get a lot explanation, what really got me to do it was actually I auditioned for a different vignette thing that ended up not being made as far as I know. They had some that they thought of, and decided not to do, and they wrote new ones instead of those. I read for two or three different ones and they kept bringing me back to read. The writing was just so interesting and Noam Murro who directed was very fun to work with. Because, he would be “like let’s try this, or let’s try this.” He likes to try a whole bunch of different things, get it a whole bunch of different ways and he ends up taking whichever version of that scene he liked the best. It was just so much fun working with him because he would just throw this random stuff at you, and you had to kind of go, ok and try it. I know some actors were not a big fan of that, but I really enjoyed it because it’s a challenge. That was probably my favorite part of the project. But even as we were shooting it, even until the final product came out people would ask me to describe the project and I had a really hard time. I kept saying, “I think it will be kinda like this.” I mean we obviously knew that The Art Heist and The Affair were going to be four sided, just because of the way we were shooting it. But as far as how everything connected, how the whole story line was concerned I believe they developed it kind of as they went. We shot The Art Heist almost a year ago in November of 2008, and then we shot The Teddy Bear Chase(probably one of my favorite of the vignettes!) in January 2009, just the shooting of this took over 6 months and I don’t know how long they were in development for this project. This was something I know a lot of work and a lot of planning went into. But it is the kind of thing where you really have to see it to understand it.

Have you had a chance to see the cube in person?

I have not been able to see the live cube because it’s always been out on the East Coast and I’m actually doing a play right now. It’s a great play but as far as traveling, I don’t have the ability to go and see it. I’m hoping it will work its way west to LA, and I will be able to check it out. But I have seen it all on the web, it’s a pretty cool concept but I have to admit I got a little confused the first time, because it’s got the 3-D Web thing and you’re diving around and I was like “Whoa, this is amazing!” and I kind of got a little lost my first time through. But I noticed they have that little tab at the top, that will show you more the pathway through the story and I have to admit I cheated and used that.(I actually did the same thing, it is kind of confusing) I know when the project was in the planning stages they had discussed touring it around to art galleries only and I am actually glad they did it this way, it makes it quite a bit more accessible.

I know you’re busy right now with your play Children of a Lesser God what’s next for Matthew after that’s finished?

Before that play even ends I will be flying out to New Hampshire, we had to cancel one performance for a special screening of a film I shot about a year ago that actually we also premiered in Philadelphia. It actually premiered in July at the Q-Fest it’s a gay love story called Just Say Love which is being released by Regent Entertainment, who is also a part of Here! TV.(It will get a wide release in the spring) The run for Children of a Lesser God was supposed to end on the 11^th but now its been so popular we have extended it for three more weeks. We normally do a Thursday night show but we had to shut that down so I could do this screening, and we have been getting a great response in the festivals from the film. The film is actually going to be in Rochester coming up on October 18 at the Image Out festival and then obviously the Screening October 22. There is also the Reeling film Festival, in Chicago, Illinois which is very close to my home town. So I might fly out for that as well, and the film festival runs from November 5 to the 15, and we will be in that festival as well. That’s the next promotional thing I will be doing, the tour for the film and as far as Children of a Lesser God at Deaf West in North Hollywood, California and I am opposite Shoshannah Stern who people may recognize from Jericho or Weeds and as well as Threat Matrix. We have sold out the entire run and extended it 2 weeks, come November I am going to go wine tasting and then I don’t know. You can check out what I am working on, on my Facebook fan page and my web site MatthewdJaeger.com. I usually keep those current as to what I am working on and post new stuff as soon as I can.

And my last question, have you ever been to Philadelphia and if so what is your favorite place?

I have been to Philadelphia, and I think it’s a great town. I went to Philadelphia; Oh wow how old was I must have been 11 or 12.  I had driven through Pennsylvania numerous times because my father has family in New York.  One time we did stop in Philadelphia for a while, I don’t think the restaurant is around anymore but I remember having great Indian food at this restaurant in Philadelphia.