Jim Ligon

Jim Ligon

AEA * SAG * AFTRA

CONTACT: (908) 531-7575

Email: jimligon@jimligon.com

The Star Ledger
Friday, February 03, 2006

BY PETER FILICHIA
NEW JERSEY STAGE

Jim Ligon can now make the claim that comparatively few New Jersey actors can make: Someone has written a part in a play specifically for him.

The role is Papa in D.W. Gregory's "The Good Girl Is Gone," which opens Friday at Playwrights Theatre in Madison.

"Papa's a blue-collar dad," says the portly, bald actor. "Eighteen years ago, he met a woman to whom he was really physically attracted. She paid some attention to him, so he went head over heels for her. In trying to do everything to keep her happy, he smothered her. Now she's left him for a younger man, and he's falling apart."

Gregory discovered Ligon in 2000, when he was appearing at Playwrights in her "Radium Girls," the story of workers contaminated at the U.S. Radium Corp. in Orange during the 1920s. Ligon had four small roles: "a doctor, an attorney, a shopkeeper and a scientist," he says, counting them off on his fingers.

"Jim had a presence," Gregory says. "I was drawn to him whenever he was on stage. One day I walked in and said, 'Jim, I've started a new play, and there's a part in it for you.'"

For the 40-year-old Cranford resident, Papa is a bit of a departure.

"I usually play the big, goofy comic relief," he admits. "I've also done TV commercials where I'm the silly father. 'Oops, I bought the wrong medicine,' or 'Darn it, honey, I brought home the wrong bread.'"

Then there was the time he was hired by Wendy's.

"Another guy and I each had to wear a block of cheese on our heads," Ligon says, shaking his head at the thought of it. "During a break, we started talking. I mentioned that I had a master's from U-Virginia, and he told me he had one from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. And there we were, with blocks of cheese on our heads."
As a result, Ligon welcomes his more serious role in "The Good Girl Is Gone," which he describes as a "blackly dark comedy."

Ligon says, though, that he doesn't have much in common with his rage-filled character. "I've always been single, too," he says, "though I came close to getting married in the early'90s, until that fell apart." He shrugs. "It was my fault."

Still, Ligon's at home with his career. When he's not onstage at Playwrights, chances are he'll be found on the premises. He's the troupe's box-office manager, as well as its Webmaster.

"It's a joy to come to work every day," he says. "Sure, we have our differences and clashes, as all creative people do, but it's still the life I want."

Theater is all he's wanted since he discovered it in the eighth grade, while he was living in Sierra Vista, Ariz. "I don't know what made me audition for the school play," he says, "but I did. I was in a line with other kids, and the director barely looked at anybody, just kept his head down and wrote while they all auditioned. When I started talking, though, he put his pencil down and watched me, really watched me."

Ligon got the part.

Because Ligon's father was in the military, the family relocated a number of times. "And because the Army is the largest single producer of plays -- every base seems to have a community theater -- I got to act a lot.

"Plenty of us Army brats wind up performing," he says. "My theory is that because we're always on the move -- my dad brought us to Turkey and Taiwan, too -- we get to reinvent ourselves every time we move. And what is acting, but reinventing yourself every time you're in a new role?"