Morlan Higgins sits in the first row of the Fountain Theatre, back erect, eyes meditatively focused on the stage.
His character isn't present for the first 11 pages of "Victory," a new play by South African writer Athol Fugard. So as rehearsal begins, Higgins lingers in the auditorium, listening to the a cappella African vocals that serve as pre-show music.
"I'm going to be hearing that music" at every performance, he explains later, and it will become an entry point into the world he's helping to create. "I was just letting it affect me. You have to immerse yourself; you have to let everything in."
This total-immersion approach to acting makes Higgins one of Los Angeles' most consistently compelling performers -- as poet Dylan Thomas in "Dylan" at the Skylight Theatre in 1994; as the authorial alter ego in Arthur Miller's wrenching meditation on his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, "After the Fall," at the Fountain in 2002; and as the imperious if emotionally bruised aging actor in Fugard's "Exits and Entrances" at the Fountain in 2004.
When acting opposite Higgins, "you can never cheat yourself," says "Victory" cast member Lovensky Jean-Baptiste. "If you're not in the moment with him, then you're just going to get left behind."
"It's about all of us doing the very best that we can," adds actress Tinashe Kajese, "all of us really seeking the authenticity of these characters."
"Victory," like much of Fugard's writing, is a rigorous yet compassionate study of race relations in his native South Africa. Unfolding in a tense, intermission-less hour, it relates what happens when Higgins' character, a former teacher named Lionel, enters his home to face two young thieves.
The aging gentleman -- who tries to engage the poverty-hardened youths in a dialogue so he can better understand their circumstances -- should be pretty easy to recognize, Higgins says. "Lionel is clearly, in large portion, Athol Fugard."
"When Athol sent me the script for 'Victory' and I read it," says director Stephen Sachs, "the first and only actor I thought of in that role was Morlan. I called Athol and told him so, and he never questioned it being anyone else."
The show opens Friday.
As Higgins chats over coffee one morning before rehearsal, he tends to get all hushed and reverent whenever he's talking about the art of acting. Then, suddenly aware of how he must sound, he'll dismiss himself with a cheerful obscenity.
