Caliban Revamped: Eisenstat Takes Center Stage

Zach Eisenstat, bottom, and Manelich Minniefee united as Caliban in an ART performance of The Tempest.

Guest Blogger: Peter Dunn

Zach Eisenstat ’06 didn’t grow up wanting to be an actor. The Course 2 major only started acting after graduation, as “something to do after work to keep me entertained.”

However, with his knack for keeping other people entertained, Eisenstat won increasingly prominent roles with small theatre companies, and in 2011 began a series of engagements with the Lyric Stage Company of Boston. That year Eisenstat quit his day job in finance and began making his living on the stage.

His most recent appearance was in the critically acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre (ART). He and another actor, Manelich Minniefee, collaborated in the role of Caliban, portraying the half-human son of a witch by interlocking their bodies and sharing dialogue.

“Watching Mr. Eisenstat and Mr. Minniefee as their limbs tangle and wrestle, we get a vivid sense of the dueling impulses inside this man-monster,” commented the New York Times.

“I wasn’t quite sure what to expect,” recalls Eisenstat. “I originally thought I’d be the actor, and Manelich, who’s a phenomenal dancer, would do the movement, but we ended up pretty much dead even. It was amazing to go from never having danced to working with Manelich and [choreographer] Matt Kent who are from a world-renowned dance company, Pilobolus.”

The show was adapted by prominent playwright and director Aaron Posner, in collaboration with Teller of the magic performance duo Penn and Teller. Rehearsals and previews were held in Las Vegas, to accommodate Penn and Teller’s ongoing production there; Teller “was at every rehearsal, and as a director and magician he added a lot,” says Eisenstat. (Teller, who remains silent in performance, did use his powers of speech.)

“Magic is an extremely intelligent art that requires a disturbing degree of precision—every movement, the exact angle of the body,” explains Eisenstat. “Teller brought that perspective. It can be frustrating to try things over and over with very slight differences, but it was a great show because of it.”

Eisenstat will be reprising the Caliban role this September at South Coast Repertory in Orange County, CA, and expects to sign on for another engagement that will run through the winter. “I’ll be in actor housing for the next six or seven months; after that, hopefully I’ll have to move to New York City,” he says.

And while it might seem counterintuitive, Eisenstat says his Institute engineering education informs his work. “I don’t have to apply thermodynamic equations, but certainly my analytical thought process helps me approach things in a way that keeps me excited and is maybe a little different from other actors. One of the best things about acting is that you have to learn something completely new every few months—not just lines but an understanding of the vision for a show, how to sing or dance, how to climb a rope. You need a sense of intellectual hunger, and that’s certainly stoked and encouraged at MIT.”