STAGE : James Earl Jones, Aiming for the 'Fences' : An Actor Who Believes in Standing Tall on Stage Reprises Tony-Winning Role in Tale of Ex-Ballplayer

By JANICE ARKATOV

Sept. 25, 1988 12 AM PT

It’s no surprise that James Earl Jones is a big man. Booming voice, imposing presence. But there’s a gentleness too: in the eyes, in the handshake, in the offer of a cup of tea. James Earl Jones is almost . . . meek.

It’s not for lack of success. His career has spanned film (recently, “Coming to America,” but who could forget his thunderous presence as the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars”), television (the upcoming “Roots: The Next Generation”) and stage (“The Great White Hope,” “King Lear,” “Master Harold . . . and the Boys”).

Last year he won his second Tony Award for best actor for August Wilson’s “Fences.” It’s a role he reprises, beginning Wednesday, at the Doolittle.

“The Tony makes more of a difference to my agent, because he might be able to ask a better salary,” Jones, 57, said lightly. “But it doesn’t help you the minute you walk on the stage. It’s a new deal, as they say in the movies.”

He shook his head. “Those laurels should give us confidence, shouldn’t they? Acclaim by our peers? I’m sure it gives some of us a healthy confidence. Others of us, it doesn’t help at all. Actors are very fragile, you know. Shy? Necessarily, yeah. I pretend a lot that I’m not.”

Jones was joined in his Doolittle dressing room by director Lloyd Richards. A fellow Tony winner for “Fences,” Richards is dean of the Yale School of Drama and has collaborated with playwright Wilson on four plays, all originally presented at the National Playwrights Conference, where Richards has served as artistic director since 1968.

“Fences” concerns a man who could have been a major-league ballplayer in his youth, except for the color of his skin. Now it is 1957 and Troy Maxson (Jones) drives a garbage truck. Maxson has fathered many children outside his marriage, but continues to be a constant at-home presence--alternately tyrannical and loving--to his wife and teen-age son.

“The play doesn’t need to celebrate the family,” the director said. “But it certainly does affirm the relationships between people and people coming together. They interact with each other, affect each other, hurt each other, talk to each other. Troy stands for responsibility--responsibility for his child, for his wife. You want to condemn him because he takes another woman. But even in the process of that, he says, ‘This is not about you. It’s about my inadequacies, my feelings, my needs. . . .’ ”

For Jones, the initial attraction of the character was as “a poor man, blue-collar, dealing with the issue (of confronting and accepting his mortality).

“Noble? Of course. But all men are. I believe, as Anne Frank said, in the goodness of people. And Troy is more than good. He’s standing up on his hind legs reaching for Heaven.”

As for the character’s crueler qualities, “Those are just abrasions and scars from being a common man. These people don’t buy their way through life. They suffer through it. In plays like this you deal with the most horrible things in life,” he said with a laugh, “and it’s delightful . It becomes part of glorifying life.”

And glorifying the actor? Richards feels that Jones’ celebrity does not impinge on the truth of his portrayal. “Jimmy is immersing himself in the character--who has his own sense of celebrity, his own choice of words,” he said.

“We all do. I, the character Lloyd, pick words for effect. I dramatize myself. That’s part of living. The actor finds the character’s celebration in himself--in his selection of words, phrases, images.”

And yet, Jones warned, “An actor has to be very careful. To stick to what he’s saying, rather than how he’s saying it. It shouldn’t be an aria--although you, as the audience, may hear it that way. It may be a beautiful speech, but I must not deliver it as one.”

Jones is all too aware of the trap of fame. “I will invoke the name of another actor: Christopher Plummer” (who played Iago to Jones’ most recent Othello, on Broadway in 1982).

“The early Christopher Plummer walked onstage in plays like ‘Royal Hunt of the Sun’ and we in the audience forgot to applaud. We knew he was a star, but we were so involved in what he was involved in that we forgot to applaud.”

Jones admits that his own physical size (height: 6 feet, 1 1/2 inches; weight: classified) has often worked to his advantage.

“Energy and size mean I can hopefully be heard. My father became an actor because in school he had the loudest voice, which meant he had a concentrated energy. An actor can be 5 feet tall and have that.

“But I think stage people should be big. Physically big. In the old days, priests and actors (wore) lifts. It was to say, ‘Yeah, this is a big guy, an important person. Someone to watch.’ Because that’s the job at hand: getting them to watch you, listen to you.”

When they do watch and listen and appreciate, he is gratified. Awards, however, are another matter.

“Someone set you up to want to win over someone else--which has nothing at all to do with acting,” he shrugged. “But that’s the ritual. Sure, you’re glad you won and not the other guys. But that’s not what it’s about.”

Richards also finds his self-worth away from the awards arena. “If you didn’t have that (surety) to begin with, an award isn’t going to give it to you. After all, it just sits there.”

On a bad day, couldn’t he look at the prize and feel better? The director chortled. “Save that for when you quit.”