WESTBROOK — Paul Haley worked stage crew in high school, always behind the scenes and in the wings. He never ventured out on stage, although the idea intrigued him.

In 1987, he made the leap and took a part in “Play It Again, Sam” at Portland Players. He enjoyed himself and thought he did a pretty good job. But he was never asked back.

For 15 years, his interest in theater idled. Then in 2002, he enrolled in his first acting class.

He’s barely paused since.

Through self-directed work and commitment to the acting craft, Haley has made himself into one of Portland’s premier theater artists, a favorite of directors and audiences alike.

Haley’s ascent is remarkable if only because he practices theater as a sideline to his day job as an editor at Maine Video Systems in Portland. Before moving to Portland in 1984, he worked as a TV reporter in Odessa, Texas, and Sioux City, Iowa.

Being on camera helped prepare him for the stage, at least in terms of his ability to think on his feet. The challenge of theater, he says, is memorizing scripts and allowing a character to inhabit your life. The reward is the satisfaction of accomplishing something that moves people to laugh or inspires another kind of emotional reaction.

“We all have energy that needs to be worked and exercised. Acting is one of them for me,” says Haley, 52. “It’s more than a hobby, but has something in common with that.”

Haley is best known for his comic roles and his ability to draw laughs from even the most reserved audiences. He’s also mastered the rich texts of Shakespeare, and has played Macbeth almost 50 times in a stripped-down production that travels to schools.

This month, he faces the most challenging role of his amateur acting career: playing the lead opposite Kerry Rasor in “Crying at Movies” at Acorn Productions in Westbrook. It opened Friday and runs weekends through Jan. 30.

Maine writer John Manderino adapted the play from a book he had written previously. It’s about a guy who lives vicariously through the movies.

Haley’s character, Tony, is not only affected by movies, but programmed by them. The movies become his frame of reference for all stages of life. Specific scenes in his favorite movies offer cues for his likes and dislikes — in women and in life.

Haley evolves his character from boy to man over the course of 90 minutes without leaving the stage.

His co-star, Rasor, certainly has a lot of influence in the outcome of the show, but the success of “Crying at Movies” rests with Haley’s performance, says director Mike Levine, who is also Acorn’s artistic director.

He has to own the space. If audiences don’t root for him, it’s over.

“This is a big role,” Haley allows during an interview before rehearsal. “It’s big because of the size of it. I’m on stage the whole time. The challenge will be keeping the interest up and keeping the energy up, and making sure it’s worth watching.”

That’s not likely to be an issue, says Tony Reilly, artistic director of the South Portland-based American Irish Repertory Ensemble. Reilly has cast Haley in AIRE shows a half-dozen times, most recently as an evil drunk in Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer.”

Reilly first comprehended the scope of Haley’s talent when they worked together in “Playboy of the Western World.” They were playing to a stone-cold quiet Sunday matinee audience. You couldn’t buy a laugh, Reilly said. He and Haley commiserated their failings during intermission.

“Paul had a drunk bit at the top of Act II, where he is alone on stage telling what happened at the county fair. I said, ‘I’ll give you a quarter for every laugh you get.’ I think I had to pay him $3.50 — he got 14 laughs. That’s how good he is.”

Directors and playwrights love telling Paul Haley stories. They all have them, and they’ve become legend in Portland theater circles.

FANS INCLUDE PLAYWRIGHTS

Here’s one from Manderino:

“He was in a piece of mine, a comic piece called ‘Wolfman and Janice,’ a little short thing. It’s about a guy who turned himself into a werewolf. Paul went out and rented some tapes of wolf behavior in the wild, and came back with all this great stage business related to wolf behavior. It picked up the show.”

Michael Howard, a Maine actor and director, was Haley’s first acting coach. Haley signed up for what Howard calls “acting for ordinary people,” and he quickly learned that Haley is not an ordinary person. Haley impressed Howard with his ability to transform himself and adopt unusual physical characteristics.

Howard immediately cast him in a production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at the Stage at Spring Point in South Portland.

“That is when I realized he could make alchemy with props,” Howard says. “He has an amazing ability to take as simple a thing as a bench and turn it into amazing things. His timing with props large and small and his ability to shift and create his own sense of space is miraculous and wonderful to behold.”

He wonders what Haley might do with something as simple as a cardboard box. “He would do amazing things with it, I am sure. If he had gone in a different direction, he might be doing something with physical comedy. He has that same wonderful sense of timing and a body that is so limber and adept at allowing it to fall and to appear at odd angles, which greatly enhances the comic aspect of things too.”

Reilly met Haley during auditions for an AIRE production of “The Cripple of Inishmaan.” Haley coveted the boat-builder tough-guy role.

“He came in for the audition and brought every tool out of his home, because that’s the way Paul works,” Reilly said. “He had hammers and chisels, and this was just for an audition. But that’s Paul in a nutshell. He is very specific about his work. He is never general.”

Levine recruited Haley for Acorn’s Shakespeare Ensemble, and has cast him in a variety of roles in an effort to expand the actor’s repertoire. He worries that audiences see Haley primarily as a comedic actor, which is understandable.

“He’s got this Kramer-esque edge to him, and an elastic face,” Levine says, referencing the zany “Seinfeld” character. “His comic timing is impeccable.”

He hopes “Crying at Movies” helps change that perception. “Paul has gotten away over the years with his natural comedic abilities, and has been somewhat typecast. This will allow audiences to see the range that Paul has an actor,” Levine says.

Levine has always appreciated Haley’s willingness to take risks on stage, physically and otherwise.

A few years ago, they worked together on a Shakespeare play at One Longfellow Square in Portland. The scene lent itself to a dramatic twist, and Levine asked Haley if he would be willing to climb down a rope from the balcony to the main floor.

Haley barely hesitated.

“He’ll do anything you ask him to. Pour gas in him. He goes,” Levine says.

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Follow him on Twitter at:

twitter.com/pphbkeyes

 

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