Director Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was a smash hit and the movie that made him Hollywood royalty. Making the movie, though, was a royal pain.
Filming on Martha’s Vineyard put cast and crew at the mercy of the weather. Filming on the ocean, as Spielberg insisted on doing, revealed all the reasons no one ever films on the ocean. Plus, the mechanical shark named Bruce was as dependable as a diva with a drinking problem, breaking down frequently.
The play The Shark Is Broken focuses on three Jaws cast members waiting out filming delays and getting on each other’s nerves.
In Jobsite Theater’s production of The Shark Is Broken, Paul Potenza portrays English actor Robert Shaw, who is stuck on the boat with American actors Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider. Paul has done his homework for the role. In fact, he’s been doing his homework since 1975.
“I saw it the week it came out in June 1975 at a theater in Queens,” he recalls. He went back the next week with friends who were seeing it for the first time, knowing when each jump-scare occurred and delighting in seeing his friends “get the crap scared out of them.”
He remains a fan of the film and of the 1974 Peter Benchley novel that begat the film. Being cast in a play about the making of one of his favorite movies has only increased Paul’s Jaws ardor.
“I love it so much,” Paul said, “since I’ve been cast in the play I’ve taken the deep dive, no pun intended – or you know what? Pun intended – into Jaws history and all the stuff that went on.”
The Shark Is Broken, written by Ian Shaw, Robert Shaw’s son, and Joseph Nixon, looks at the stuff that went on with the three actors as they waited and waited for whatever was delaying the shoot this time to be settled.
The play premiered on London’s West End in 2021. The show received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play. Ian Shaw portrayed his father in the play, as he did during its North American premiere in Toronto in 2022 and its limited engagement on Broadway in 2023.
Robert Shaw, the eldest of the trio, and Dreyfuss, the youngest, have been famously rumored to have not gotten along, with boredom and liquor stoking the animosity.
Some working relationships work better than others, though. Paul has worked with just about any Tampa Bay area theater group you’d care to name in his 30-year career. Paul’s relationship with Jobsite, though, is particularly special.
“Our working relationship is 28 years old now which I can’t believe,” Paul said.
Paul and Jobsite Producing Artistic Director David Jenkins “have a good shorthand as far as working together, and he trusts me,” Paul said. Paul said he was surprised when David brought up the role of Shaw, “but he knows that I can make the changes necessary to play the character.”
“Paul is one of the hardest working, most dedicated actors a director could ever want,” said David, who has both directed and been directed by Paul.
“We call him the Lon Chaney of Jobsite — the man of a thousand faces,” David said. “He relishes in deep-dive character studies to transform himself.”
The Shark Is Broken will be presented March 11-April 5 in Shimberg Playhouse, part of an, as always, eclectic season of theater that swings from Green Day (American Idiot, July 15-Aug. 9) to the Greeks (Penelope, Aug. 19-Sept. 6) Please see jobsitetheater.org for more information.