"Dave’s actions represent a culmination of events. Selling himself makes him feel valid. This play is a window into a certain kind of life - and I can’t judge it," Kartheiser notes. "I don’t think there’s anything gratuitously distasteful here, not even Dave cutting himself. And if you cut yourself, there is blood. He does it because he thinks the person who asked him to do it is going to help him. Dave is in fact just an object to be discarded.
"Kartheiser, making his New York theatre debut in "Slag Heap," admits to engaging in a lot of "personal research" to prepare for the part. "I went out on the street, stood around, and tried to get myself picked up - not that I went home with anyone. But I did it just to have a sense of how Dave is perceived," he says. "After standing on the street, I felt that Dave has to be desperate and hard, but the director told me that Dave doesn’t respond to his life on the street that way at all. He believes what he’s doing will put him on the road to becoming someone."The challenge for me was to be realistic within that optimism," Kartheiser maintains. "The challenge was to find Dave’s pace, his goal, his naïveté, which would allow him to see what he’s doing as a positive thing and nothing to be ashamed of."
Kartheiser, who played Connor, a vampire’s son with superpowers, on the Fox TV series "Angel," admits that Dave is a departure for him: "I’ve never played a character quite as naïve as Dave. Most of the characters I play have an intellectual underpinning, certain smarts even if they’re simple on the surface. Dave, on the other hand, is a surface person. He’s not aware of emotions - his or others’. He’s aware that someone may be frowning, but not the meaning behind it.
"In addition to his "Angel" role, Kartheiser has guest-starred on the TV shows "Sweet Justice" and "ER." He has appeared in several independent films, including "Another Day in Paradise," opposite James Woods and Melanie Griffith, and a host of productions at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
