Jonathan Groff of ‘The Singing Forest': Not Seeking Nudity, But It Keeps Finding Him

Craig Lucas’s “Singing Forest,” which opens Tuesday night at the Public Theater, is a nearly three-hour play that travels backward in time from 2000 to 1933, from New York to Vienna and London, with characters that include a Nazi, Starbucks employees and Sigmund Freud.

“I guess it’s mostly about dealing with those sorts of things in your life that make you feel uncomfortable,” said Jonathan Groff, who plays two roles in the production (as do eight of the show’s nine actors).

Being uncomfortable doesn’t really register on the all-smiles face of Mr. Groff, who grew up in the Amish area of Lancaster, Pa. After all, the 24-year-old actor mooned the audience in the Broadway musical “Spring Awakening,” hippied it up in last year’s revival of “Hair” in Central Park and is nearly naked in “The Singing Forest.” (He left “Hair” before it transferred to Broadway to shoot Ang Lee’s new film, “Taking Woodstock.”)

“I’m not seeking out the nudity in projects,” he said, laughing. “It just sort of seems to be finding me.”

Mr. Groff sat down last week at the Public Theater, fresh from an early morning session with a personal trainer, to answer some questions about working Off Broadway, interpreting Craig Lucas and being invisible in New York. In this audio slide show, he talks about performing in “The Singing Forest.”

“The Singing Forest” is an ambitious play. You go to different decades and places, and characters switch just by going through a door. When you first read the script, how did you think it would translate to the stage?
When I first read the play I was on an airplane and I was exhausted. I couldn’t put it town. I read it from start to finish the whole way through. In our first read-through in the first week of rehearsal, the play read really well around the table. It’s a really well-crafted, really well-written, really complicated, interesting play. When you throw in all the technical aspects and costumes and lights it becomes sort of an epic, giant adventure.

You followed up “Spring Awakening” with two Craig Lucas plays in a row: “Prayer for My Enemy,” at Playwrights Horizons last year, and now “The Singing Forest.” What is it about his plays that appeals to you?
I had the gift, in “Spring Awakening” and “Hair,” to be involved with something I felt really passionate about, and I realized the importance of that. I wanted to look for something that was really challenging that I also believed in. Bartlett Sher, who directed “Prayer for My Enemy,” said to us on the first day of rehearsal that when you’re working on a Craig Lucas play, you walk into the rehearsal room one actor, and leave the final performance of your closing night a different actor. I found that to be true. His writing is so unexpected. … It takes a lot of work to get through it. It’s incredibly rewarding and frustrating and challenging.

Have you seen “Hair” on Broadway? How does it compare to the production in Central Park?
I felt it crystallized in some way. Suddenly you could see everyone’s faces clearly. You could hear the music better. You could get a sense of the story better. Having been outside, and then putting them inside a theater, it felt like they were going to blow the roof off the top of the space. It was an incredible night. I was crying through the whole second act.

Is it a challenge to be naked on stage? What’s rehearsal like to prepare for that kind of scene?
When I moved to New York I never thought I would be the kind of person who would be in a play where I had to be naked. I thought maybe I’d be in the ensemble of “Hairspray” or something. I never thought I’d be doing edgy sort of work, let alone stripping naked. This is the most naked I’ve ever been, in this play. In “Spring Awakening” I sort of just dropped my pants. [Pause] Is it fun? I don’t know. Once you get into rehearsals and you feel comfortable with the people you’re working with, and it becomes about what you’re acting and not about Jonathan getting naked, it takes some of the pressure off.

Do you remember seeing a show when you were a kid that made you decide to pursue a career in the theater?
When I was in fourth grade, our elementary school took a class trip to see the high school production of “Annie Get Your Gun.” My mom had taken me to theater before but it had never clicked in my head. At intermission I was so blown away. I thought it was over, and when we got to come back and see more of it in 15 minutes I was so excited. I went to the library and got the record of the show and took it home. From that moment on I became obsessed and did as much school theater and community theater as I possibly could.

Do you get recognized a lot on the street?
No, not really. The great thing about acting in theater in New York is that you sign a couple of autographs outside the stage door, and then you walk down the street and people couldn’t care less who you are.