Saturday night, after the second-to-last performance of King Lear, Frank Malle leaned on me as we stepped offstage. As we crossed behind the curtain, he audibly winced. “You okay, Frank?” I asked. Without missing a beat, he smiled up at me and shot back: “Are you kidding me? I live for this.”

And he does.

Frank Malle’s portrayal wasn’t just a performance, it was a coronation. Frank wore Lear, a role many actors tremble to touch, like a thorny crown of triumph. Complex and crumbling, regal and ravaged, sharp with rage and soft with grief. He delivered all of it while wearing a pair of knee-high buccaneer boots he’d bought in Los Angeles nearly fifty years ago, once worn in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Richard Chamberlain. Like the boots, Frank brought his own history to the stage: decades of experience, pain, and fierce paternal love as the father of four sons poured into every moment.

It was unforgettable not for its polish, but for its rawness. We didn’t see a performance. We witnessed a man unraveling.

But Lear is only the latest expression of a lifetime onstage. Frank's creative path began in Linden, New Jersey, where he first performed at age twelve in Auntie Mame. In high school, he was student council president, vice president of the drama club, and starred in the senior play, Angel Street. He went on to study theatre and speech at Montclair State Teachers College.

In the late 1960s his journey took a spiritual turn. Frank joined the Hare Krishna movement and was given the name Vrindavan Chandra (‘Moon over Vrindavan’). Drawn to stories with spiritual depth, he helped form a Krishna theatre troupe and began exploring performance as a sacred act. “I wasn’t a scholar or anything,” he said. “I was just looking to live something real.”

That depth of inquiry still drives his work. “According to the Vedas, human life doesn’t begin until you ask: Who am I? Why am I here?” Frank told me. “Interestingly, those are the same questions an actor has to ask their character.”

For King Lear Frank dove deep. “The text is paramount,” he said. “It reveals character, relationships, and motivations.” He consumed critical essays and watched every version of the play he could find.

Frank’s roles have included kings, pimps, madmen, jesters, con men, ghosts, vampires, and revolutionaries. In each, he seeks connection. “I’ve poured my heart and soul into every role,” he said. “I hope I’ve delivered a soul-connecting performance every time.”

A key piece of his philosophy comes from a lecture he attended by Anthony Hopkins. “It isn’t the actor’s job to feel this way or that in a scene,” Frank recalled. “But it sure as hell is the actor’s job to make sure the audience feels it.” That insight has guided him ever since.

Frank has been part of Prescott’s theatre scene for over a decade and on many of our stages, directing, starring, and just as often sitting quietly in the back of the house, watching. Well, sometimes quietly. I remember him standing up from his chair and dancing with the cast of 2024’s Jersey Boys, a show he attended at least five times.

The March production of King Lear, directed by Julie Harrington and presented by Basin Lake Theatre Project as the soft opening of the Cosmos Theatre, was a landmark for Prescott. Bold, emotional, and unflinching, it showed what local theatre can achieve. And at its heart was Frank, burning with vulnerability and power, proving that community theatre can be more than just “good … for community theatre,” it can be great.

After the final performance, Frank turned to me, accepted my hug, and wept in my arms. In that embrace, I felt the weight of what participating in theatre can mean.  Not just to a town. To the people who pour their hearts into it— The ones who are changed because they did.

For Frank, as a father, a seeker, a storyteller, taking on a part like Lear isn’t just a role. It’s a reckoning.  And he lives for it.