Former Star Trek actor to host Master Class in Lansing

From 1995 to 1999, J.G. Hertzler played Klingon General Martok on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” It was a role that the former stage actor said would change his life.

Since leaving the football field at Bucknell University for the stage 50 years ago, Hertzler has played mostly Shakespearean roles.

Now a resident of Trumansburg and member of the Savage Club of Ithaca, he is hoping to merge the two with a master class in Lansing.

On Feb. 25 Hertzler will host “A No-Nonsense Technique: Shakespeare to Star Trek from the Bard to Martok” at the Savage Club Performing Arts Center 12-3 p.m. The Performing Arts Center is located at 1004 Auburn Rd. in North Lansing.

Hertzler said that the class, which is limited to 15 participants, explores the similarities in invoking the grace and style of performing Shakespeare with playing a member of the Klingon race.

“The course is about teaching the truth and grace of Shakespeare plus the music of that. You’re speaking a heightened form of communication, and that’s what the aliens are speaking,” he said. “It has to be listed above normal, sloppy, American dialogue, but it has to be truthful too.”

The Savage Club has called Lansing home since 2021, but the club was founded in London, England in 1895. It is a charitable nonprofit, dedicated to the enjoyment and pursuit of the arts through performance and support of community arts groups.

There is no charge for the workshop, but a free-will donation is encouraged. Those interested can register at savageclubofithaca@gmail.com.

Hertzler came to the acting world while he was a linebacker for the Bucknell Bison in the early 1970s. After devoting his life to football, he came into his senior year wondering if the sport was his true passion.

“I said, ‘What the hell am I doing? I’m spending nine hours a day practicing, preparing, hitting people and then cooling off,’” Hertzler said. “This was a time when America and the world was in upheaval, so I thought there were so many more important things I should be doing.”

He said it hurt to quit the sport because although he wasn’t sure he ever loved it, it was something he had done well for years. Soon after, however, he found what would become his life’s work.

After a gentle nudge from a classmate, he auditioned for a role in the school’s production of “Marat/Sade.” During the show he met Harvey Powers, who was the director of the theater department at Bucknell, a man he credits with being a mentor on a par with his father and his high school football coach.

After college, Hertzler worked for the federal government in environmental affairs. While in Washington, D.C., he continued to do stage work and received a few television roles. He left the federal government to pursue acting, and in the 1980s he moved to San Francisco to work in the American Conservatory Theater.

Eventually, the move many actors have made to Los Angeles seemed inevitable. 

“In America it’s strangely difficult to make a living doing theater, because it’s not recognized as a profession,” he said. “So I moved to LA to begin to earn a living.”

While in Los Angeles, Hertzler appeared in numerous television shows, including “Seinfeld, “Murder, She Wrote” and a two-year stint on “Zorro.” In 1995, he began what was supposed to be a two-episode appearance as General Martok.

Four years later, he was still playing the role. The impact it had on him, however, would last much longer.

“Star Trek changed my life. I really can’t underrate that. It was vital in changing my life and made a lot of things possible,” Hertzler said. “I was able to travel around the world on somebody else’s dime and meet tens or hundreds of thousands of people that I otherwise would never know existed.”

Hertzler has continued to live in the Star Trek universe by going to conventions around the world, with multiple stops scheduled for this summer.

Following Star Trek, he decided to explore what living in Los Angeles would be like moving forward.

He comes from a household that had two hard-working parents present. His father was in the Air Force, and his mother was a high school French and Latin teacher. He said he was raised with a set of values that he wanted to instill in his daughter.

That didn’t seem possible in Hollywood.

“If I had a choice, I didn’t want her to grow up in LA because it’s hard to keep your head screwed on straight [there],” he said. “Whatever make of shoes you have isn’t important, the make of your whatever is not important. It’s what you think, and do, and feel.”

An opportunity came during the 2005-2006 season when an old friend, Skip Greer, whom he met in San Francisco during his time at American Conservatory Theater, got him to Rochester’s Geva Theatre Center to play Henry Drummond in a production of “Inherit the Wind.”

Members of Cornell University’s theater department saw the performance and asked Hertzler to play the same role in its production the next year at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

He accepted and saw that there was an opening for an adjunct professor at Cornell. After applying and being offered the job, he began his move from Los Angeles to Ithaca.

“It was a big change, but I’m so glad I did it,” he said.

After Cornell cut his teaching position, he stayed in Ithaca and joined the Savage Club and continued to do Star Trek conventions.

Hertzler recently taught the same master class he will be teaching in Lansing at the Geva Theatre Center. A fellow member of the Savage Club heard about it and asked Hertzler if he would consider teaching the class at the club’s Performing Arts Center.

He agreed, saying that he loves the venue, which used to be the Faith Bible Fellowship Church. His hope for the class is that everyone will be able to get a chance to act and receive feedback and instruction. Everyone will also be given a syllabus of materials from Hertzler.

Hertzler said he hopes participants can truly work with the instruction and notes to elevate their performances by tapping into the heart and soul of their characters. According to the event flier, the class is for anyone aged from 12 to 72 and over.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Email story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com