Stages of Life
Sometimes even a grateful veteran actress finds that playing the role of a matricide can be a stretch.
In your 51st American Repertory Theatre production, you're playing Hippolyta, a human, and Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Directors often have one actress play both roles. Why?
I read somewhere that Shakespeare probably did it for theater economics and because it's fun for the actor. There is one scene where the fairies exit and the very next people onstage are Hippolyta and Theseus. It's a very quick costume change.
Not everyone thinks that Shakespeare is as relevant as you do. Give me an example of why he is.
In rehearsal, we were talking about how you turn on The Weather Channel, and it's 90 degrees here, 50 degrees there, there's floods. We're working on a speech in the play that makes sense now. Titania talks about how because she and Oberon are fighting, nature is not getting its proper due, so it's rebelling: Rivers are overflowing, the weather is crazy. The state of the world in our Midsummer [opening Saturday] will reflect that, that it's very confused and empty and wrong. You're reminded over and over why people want to do Shakespeare; the plays never go out of style, they always make sense.
Ever carry your roles home?
I think I do, [but] not to an excessive degree. When I played Mother Courage, I had these two women strongly in my mind, my grandmother and step-grandmother, both immigrants, one Polish, one Lithuanian. Both tough. I was in a Polish-Lithuanian mode for a while, ate lots of big food.
Most challenging role?
I was in The Beauty Queen of Leenane and played the daughter. Maureen has no one to love or to love her; she's essentially stuck with her mother, who is not the easiest to get along with. Going from a woman who's very depressed -- no Prozac in Ireland -- to being so mad she becomes mortally violent was very challenging. And I was in Martha's Vineyard [at the Vineyard Playhouse] in the summer, and it was beautiful and wonderful. And every day it was "Kill your mother, kill your mother."
You've been with ART off and on since 1980. Have you missed out by spending so much time in Boston?
Sometimes I think, wouldn't it be nice if I was more on Broadway and could pick whatever plays I wanted? But I feel lucky because I get to be an actor and make my living doing that. I've never done anything but that. It doesn't make me rich monetarily. But it does in other ways.
What goes on onstage that we don't know about?
During important sporting events, if you're offstage a lot, it's your job to find out the score and let people onstage know. One time at ART, in the first season, in a strange and confusing play, the script was so bad and actors so bored that they played tag. At one point, someone who knew I was "it" was literally running away from me on the stage. 