Where are you from and where do you reside now?
I grew up on the last small registered family farm in Worcester, MA and have lived in NYC for decades. I always knew I would.
What is your artistic discipline?
I’m an actor. I knew that would happen, too. Since grade school.
When did you become a Member?
I was ecstatic to hear the news that I’d become a member sometime in 1993. Longtime member Susan Willerman, who’d written me a recommendation (along with John Schwab and dearly missed David Margulies and Meir Ribalow) left the news on my answering machine. I heard the message upon my return from a Springsteen concert. Before I listened, I didn’t think it was possible for my night to get any better, but that news topped seeing Bruce!
What is one of your favorite EST Memories?
I have a gazillion great EST memories, but if I have to pick just one, it would be playing Ginny, "the feminine caller” in the premiere of EST Member Artist Christopher Durang’s parody of The Glass Menagerie, FOR WHOM THE SOUTHERN BELLE TOLLS as part of EST Marathon 1994. (That Marathon sold out before we even went into rehearsal and, with playwrights like Steve Martin involved, attracted some very heady company. Allison Janney was in Julie McKee’s play and was a wonderfully supportive colleague. And Paul Ronan, father of Saoirse, was in the play right before ours, with my friend Ed Hyland, father of Sarah. Little did we know what big careers those girls would grow up to have!) It was my first important job in NYC and I was utterly thrilled and determined to do his hysterically funny play justice. Durang had been a comic idol of mine since I was an undergraduate acting student at BU and my main objective at my first audition was just to get his tone right. It was in the days before cell phones, so I can still remember running to a pay phone outside the studio on 57th St. to call my husband Bill to let him know that, rather than ending up with egg on my face, I’d actually made Mr. Durang laugh. The notion that I’d land the role hadn’t even occurred to me. But two callbacks later, I did. It was the hit of the Marathon and moved on to a production of a full evening of six of Chris’s short plays at Manhattan Theatre Club later that year called DURANG DURANG, which also sold out and was pure pleasure to work on from start to finish. The night Julie Andrews was there, she talked with the cast backstage for about twenty minutes. Chatting with Mary Poppins about the work was a career highlight. And my friendship with Chris and his beloved husband John Augustine went on until he left us this past year. That production changed my life for the better in so many ways. And none of it would have happened without my membership at EST.
What is influencing or inspiring your artistry right now?
So much it’s impossible to list it all, but many, many of the people who inspire me are member artists right here at EST. There’s a prodigious amount of talent here across many theatrical disciplines. Most recently, I was completely knocked out by Lloyd Suh’s FRANKLINLAND this season. Since the pandemic, I’ve found myself at The Met Opera on a regular basis and I get a great deal of inspiration from those productions. I think of it as a kind of cultural cross training.
Who are your artistic influences?
If you’re very lucky, you’ll encounter a truly great teacher during the course of your life. Mine was my high school music teacher Antoinette Gianinni. "Miss G” was a Juilliard graduate from a very conventional Italian family who, as was not unusual at the time, was pressured to live close to her family in MA rather than pursue her promising career as a musician. That life limitation for her was the gain for every student who came under her tutelage. Her music appreciation classes opened a world of music to me that I would never have experienced without her. And singing in her chorus taught me so much about collaboration and professionalism. But she taught much more than just music. I still have my notebook from my first class with her and it’s covered with the names of great writers, philosophers, visual artists and thinkers, whom she would casually mention in the course of making one point or another. I wanted to know them all. And, over years, I did become familiar with most of them. She and I had a regular correspondence with each other until her death ten years ago at the age of 91. That’s when I learned she maintained that same sort of steady connection with many of her former students. I treasure every word of advice I ever got from her. She made me believe a life in the arts was possible, even for somebody with a very humble, blue-collar background. And, because of her, for me it was.
What was the best play/film/TV you watched recently?
THE PIANO LESSON, both on Broadway and the recently released film version. Just as I’m grateful to have lived in the Sondheim Era, I’m grateful to have lived in the August Wilson Era. I remember seeing the first production of FENCES and knowing it had been written by an individual with prodigious gifts. His canon of work is one to be grateful for. Also, I have a special place in my heart for NYC theatre artist Michael Potts. His work knocks me out every time.
What advice do you have for emerging theatermakers that you wish you knew?
Perseverance is everything. And some of the most fulfilling work can come to you in thoroughly unpredictable ways. Betting on the deepest and truest parts of yourself, even when that seems crazy, is the path to take if you want the life of an artist. That life can be quite hard, but community, like the one I’ve found at EST, can sustain you during the tough times.
What are you working on now?
I’m doing a casual reading of a new play by my colleague Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Marans with a terrific cast of six, including David Hyde Pierce, in the second week of December. Coincidentally, David was in one of the first Marathon plays I saw at EST, when I first moved to NYC and he was just starting out. When I met him on the picket line during the SAG-AFTRA strike last year, I was happy to tell him I still have the program, in which he wrote a wryly amusing bio. He also spoke beautifully at Chris Durang's recent memorial at Lincoln Center. I’ve learned to be grateful that, in our theatre community, circles often converge again and again.
How can people connect with you?
Through EST or my agents at the ASA Talent Illuminated (formerly Ann Steele).