'a delicate balance' begins rehearsals in los angeles

Yesterday we had our first read-thru with the company and designers at The Odyssey Theater. I'm so glad to be re-teaming with director Robin Larsen and to be working with this terrific cast for the first time. ADB will mark my fourth play with Robin (the Ovation Award-winner "Four Places" I produced rather than acted in), and it's almost exactly two years to the day since we did "The Fall to Earth" at the same theater.

We open April 26th. Once tickets are on sale, you'll find them HERE.

opening david lindsay-abaire's pulitzer prize winner, 'rabbit hole'

I have a list of roles I'm dying to play on stage. I think most theater actresses probably do. Mine's yearssssss old, written in various shades of pen and pencil on a dog-eared piece of notebook paper, tucked away in a drawer.  Once in a while I'll get it out to look it over, and occasionally I'll edit the list. Cross something off that no longer appeals to me or I'm too old for (see ya, Juliet!), add something in that's just come along or that I feel I've grown into. I'll think about the doozies that I'll wait a while for ('Mary' in Long Days' Journey into Night, anyone?) and wonder how many of the titles will eventually cross my path. Only a couple of times have I been lucky enough to cross a part off the list because I got cast in it. A few years ago, I played 'Alma' in The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. When I got that part, pffffft! Off the list. And she was as much fun as I'd imagined.

Don't get me wrong: I have been given the chance to play many terrific roles, but lots of them have been in world premieres, and you can't put those on the "to-play" list unless you figure out how to time travel. (A couple of those roles would be on the list now if I hadn't already played them. 'Lisa' in The Glory of Living. 'Darlene' in Caught.) I don't know how I got lucky enough to snag those parts, but I'm glad I did.

Then just the other day, pffffft! Another one crossed off the list, and I'm so excited for it. I'll be playing 'Becca' in Rabbit Hole at the beautiful La Mirada Theatre starting October 25.  I've been dreaming about this role for a very long time.The production is being directed by Michael Matthews, and I can't wait to get to work with him and the rest of the cast next week. You can click here for more info and tickets.

'the fall to earth'

Back in 2010, I was fortunate to be part of the producing team that offered up Joel Drake Johnson's funny and heartbreaking play, Four Places, in Los Angeles at Rogue Machine. That production was helmed by my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Robin Larsen, and featured Roxanne Hart in one of the lead roles. Its quartet of actors and creative team went on to many richly-deserved award nominations that season, including the Ovation Award for Best Production, Intimate Theater, which we ultimately won. The whole process was a thrill, and so I'm really, really excited to announce that I've re-teamed with Robin and Roxanne for another project written by Joel.

Earlier this year, we secured the West Coast premiere rights to Joel's equally dark and funny drama about family secrets, The Fall to Earth, which premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater several years back. Robin will again direct, but Rox and I will switch places--this time around I'll star and she'll produce along with the fine folks at Los Angeles' acclaimed Odyssey Theatre. And as the icing on the cake, the wonderful JoBeth Williams will grace the stage in a tour de force role as the mother of my character. Rehearsals begin this week with a February 11 opening.

Click here for performance schedule and tickets. 

I hope you'll join us.

skateland, u.s.a

My son, Wyatt, went rollerskating for the first time last weekend. It was a birthday party for a classmate, and the whole class was there. He was ecstatic to finally get on skates and told me that when I came to pick him up after work, I'd see him zooming around the rink.

Hardly. 

About an hour and a half into the party, I arrived at the rink to the ear-splitting vocals of Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' (appreciated) and multi-colored lights bouncing off the walls. I was tired. Rehearsal had been a tough one for me; I was disappointed by my work that day, and I really just wanted to get Wyatt, go home and nurse my bruised ego. As my eyes adjusted, I finally caught sight of him, alone at the opposite end of the rink making his way around, a death grip on the outer wall for balance. His progress was painfully slow in comparison to the speeding, dancing skaters around him. Occasionally he'd let go and coast a few feet, then smash violently to the floor. Up to the wall and a few more shuffles, then down again. And so it went until, many long minutes later, he rounded the bend and saw me. The shit-eating grin on his face and wobbly thumbs-up he threw my way were his assurance to me--he was having a blast, knee pads, bruises, sweat and all. His ego was faring just fine. And by the time we left, he was making it with the other skaters all the way around the rink. It wasn't pretty, but he was on his feet and moving forward.

Parent after parent approached me that night to tell me how unbelievably hard it had been for Wyatt to just stand on his skates that first hour. "Even holding onto the wall, he fell a hundred times," one said, adding, "if it'd been me, I'd have quit." I asked Wyatt what had kept him going. Before flailing away toward a friend he'd spotted, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I really wanted to skate, so I kept getting up."

caught, or why i was up at 3:34 am

I'm home from rehearsing a new play that will open December 3, 2010 at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles. That it is a new play means that I'll be originating a role, an experience I find both a joy and a nightmare, literally.  I'm playing a woman very far removed from my own experience on  many levels, and making sure I tell the truth of who she is has got me a little anxious.

The work that actors do is special. And by special, I don't mean vaunted or More Important Than Other Work. I mean different and strange. My work takes me out of the house at odd hours and leaves me talking to myself on a regular basis. Thanks Haysus for hands-free phones; now when my neighbor on the 405 watches me madly gesticulating and pontificating, I can pretend it's because I'm On The Phone (sometimes I'll even do a little dumb play with my phone to add to the illusion when I know I've been, um, caught.)

As to the literal nightmare, I never sleep more poorly or dream more vividly than when I'm rehearsing a play that's gotten under my skin. Not all of them do. But the tougher ones, the ones with themes of violence or hate or deep, deep love occupy my mind almost around the clock during the 4- or 5- week rehearsal period. Caught is one of those plays.

The reward I get for all this Big Suffering is to move around on a stage and say someone else's Beautiful Words. To be someone else for an hour and fifty-two minutes. To maybe, if I'm lucky, mirror for a couple of people something difficult they're working out in their own lives. To expose some small truth. To make somebody chuckle in recognition.

I won't  tell all Caught's secrets, but it deals with questions around love, family and faith. It's a very funny, very affecting play being originated by a team of some of Los Angeles' and New York's top theater professionals. I think it's gonna be one to see.

Caught, the play