Gammage Goers

“August: Osage County”                                                                                                  
Casual conversations with cast members

 
On a recent trip to Tempe, Estelle Parsons donned a dingy bathrobe, alternated smoking cigarettes and unscrewing her pill bottle, and repeatedly raved about the rhythm of Eric Clapton’s music. She was on stage, performing the lead role of Violet Weston in the play “August: Osage County.”

Before rehearsals for Friday night’s show at ASU Gammage, Parson graciously paused for an hour of casual conversation with a small gathering of Valley artists and arts supporters, including several of the Gammage Goers tasked with reviewing shows during this season’s Broadway Across America series in Arizona.

She’s been meeting with artists and arts advocates while on tour with “August: Osage County,” including stops in Denver and San Francisco. A lifelong New Yorker, Parsons acknowledges her bias for believing everyone needs to be in New York, but recognizes that theater is becoming more widespread—with various degrees of quality and success. She doesn’t appear snobbish, just smitten with her hometown.

Parsons sits atop a small stack of stairs in the ASU Gammage lobby—much shorter than the staircase she maneuvers with various degrees of success when she’s on stage as a pill popping matriarch—and looks like anyone you might meet on the street (assuming you’re on a hip street—and Mill Avenue certainly qualifies).

The first thing I notice is her caramel-color shoes, a somewhat-worn cross between moccasins and penny loafers (no pennies, of course). Then her large red round eyeglasses, the small singular hole in her faded blue jeans and her half-tucked in blouse with an overall leaf pattern in muted tan, green and blue (plus a peachy color I’m not astute enough to identify).

She’s interested in learning more about Arizona’s arts community and where theater fits into the hustle and bustle of our lives. She’s concerned that too few people are going to the theater these days. The last thing Parsons wants to hear, she says, is “Oh, I went to the theater once.” Good theater pulls people back time and time again. “August: Osage County” clearly fits that bill in her book: “This play is a phenomenon.”

“I don’t even call it a play,” Parsons says, “because the audience starts to interact with it immediately.” Other plays, she observes, come out of literary tradition. “This one doesn’t do that.” Still, she’s quick to distinguish herself from folks well-versed in literary criticism. That’s not her thing. “I’ve been in acting all my life,” says Parsons (she began acting in community theater productions at the age of seven).

Her vast credits include being an original member of the NBC-TV “Today Show” (she was the first woman to do news reporting for a television network), garnering an Academy Award for her performance in the film “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring on television for 10 years as “Roseanne’s” mother and more. Parsons was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2004. Still, these aren’t the things she’s come to share.

Instead, she talks about the work, the craft of acting. “I never went to school or anything,” she says. “I apprenticed in summer stock places while at college.” A theater student in the group asks Parsons about her technique. She’s gracious and genuinely helpful in her reply—yet says, “I don’t have a technique.” Someone once told her, she recalls, that this was her technique.

“I’ve prepared myself through my life of acting to let things happen to me after I get out on stage,” she says. “I believe I was born with a gift and I’ve spent my life trying to be aware of this, to use this.” Her tone is matter of fact, earnest but not egotistical. “I have always,” she adds, “tried to listen inside me.”

Once Parsons reads a script she’s mindful of “what comes up in me, what questions come up.” “I read the script,” says Parsons, “and get up and try to do what it gives me.” Parsons readily admits that she doesn’t like taking acting classes. “I don’t like anyone telling me anything,” she says, “as an actor.”

“What happens today is not the same as what happens tomorrow,” reflects Parsons. “Stay open during rehearsals, performances.”

Paul Vincent O’Connor, who performs the role of Charlie Aiken in “August: Osage County,” has now joined Parsons sitting on the steps. He agrees and tells her, “Yes, you’re exquisite at that.”

O’Connor has extensive film and television credits and spent 16 years as a member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He and Parsons agree that while actors can do research and other prep work for their roles, what they really traffic in is the emotional.

O’Connor references Greek philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor and Stoic who wrote: ‘Time is a sort of river of passing events’) and cites a quote attributed to Heraclitus (a later Greek philosopher who wrote: ‘You can never step in the same river twice’).

They also agree that acting demands emotional and physical stamina. If you work the craft, you already know this all too well. But those of us who witness the work sometimes take it for granted.  The more time I spend with theater folk, including my daughter Lizabeth, the more I appreciate the blend of rigor and agility this craft demands.

“It’s a lifelong commitment doing long, physical work like this,” says Parsons. She describes the physical activities built into her busy schedule—hiking, weightlifting, working with a personal trainer, swimming, running—as just part of her life as an actor. “I’m Swedish,” quips Parsons. “My mom was born way up by the arctic circle, so I’m stronger than most.”
 
Of course, none of this occurs to you as you’re watching the Westons continuously unwind and rewind their lives, their relationships, their memories.

The set features a three story house that bodes of the heaviness this home heaves onto the hearts of its inhabitants. The writing (described by Parsons as “sparse”) scarcely gives an on-edge audience time to breathe between revelations and their reverberations. The actors draw you into a world infinitely more real than anything you’re likely to see on a reality TV show.

The live performance allows for interaction you simply can’t get from that little box or giant screen in your living room. (You can make it 3-D, but it’ll still pale in comparison to live performance art). Audience members, insists Parsons, are an integral part of the show. Not just “August: Osage County,” but every work of live theater. “We must listen to the audience,” she says. “Audiences have a tremendous effect on how actors are.”

O’Connor has performed in touring productions of “August: Osage County” in both London and the U.S., and is quick to point out the differences between audiences in the two countries. He’s also seen differences among American audiences. “Every region,” he observes, “has a different sensibility.”
 
Play-going is a much greater part of life in England, reflects O’Connor. “They understand what the process is and their part in it.” London audiences take their seats promptly and are very attentive. They applaud vigorously (“over their heads” if they’re especially pleased with something), but show fewer emotions than American audiences.

Parsons and O’Connor became mindful at this point that rehearsals were set to begin onstage, and didn’t want to be late. We had to let them go before anyone had the chance to ask something I suspect was on many of our minds. “What can we do to encourage more Americans to attend, understand and appreciate the theater?” In the absence of their insights, I’m going to venture a guess…

Practice, practice, practice…

I’ll see you at the theater.

--Lynn

Lynn Trimble is a 2009-2010 Gammage Goer who does freelance writing/editing as The Poised Pen and writes a daily arts blog for Raising Arizona Kids magazine.