Interview with Brenda Wehle

Brenda Wehle is currently appearing in Tony Kushner’s “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” at The Public Theatre. From 1980 to 1987, she performed in regional theatres across the country. After that, she spent ten seasons as a company member at the Guthrie Theatre, where she played almost every role an actress might ever set her heart upon. Brenda made her New York debut in “Waste” at the Theatre for a New Audience, and has appeared in numerous films and television shows. She is an actor to her marrow.

PC: Do you recall the moment when you knew you wanted to be an actor?

BW: I think it most likely was when, as a 19-year old French Literature major, I was asked to participate in a play. The part was Granny in Edward Albee’s “American Dream.”  I do remember feeling very responsible for her, very much her in my body and in my mind and heart and I felt so very old.  I look at a photo of me doing that part now and I think: “What?! I look just like a hunched up 19 year old me!”

But what I remember is that people got HER and were surprised that I had that in me. I, too, was surprised!  Or it might have been when a year or two years later, my parents came all the way to Chicago to see my sister Steph and myself in a play (directed by a drama student) of Jean Paul Sartre’s called NO EXIT. My mother’s response to her experience was a very New England phrasing of, “I didn’t recognize you.”

PC: So your first experience of acting was that the character was something to be found inside you. Did your early training confirm that impression?

BW: My earliest “training” was one of an “unofficial” nature. I would bet that being an army brat, traveling to a new place every year or two, sometimes to different countries and having to learn new languages, and to “adapt” to a certain extent (survivor skills) those experiences themselves were teachers which I later drew from semi-consciously. I only became fully aware of the connection when I began working professionally.

The best training (and really the ONLY training, aside from Acting 101, which I had to take in order to be accepted in the MA program) I had starting out was that as a graduate student at Catholic University Of America. I was given several roles in two years’ worth of rehearsals and performances across the country (heaven!). Our little band of players (and we each were also truck driver, car driver, wardrobe, lighting, sound, set  put-er upper and take-er downer, accommodations maker, interviewee, etc.) travelled under the name of National Players and each of the tours ended at the end of nine months with a ‘professional performance’ at the Olney theatre then owned by the University.

So in many ways, I was drawing on everything I had learned that was INSIDE me to do that, and when playing the characters, i.e. Jocasta, Elmire, etc., I drew from what I knew those women and I shared—not too much, as you might imagine—but we did share fear and pain and love and “being outcast” and “attacked” and even a sense of humor a[bout some of] the experiences I had had adapting as a young girl to all that traveling in all those cultures, hither, thither and yon.

This all has something to do with an experience of “communication,” really. The recognition of the importance of it, the desire for it, the need for both listening and being heard. How essential an art it is for us all to perfect if we are to be able to share and reflect upon collectively, the experience of living life as a human being, to be comforting and to feel comforted in some way to and by one another, honored, I suppose.

And then there was the sheer joy of doing it!  I myself had never felt such freedom! The people I was portraying were the folks who needed and I could share that!   People witnessing our plays laughed, people cried, people fell asleep right next to those awake and the whole time there was this person up there, in each of us, getting an opportunity to communicate through the literature of a classic play, familiar to some out there, and brand new to others.

PC: I have to say that I am very moved how you instinctively understood that a character in a play is someone who needs. How did you get to The Guthrie with all those like-minded souls and how long were you there?

BW: Getting to the Guthrie was a miracle. I had been doing a new play by Eric Overmyer, “On the Verge, or the Geography of Yearning,” which had begun at Center Stage in Baltimore. After a year or so, and a production there and in New York, The Guthrie Theater put it in its season. Stan Wojewodski, then Artistic Director of Center Stage, invited me to continue playing the part in that production. This was at the time that a “changing of the guard,” so to speak, was taking place at The Guthrie. Liviu Ciulei was leaving his post and Garland Wright was taking up his as Artistic Director.  At the end of that season, Garland asked if I would be interested in joining his Acting Company.  I said that I would be honored to, but that a longer commitment on both my part and the theater’s was necessary in order for me to accept. I had two children, I was separated from their father and I wasn’t going to uproot them for another five month stretch. I really wanted to be able to accept this beautiful offer. The dream I had been hoping for—a full time acting position in a regional theater company—was so close at hand. Months later, Garland called and offered me a personal commitment of a recurring annual contract for three to five years. I was ecstatic! Truly in ecstasy.  My girls and I moved to Minnesota from Philadelphia where I was able to buy a house with a white picket fence, find them a good school, and if I chose, when the weather was above freezing, I could walk to work. I was a member of The Theater Acting Company from 1987-1997 during Garland Wright’s full tenure.

PC: People’s eyes seem to mist over when they mention his name. What was so great about him?

BW:  His genius, his talent, his passion, his commitment, his intelligence and heart; his love of, and responsibility to and profound belief in the power of theater, to name but several great things about/that were Garland. I consider myself the most fortunate actor in America to have worked with him so closely for so many years. The roles he “assigned” me stretched and deepened my own commitments and belief in that same power that he spoke of so often and so eloquently.  When Garland addressed any gathering, nervous about having to do that as he always seemed to be—not in rehearsals, but in ‘Public’—those listening to him were awed and inspired, silenced into thought, in a way.

Garland, as a director, was an actor’s director (having been one himself earlier in his life).  To him there were no ‘extraneous’ characters in any play.  He fleshed each one so thoroughly and placed them, guided them among each other with such grace and beauty. Beauty. All was beauty to Garland.  He had a hard time making even evil ugly!

AND, his sense of humor! We laughed richly in rehearsals—even with the most difficult of material, the darkest of subjects. And when you really couldn’t “get” the note he was giving you, and you asked him to, he would DO the move, make the gesture he was trying to get YOU to do (psychologically-based, naturally) and then a LIGHT would come on for you. You could literally feel what he felt in the character and all you had to do was house his display and a whole chunk of mystery opened up in you. Garland was so committed to respecting actors in a real and tangible way. He built a Company of them. He raised their salaries and demanded of them that they attend classes he provided for their continuing growth. He gave us the finest theatrical literature, directors, designers to work with. He was an exacting and supportive leader to us all. And what we did together, under his guidance and with his full support, was to experience “The shared act of imagining” with one another and with our audiences. Garland was “sui generis.”  I am ever grateful to Garland for all he gave me, all he taught me and I will always miss him.

PC: You even like saying his name. Do you think actors feel they are part of a community these days? Do you feel you are?

BW: I would say yes, often, but not always.  At least I believe most actors feel they are. Now, the term “community” might vary in hue depending upon WHERE any said group of actors live and work.  I ‘m finding that the community of actors I feel very much a part of are the actors I have known, worked with around the country who are now here, and new actors I continue to meet while working here in New York.  It is such a joy to round a corner in this city and run into not only an actor you know/have worked with elsewhere but also a costume designer, a director, a stage manager, a lighting designer, you name it.  In that sense, New York City is Actor Community Mecca but that can also be said to be true of many cities around the country which house a strong Theater Community (i.e. Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, etc.)  That having been said, I’ve also felt a sense of community of actors on any given set one is working on—movie, TV—a community of actors can be “birthed” in these places!  Any time an actor has an opportunity to work with any given number of other actors a community is built.  Does it last?  Often not, but sometimes, nomadically challenged, actors who become friends as well? Lifetime community is theirs wherever they may be.  Nothing’s more fun than sharing emails with an actor friend on the subject of work one is doing while separated by hundreds of miles. Two actors, two roles, two locations and a myriad of attendant personae with whom they are working that too creates community of a sort. I wonder if it is any different for musicians, say. As a member of a City’s Orchestra you have a community of musicians.  With secure work, great talents, supportive management, all are nurtured.  But then there are some wonderful musicians who actually prefer to NOT be a member of an orchestra but instead travel and perform on demand. It’s an interesting question, really.  And I would bet that every actor would have a very different response to it.

PC: Since you live in both places, could you generalize about the difference between actors in New York and actors in California, if there is one?

BW: I wonder if the real difference isn’t in the questions asked around the “acting work” being done in either city. Actor’s have such a wealth of questions about the work, always, and it seems that in NYC while doing theater work we get to ask them. In L.A. we are asked to “do” the work and not question it. Also I think there is the draw/dream in L.A. of becoming “known,” “famous” a “celebrity”?  I don’t experience that here so much (there are always exceptions to be sure) but I would say that “work” and “fame” have different ingredients for actors in each place.

PC: Clearly, theatre is a priority for you. Have you found your agents through the years to be supportive of that?

BW: I have, actually, and I feel very fortunate about that. I signed with my first agent after the Guthrie, in 1997 when I moved to Los Angeles with John. [Brenda is married to actor John Carroll Lynch, ed.] I had a hard time finding one at first, but John helped me assemble a “reel” of nothing but Guthrie production shots/stills and we chose some music to go with it and then, a dear friend who was a producer director brought me in to audition for a recurring part on a series and I got the job and, what d’ya know?! An agent was more willing to entertain taking me on at that point!

I have had one bad experience. I can expound if interesting to you but for the most part, I have felt very supported. Very.

PC: Well, I am surprised but very pleased to hear that my former profession has stood by your commitment to the theatre. Of course, I’d be very interested to hear about the bad experience.

BW: My first agency blew up out of nowhere. One of the agents who had been there announced he was forming his own office and asked me to come with him. I loved this guy. He was so honest, always saying things like, “Never trust an agent.” Then one day there was a situation with a conflict of dates between a production of “Cymbeline” that was going to London and directed by Bart Sher which I had been offered and a recurring role on a television series. There was no way the dates would work for me to do both of them and I realized there was no way the agency was going to let the series slip away. Nevertheless, my wonderful agent said he would do everything he could to keep both jobs alive and then handed me over to his assistant. She and I would supposedly work it out together. That got to be a little tense and finally one day the assistant said to me on the phone that it was time to get over “Cymbeline.” I suddenly realized they had committed me to the series. Then she added before I could say anything, “Look, we’ve kept you on, Brenda, not because you make us any money, but because you are an ‘artist’, OK?”

I heard that and handed the phone to John and thought I was having a heart attack—which in retrospect I WAS! My heart was attacked! I did love doing the series but that was the end of the relationship with that agent. I wish them well. I have never had another incident like that and that was the ONLY time I did not feel supported completely by an agent of mine in my choice to do Theater!

PC: That’s really horrible but, of course, it happens all the time. Glad to hear it’s the only time it happened to you. I can’t help think that the right artistic choice ultimately leads to enhancing the actor’s career in every respect—money, prestige, everything. Though there is not a lot of support for such thinking anymore.

Do you find your commitment to acting as an art and to the actor as artist mirrored in younger actors today?

BW: I HAVE found that! There are a lot of truly talented, well trained, eager young actors graduating from programs all across the country who are taking the risk, the chance, that what they feel drawn to do with their lives will be blessed with opportunity.  Having taught at the U of MN grad school, and shared in Q & As with a group of UNC, Chapel Hill MFA students fairly recently, I  found them to be  deeply inquisitive and clear about the prospects of doing the work.  Something else I have noticed? I find that we more mature actors are pure example and teachers to the younger ones in a cast and that it behooves us older folks to behave well in a rehearsal. After all, aware of it or not, we ARE mentors to those coming up after us. I had such wonderful examples in my own years doing this, Ann Pitoniak being a prime one.  It makes a difference to the work to behave well while rehearsing it, that is for sure.

PC: Do you have a most memorable role? A favorite onstage moment?

BW: I feel I am one among many who can honestly and gratefully answer: “Not just one but many!”  I find it hard to say which moment is the MOST memorable.  All of the characters I have been honored to play have had their special moments, really.  People who have seen some of the productions I have been a part of often remember ‘their’ best moments of my performance in a show and what could be better, right?

Among those are some moments in Alan Bennet’s “Talking Heads,” “Pericles” at BAM, “Harvey,” “The Seagull”—but the series of moments for me that seemed to encapsulate all of the joy, the wonder and the mystery of being one with an audience while also being the story teller, occurred during EVERY performance of “Medea.” The audience, literally and audibly, was divided by gender in its responses to moments in the play. Women responded heartily and similarly to some moments, and men the same and in unison to others.  You could not NOT be aware of the difference in tone in those responses. Amazing! And each time I felt even more humbled to have been given the role, to be having this experience, to be in the company of such magnificent artists at all levels of production and to feel in a moment the incredible awe of the history of the power of a live theatrical moment, an understanding, a “knowing,” that we actors are all here but to be in service to those alive in our time since it was written, since it was performed at Epidaurus! I subsequently found out that the genders were actually split apart in the seating arrangement of these performances back then! So what we experienced in the telling of the tale in 1991 was what was experienced all those years ago in Greece!

PC: You talk as if you were really serving an art form. It’s quite wonderful. I don’t hear many people who seem to genuinely feel that. Do you think many actors do and they just don’t reveal it so nakedly?

BW: I think many actors are so ready to talk about that subject of serving an art form or even of ‘serving through art’, period. My first real consideration and mulling about that began with Garland insisting to us, his company of actors, that we take on the mantle of calling ourselves “Artists.” And it was through that encouragement that I began to think about the role that Art and Artists play in humans living out their lives on this planet. If we DON’T describe ourselves as “artists,” who are we? How DO we describe ourselves as operating functionally in a culture? I have encountered, many times, actors who aren’t really ready to have that conversation. It is a conversation diminished in our culture at present, but I have never encountered an “artist” unwilling to pursue the topic.  It might be [because] I am working on Tony Kushner’s play at this moment, but big thoughts/ideas need to be argued, need to be seen/heard being argued today in the theater. That is simply the way I feel when I feel encouraged and hopeful. I’ve always loved contemplating the cloud-mist I can see fronting the mountain I know is behind it.

PC: Could you say a few words about rehearsals for the Kushner play?

BW: Thrilling, intense, challenging, new pages arrive daily; some tweaks in an existing scene and some whole new scenes. A bit scary for us thespians but all are totally in on the co-laboring in/of Tony’s delivery! We are at one more week of rehearsal, tech and previews!

PC: Thanks. What about a favorite performance by another actor?

BW: Christine Ebersole in “Grey Gardens,” Zeljko Ivanek in “Master Harold and the Boys,” Byron Jennings in “The Merchant of Venice,” John Heard in “The Glass Menagerie,” and so many other performances in film, so many moments in rehearsals of so many plays when an actor exploring is literally “stunning” us all.

PC: And I am quite stunned by your bottomless zeal for your art. I have a final question. We’ve all heard stories of legendary marathons—Ian Holm in “Henry IV Parts 1&2” and “Henry V” in one day, all three parts of “Henry VI” in Central park followed by the cast of HAIR singing “Let the Sunshine In” at dawn. Fewer of us have actually been in those marathons. You have been in three. Could you describe the experience?

BW: The “Greeks” Marathon at Hartford Stage, Mark Lamos directing, in the early 80′s performed with a Marathon for the Opening and one for the closing and otherwise played in parts on separate evenings was astounding. At the closing marathon performance, at the curtain call, the audience literally leapt to its feet after ten hours of theater and even began shredding their programs and tossing them into the air in the midst of applauding—a long time applauding—and we onstage were transfixed both by the response to the event and our having DONE it.  That was a moment of altruistic joy for all of us gathered and participating.

The experience of William Shakespeare’s “The History Plays,” Garland Wright directing at The Guthrie Theater (same schedule). On the Opening Day Marathon, the company came out on stage for the third performance of the day, which was “Henry V,” and the audience again leapt to its feet and began applauding wildly before we even began our choral rendering of “O For A Muse O Fire.” Astounding, thrilling, and again altruistic joy.  We ALL were celebrating the experience together. Unforgettable in both instances.

CIDER HOUSE RULES, performed similarly at both The Seattle Rep and the Mark Taper Forum—pure storytelling, actually—direct from John Irving’s novel, period costumes, minimal set pieces, many actors telling the saga and more often than I can remember exactly, someone would faint in the audience during the description and enactment (no gore, no verisimilitude, just plain story telling) at one particular moment in the story, audience and actors shared a moment of mysterious reckoning as to the power of the collective “shared act of imagining,” as Garland described.

PC: How would you describe that moment?

BW: An awesome experience of true “collective consciousness.” Humbling and wondrous. Greater than the words used to create it inside of which was a tremendous feeling of gratitude.

How lucky have I been? Those memories fortify and confirm my sense of the necessity and importance of the art form. LIVE theater.

PC: Thank you, Brenda, for all these moments and for so much superb work.