Interview with Adale O'Brien, May 11, 1989

Teka Ward: Today is May 11, 1989. My name is Teka Ward. Meeting with Adale O’Brien. We are at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and our topic is Actors Theatre. Adale, you’ve been a resident company member at Actors since 1969.

Adale O'Brien: Yes, I came when Jon Jory came. He offered me two plays and as it turned out there were more than two plays in my future at Actors Theatre. It’s been 20 years now and it’s over- I think the count’s over a hundred-twenty-five now.

TW: Of plays in which you-

AO: Of plays in which I have performed.

TW: How did your-

AO: I’ve been involved I think in, in more than that because I directed as well.

TW: How did you know Jon.

AO: Jon and I first met at the Cleveland Playhouse, when he had left the University of Utah 1:00to go out in the big wide world and see what his chances were of becoming a theatre person. ‘Course we look back on that now and giggle because his chances of becoming one of the biggest theatre people in the world were obviously very good. And, ah, Jon and I had an interesting experience which we both laugh about. We played Orestes and Electra in Sophocles’ Electra together at the Cleveland Playhouse and, ah, it was, to be perfectly blunt, a hoot (laughter), if you can call a- a- the experience of acting in a Greek tragedy a hoot. But it was, it was great fun. I used to come in early and pin curl Jon’s hair—he was beardless then and he has very straight hair—and we would pin curl his hair and he would wander 2:00off and it would get dry, and I’d put on my makeup and run up and down the hall and prepare myself for the frantic entrance of Electra and then just before the curtain went up we’d un- pin curl his hair, we’d un-pin his pincurled hair and fluff it up and spray it gold. (laughter) And on he would go, as Orestes. Well, he came on a little later than I did.

TW: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

AO: I’m from Billings, Montana. My father was a jack-of-all-trades, kind of a Renaissance man is the more elegant way to say it. He was a musician, an amateur makeup artist, an insurance underwriter, chief clerk of the draft board. My mother was a housewife but I consider her to be one of the most talented women I’ve ever met. She sang beautifully, although she had an untrained voice. My grandmother was the first woman president of the Montana Pioneer Society, 3:00and with her parents, as a child, crossed either nearby or right across the area where Custer’s last stand, I will call it that even though that’s not the proper way to, to designate it. I believe it’s called, more correctly, the Battle of Little Big Horn. Anyway, they crossed it in a Conestoga wagon about three months after it had happened and they were still picking it up. I had a wonderful childhood in Montana, a very happy childhood. And I had a lot of music around me because, I said, my father was a musician and he had two bands, the Shrine Band and the City Band, which he was conductor of both. And uh- uh- I remember very fondly one thing that he used to do which always amazed me. He was the conductor and so he would check out the uh- um- the musical arrangements of music that he had bought by taking the conductor’s 4:00score and sitting down at the piano and playing it, and he literally sounded like a whole band when he did. He was really a pretty incredible mind, and talent. I think my Daddy was probably a genius, (laughter) actually.

My brother was also a highly ah- ah- intelligent and talented man, who was one of five men after the Second World War that was being groomed for NASA’s beginnings. As a matter of fact he was in the beginnings of what NASA is today at Wright Patterson Air Force base. He and my sister-in-law were both killed in a car accident though. But I always watch the lift-offs because I know that Danny would have been down there pushing buttons, had he lived. It was very much a- a- what he wanted to do. He was fascinated by the exploration of space.

TW: There were just the two of you?

AO: Yes, just the two of us. And there was a very large gap in years. He was fourteen 5:00years older than I am. Is that enough family?

TW: No (laughter) --interested in acting? Was it a result-

AO: Well- um-

TW: - or start out being interested in acting?

AO: No, I think it was a result of seeing road shows, of- you know, my father loved um- um- arrangements of Broadway show tunes, for the bands to play, and it just- the- the whole, you know, wonder of Broadway, Broadway musicals. Also I loved movies, and I loved movie musicals, Betty Grable’s movies being my particular favorites, and all that I could think about, for about five years when I was growing up, was wearing fishnet stockings and sequins and feathers like she did. Of course now you have to hog-tie me to get me into anything like that. (laughter) But there was one time in my life when I just thought that would be sheer heaven. And the more makeup on my face the better. And I, of course, having been in the theatre 6:00for many years, now don’t wear any makeup when I’m in- when I’m in real life and off the stage.

TW: You went off to college.

AO: Yes, I went to the University of Washington. I was very fortunate, I got a full scholarship there. I was there for five years. I never got a degree because I acted constantly. It was a very interesting program uh- uh- the- the university had at that time—doesn’t have any more—had three theaters and one of them was shared with the Music Department so a lot of opera, and also dance, was done there. But the two smaller theaters were solely ours. One was an arena theater, one was a small proscenium stage, audience capacity about as big as the Victor Jory, and each show played six weeks and ran six nights a week. And if you got into one of those theatres you stayed in that theatre all year long because there was an overlap between the two houses, between the Showboat and the Penthouse. 7:00And I literally acted from about the second quarter I was there constantly until five years later I stopped doing master’s thesis productions for friends. I think that probably one reason I never got a degree was a certain stubbornness that I really didn’t see why I had to take an oral at the end of four years of—and I was a very good student in college—at the end of four years of constantly performing. I was in a show every six weeks, for four years, ah- went into the summer sometimes. And I think I was just insulted (laughter) –to do an oral. Because I considered what I’d been doing for four years, you know, one long oral exam. So I never did get a degree, and in retrospect I think it’s a wonderful thing that I didn’t, because it’s very possible that I would have chosen to teach if I’d had a degree. Without a degree I had to act. So that’s 8:00what I did.

TW: And so how did you start that?

AO: Uh- I got Ford Grant to the Cleveland Playhouse right after- well, at the end of- I think it was the end of my- my fourth year in school. I think there was a lapse of about nine months before I actually went to Cleveland, I believe that’s correct. Um- And, uh- This is a complicated story. Actually my husband and I—my husband at that time, an actor named David Bird, who is still in the business and still a wonderful actor—um, he got the Ford Grant. My- We got the same amount of votes from these twelve illustrious people who’d viewed 150 people from all over the country. But I was told by Glenn Hughes, 9:00the head of the department, that I could only expect that they would give him the grant because if they gave it to me he probably wouldn’t come. If they gave it to him I would go. And that was my first kind of like rude awakening into the machinations of the world in general, that they considered a wife as, you know, an obvious adjunct to a husband, but not a husband to a wife. But our marriage (laughter), which was not too steady at any rate, did fall apart after that first year and I was handed David’s grant (laughter) so I stayed out at the Cleveland Playhouse and he went off to New York. I worked at the Cleveland Playhouse for four years and it was a- it was a very exciting time. I worked with some amazing people, the most- the most well-known person that I worked with is Alan Alda. Alan 10:00Alda and I did a show together in which I was his pregnant wife, pregnant with twins, and on the night we opened his wife Arlene had their first girl. So it all kind of dovetailed in a wonderful way.

It was a very exciting group of people, a lot of them- There was a lot of attrition right after the first year, because a lot of the people were very like Alan. They wanted to get on with their search for being a star, and that’s what he did, that’s what a lot of people did. I, on the other hand, have always wanted to be a working actor. I don’t have any particular ego-need to be a star. It would be fun to be a star to get that money, but as far as the other part of it—the lack of privacy and the constant living in a goldfish bowl—I feel, I feel I made a very wise choice. At this point in my life I would like to make some films, though, because films now are beginning to look like something I’d really like to be involved in. John Sales films, 11:00things like that. But at any rate- um- um- Cleveland was a wonderful experience, and it proved to me that you could be in one place, work in one theatre, become known to the audiences, and hopefully be loved, and make a life in a town that was not New York, or Los Angeles, or even Chicago. And I enjoyed that time and it whetted my appetite for the kind of atmosphere, the kind of wonderful group of people and wonderful town that I found when I came to Louisville. And when I came and got the chance to settle down that’s what I did. I nested.

TW: So Jon just called you up on the telephone.

AO: Yeah, I had just come back from a season of summer stock and ah- I believe I had literally walked in the door in my apartment in New York and the phone rang, I picked it up and it was Jon and he said, “How would you like to come to Louisville, 12:00Kentucky?” And for a fleeting moment I thought he was inviting me to the Derby (laughter) and, uh, then he said, “No, I’m going down to head a theatre down there.” And I knew about the theatre because an old friend from the University of Washington had worked here under Block’s and Cornett’s regime, and, ah-

TW: Who’s that?

AO: His name is Jerry Harte and he is now in England, married to one of England’s most wonderful, charming, incredibly talented women in the theatre. Her name is Julia McKenzie. She just finished, as a matter of fact, directing a production of “Steel Magnolias” in London so Jerry and I were commiserating about the fact that, you know, it always seems as if all these things are connected.

TW: She just finished directing- ?

AO: Yes, just.

TW: Because I was going to ask you what you thought about being in a play like “Steel Magnolias” in which you were just in, which is completely about women, and it was written 13:00by a man and it was directed by a man. I wondered how you felt about that.

AO: Well, I have ambivalent feelings about it. In some cases men do an extraordinary job in getting inside the psyche of the play, getting inside the woman’s experience. When Larry Deckel directed “Quilters” he made a quilt before he ever got to directing us. He made a small, granted a small quilt, but it was a quilt and there was his blood in it, you know, because you constantly break your fingers. I thought that was an amazing gesture for a man to make. He wanted to know what it was like. Um- And he certainly found out. But in some cases it can be- uh- not as happy a circumstance. I think Charles Karchmer who directed “Steel Magnolias” is a wonderful director, but he is an urban man who’s bald. (laughter) He did ??? women in a less, much 14:00less urban atmosphere than he was born and raised in who are fiddling with their hair all through the play.

TW: I should get you to summarize the play.

AO: Ah- The play is, as Hollywood is beginning to say in the promos for the movie, it’s about six Louisiana matrons in a beauty shop, who—I love that, matrons—in a beauty shop who talk about life and support each other and have their little- there is some really charming by-play between the two older women, ‘Ouiser and Clairee, who have always been affectionate sparing partners throughout their lives. And it is not all frivolousness; it’s about life and death. Many of the people who saw the play here 15:00said that they really were amazed that they could be delighted for two and a half hours and, at the very end, about 15 minutes before the end, you get this excruciatingly emotional roller-coaster ride. As a matter of fact that’s what one person said to me, “You certainly took us on a roller-coaster ride.” Just laughing enjoyment and then suddenly this real tragedy, which is alleviated by the incredible humanity and spirit of these women. And, life goes on. It’s, ah- It’s a very, ah- It’s a very wonderful play and it’s an astounding first play for an author, astounding—for a playwright, I should say. And we were all laughing in the dressing room, one wonders if his family—since this did happen to his sister, his sister did die of the same kind of complications that one of the leading 16:00characters dies of, so that this play came directly out of his deep, deep emotional pain. And we were all laughing in the dressing room saying, “I wonder if his family is constantly looking over their shoulders wondering if they’re going to be the subject of his next play,” because, very often, such an astounding first play means that there may not be one in there for quite a while. But who knows. I mean, he may simply be just an extraordinary playwright. There are playwrights who come along who can, as they say, which is not a very polite phrase, “crank ‘em out.”

TW: Which puts me in mind of--

AO: Incredible ear for dialogue. Amazing ear for- excuse me-

TW: “Blood Issue,” a first play and being autobiographical,

AO: Yeah, amazing-

TW: which was just in the 13th festival of-

AO: Humana Festival of New American Plays. Yeah.

TW: By Harry Crews.

AO: Yeah, Crews 17:00is astounding too. And there is another amazing ear. That, as a matter of fact, is one of my theories about what makes a truly inspiring playwright, director, actor, even designer, and certainly the people who cast for plays have to have really fine ears. But very often the people that I’ve worked with who- who I have felt, uh, really needed to work on life in the theatre. It isn’t that they aren’t good actors, it’s that they don’t hear reality, they don’t hear, um, uh- they don’t hear human communication in the same way other people who can really sing the music of humanity, hear it, you know. And of course there are very very famous people who I think have very odd ears. Like I do think that Amanda Plummer 18:00has a very odd ear, she has a very kookie kind of emphasis and delivery. Tammy Grimes is another- There are lots and lots of people who have made their careers going entirely against what you expect a human being to say in any given situation, or how to inflect an emotion, or how to express an emotion. But anyway, that’s my- that’s my pet theory. That’s what I think makes really good people in the theatre—people who have very good ears. Of course you have to have good eyes too because obviously you have to do physical tings that will make more plain, or enrich your physical characterization on the stage. But I think the ear is the foremost organ in the theatre, as it were.

TW: You were in “Stained Glass.”

AO: Yes.

TW: What was that like to- What was that like to be in?

AO: It was wonderful. I liked the play very much, from the very beginning. 19:00By the way it is on film. We did film it. South Carolina Educational Television came and filmed it because Mr. Buckley didn’t want it to go away and he wanted, if nothing else, he wanted a copy for his archives. So they came and filmed it, so it may be on PBS or KET or, who knows, A&E. It was a wonderful experience and it was exciting to work with Buckley because his mind is absolutely amazing. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met, one of the funniest and most charming people I’ve ever met. I was completely overwhelmed. And, I mean, he has one of the biggest fans in the world in me. I’m even going to rush home tonight and tape him on Larry King Live on CNN. I just think- The funny thing is that even when the sixties were happening, 20:00and of course I was very much on the other side of the river from Mr. Buckley (laughter), in more ways than one. I watched him anyway. I was fascinated with him. I have always been fascinated with his persona, and since that time I’ve met a number of people who are not as far right (laughter) as Mr. Buckley, who also think he is one of the most charming people who’s ever walked the face of the earth, and probably one of the best minds in the English speaking world. Just an extraordinary individual.

TW: Did you like his work?

AO: I adored my part. I thought it was a wonderful role. I was a little sad that it was not just a trifle larger because I thought she was a totally fascinating woman. But a wonderful thing happened when we were in New York doing table work, as we call it in the theatre, because Mr. Buckley couldn’t come here. So they sent us out for three days of table work, and he wanted to know what we thought. He really wanted to know and really listened, and it was even to the point where he would—and 21:00there is a kind of an etiquette in the theatre where a playwright should go through the director—but sometimes he’d get so excited he’d just ask you a personal question, you know, I mean a question personally, about how you felt—instead of asking the director to ask you—which was- it was very charming in many cases. Mr. Buckley would say, “Steve, am I overstepping my bounds?” And Steve would say yes, and Mr. Buckley would go right on and overstep them anyway, because he felt very close to us right away. He really liked the company. But at any rate there was one section in the book that I really thought was a beautiful piece of writing, and it really pained me that it wasn’t in the play, and it was a comparison between an ancient crusade of the family, of which I am a Countess of and my son is a Count of, and a modern crusade 22:00which my son is on. So I told Mr. Buckley that I thought it was beautiful, it had literally brought tears to my eyes when I read it, and I thought it really sang a song that should be sung someplace in the play. So, he said, “Oh, well, I’ll look for that,” so he did—I just showed it where it was—and then I came back to Louisville, he went to Switzerland , there were many fax communications, and when the new version of the script came out the speech was in, and it was mine, and I was of course overwhelmed. I was just amazed, because that was an extraordinary gesture. It was a wonderful experience. Everyone seemed to love the play—deeply, you know. And a lot of people who saw it felt that it was- it was such a fascinating 23:00play to listen to, that the characters were fascinating. It is a cooler play than a lot of the plays in the festival were. But it is a- I think a very important.

TW: I should get you to give a synopsis of it, and to explain what the ending meant to you.

AO: All right. Um- The play is basically about the Blackford Oakes character who is in many of Mr. Buckley’s spy novels—he had a Blackford Oakes series, like, you know- like James Bond sort of thing, double O seven. He’s an operative for the American government and he has been sent to Germany to keep tabs on a young German Count who the American government and the Russian government are getting nervous about because it looks he’s going to reunify Germany. This is right after the Second 24:00World War when the reunification of Germany, to anybody in the world, that all hell would break loose. So that was not anything that anybody wanted—the good guys or the bad guys. And this an incredibly charismatic young man, my son, the Count, Count Wintergren, and he and Blackford Oakes become very very good friends—friends on a level that is almost psychic, I mean they have an instant rapport—and they’re both men with incredible integrity. The excruciating problem of the play is that Blackford Oakes eventually has to be party to the, basically the political assassination of Count Wintergrin, because he will, if his votes are getting- his polls, in the polls his standing is getting higher and higher and he will become the Chancellor, or whatever the political position 25:00is, and he will reunify Germany and nobody can take that. So, Blackford Oakes does not actually do it himself but he is indeed a party to it and it’s of course a crushing thing for him to have to do because he is killing one of the most extraordinary men in the world, and he is probably the man who admires him the most. And there’s a wonderful line that’s like a- about- uh, about him having to kill him being likened to a wolf eating her young. Or, you know- It’s a- It’s a horrible experience for this man who is not unused to death and getting people out of the CIA’s hair, and so forth. And the end of the play is a scene between the Countess and—which is not in the book—it’s a scene between the Countess 26:00and Blackford Oakes, where she gives him a letter nine months later, after her son’s death, which in the book—it’s not brought out in the play but in the book she’s a clairvoyant—so in my reading her, in my acting her, in my creating her I always let that be part of it because it felt to me she knew what was going on. Mothers do anyway, very often, even if they’re not incredibly clairvoyant. But at any rate she gives Blackford Oakes a letter from her son which says no matter what happens I understand the forces that you are involved with and whatever happens just understand that my admiration for your integrity will never fail. And it’s a very moving moment, and then Blackford, who has finished the reconstruction of this extraordinary cathedral, which is what brought them together—or chapel I should say, it’s not a cathedral, it’s a very small, but very beautiful, 27:00jewel-like renaissance chapel—ah, he kneels at the foot of the crucifix and the countess goes over and kneels beside him. And the image of the Christ above and the two of them below—Blackford being totally destroyed by the knowledge that of course he knew there was nothing he could about it, and of her looking up at what in my mind is her son, a Christ-like figure who did indeed have to be sacrificed. I think it’s a fascinating play, and I loved the book. I read the book and enjoyed it very much. It’s fun to read somebody who really understands what the English language does, what it can do. He’s a wonderful writer. He just sent me a copy of his latest book, On the Firing Line, with a lovely note and a dedication, that of course is a great treasure to me. A great treasure. 28:00TW: So when you came here in 1969-

AO: Yes. Back to the past.

TW: - you were in “Under the Milkwood.”

AO: Yes, that was the first thing that we did.

TW: So, like you came back here, Where did you stay? Who met you? What happened?

AO: Oh, I had a wonderful experience when I drove into town. I drove into town in this disreputable Ford Fairlane that I’d been driving in New York for a while, which, the gentleman that I was involved with before I came down here said he was positive it had been a rum runner’s car in Tennessee or Georgia, it was- It had an amazing amount of power under the bonnet, as they say in the ???. And it was just- it was a mess. I basically just made it to Louisville. And I drove to Ormsby and stayed with Trish Pugh that night. And she was wonderful. I had met Trish before, I knew her in New York, very briefly, but I really admired her and I loved her right from the first time I ever saw her and we became very fast friends, and of course she was an extraordinary 29:00force in the formation of this theatre. I just got a letter from her recently. I hadn’t written to her for a long time. She’s very happy in Wales, very happy. And I think probably really and truly does not miss the theatre. She used to say occasionally, “I would love to just keep driving when I get on the freeway.” Because this job that she had here was an extraordinarily difficult, demanding, taxing job, and she was brilliant at it, but it took almost every moment of her time. It was very difficult for her to have any sort of life. But she’s an incredibly talented lady and thank God that she came here and did that for as long as she could do it.

TW: What do you remember 30:00about the opening night?

AO: Well what I remember most about opening night (Tape 47, #1 of 2, side 1, ends mid-sentence)

(Begin Tape 47, side 2)

TW: Beginning of Side 2, Tape 1.

AO: Oh, now is it just going on again? Oh, great.

Um, I think- I think what happened- It was probably one of the most extraordinary nights I’ve ever spent in the theatre, and I think that my memory is probably colored by the fact that it was just, it was absolutely an amazing evening. Everything seemed perfect. You could feel that the audience was just soaking it up, adoring it. Of course it’s a magnificent play, Jon directed it magnificently, and hopefully we were all very well cast. And at the end um- there was a hymn sung, we were all kind of interspersed around two or three ladders, some of us up on the ladders, some of us around on the stage. 31:00And the hymn was very beautiful and the last, the last notes of the hymn just hung in the air as the lights were going down and literally I believe as the lights went out the last note just was just was like (snap) not there anymore, which is a wonderful effect if you can achieve it in the theatre. And then there was this kind of rustling. And then the lights came up and the audience was already on their feet. That’s the way I remember it. Well, they might have leapt up immediately, but what I remember is looking out and seeing the entire audience on their feet. And then they cheered, and we cried, and we cheered, and they cried. It was wonderful. It was an extraordinary experience, it really was.

TW: So, though you may have been here, of course the early years of Actors Theatre were very important, and- but you’ve been here since the Jory years, since thebeginning.

AO: I’ve been here since the beginning, 32:00yeah, yeah. And it’s- it’s been absolutely wonderful. I’m so grateful that I have found a place where I am able to work, consistently. It’s very, very unusual in theatre. I never know quite what to say to people who come from New York to do two or three shows here and they ask me how long I’ve been here and I say, because I did to many people this year, twenty years, and their jaws drop down to their chest because it just doesn’t happen. Ah- and, I mean I cou- Of course I could have stayed in Louisville for twenty years and not worked for Actors Theatre, but the point is that I stayed for twenty years and did work consistently, constantly, at Actors Theatre. And Jon did tell me a number of years ago that I belonged to probably the smallest minority in the world—an actor who has worked at a theatre for a good number of years. So, I consider Actors Theatre 33:00basically my career. I mean, yes, I had other wonderful experiences in the theatre but this is where all of the truly amazing things that have happened to me have happened to me. A lot of wonderful foreign tours, and of course being able to originate a role in a play, like “Agnes of God,” you know. Jane Fonda played me (laughter) that’s ??? People have asked me how difficult is it to pass on a role that you’ve created. Well, I mean it’s not difficult at all because we do it all the time. It’s something that- it comes with the territory. A Broadway production unit, the producers, or whoever were first involved, the director, with “Agnes of God” they would have looked at my name and said, “Who is she?” I mean I wouldn’t have stood a chance of doing it on Broadway. They want stars, you know. If it’s an Off-Broadway production your chances 34:00are better. But, I also wasn’t ever sure that I wanted to do that. Now I feel a little differently about “Stained Glass.” I think if “Stained Glass” went to New York I would love to go with it. And, ah- ah- I don’t know if there’s anything like that in the offing but I would be delighted to go and do it, I really would.

TW: In addition to acting, you have a beautiful voice.

AO: Oh, thank you.

TW: I mean, you also sing.

AO: Yes, I do. I do. I also record books for The American Printing House for the Blind, too. Which I enjoy very much. It’s a very wonderful thing to do. But I do love to sing, and I sometimes feel I don’t get to sing enough, but then again, singing- if you have one large singing role every three or four years if you’re an untrained singer like I am, I think that’s probably enough. Because very often your confidence 35:00over steps the bound of your ability. I’ve gotten a little ragged around the edges sometimes from vocal strain.

TW: I did read that you had performed in concert and on record with the Louisville Orchestra.

AO: Yes. Now that is a spoken piece. There’s only one little piece of music in it. There’s a lovely short section of a hymn. And I must admit it sounds very good on the record. That was an interesting experience because Jon and I did it in concert. It’s Emily Dickinson and her mentor, T. E. Higginson, and the communication between them, the letters. It’s called “Magic Prison,” and it’s by Ezra Laderman. It’s very beautiful, but it’s in the ilk of, you know, “Peter and the Wolf.” It’s- Is that right? “Peter and the Wolf”?

TW: Yes AO: It’s where a- Or, even, the one they’re going to do next year, “????,” which is spoken, speaking parts, as it were, with an orchestra. I also did another one which was fascinating and extremely difficult. Joyce called me up and said, “You have to save my life, I can’t do this.” And I said, “Why 36:00can’t you do this.” She said, “I can’t do it, I’m not a musician.” And it was very difficult, it’s William Walton’s?—I think that’s right—“Façade,” and the poetry is—dear God now I’ve forgotten her name—that extraordinary English poetess whose poetry often is just enchantingly nonsensical. Oooo- Why can’t I remember her name?

TW: You’ll remember it.

AO: I’ll remember it. Edith Sitwell. I believe that’s right. Isn’t that right? Yeah, I think that’s right. And that was really hard to do, because, basically it was saying the poems in time to the music. It was different 37:00than just a sentence and a beautiful orchestral interlude, or a paragraph and then a beautiful orchestral interlude that wove in and out of it. This was literally like singing and it was fun and it was challenging, and I did it with one of the people from the opera, a tenor, and what a voice he had. It was fascinating.

TW: Where do you record for The American Printing House for the Blind?

AO: At the facility on Frankfort Avenue.

TW: Oh, the Kentucky School for the Blind?

AO: Well, it’s next door. It’s the first big building on that block. And then the Kentucky School for the Blind starts. But it is indeed- it’s the prototype, it’s the motherhouse, it’s the place where it all started, and we are the premium shop for this kind of reproducing of spoken books, talking books. And of course there’s a big braille facility there too. I just finished a over 600-page 38:00book about Lillian Hellman which was a really difficult book but a lot of fun to do, and I learned a great deal about Miss Hellman. Very problematical individual—highly talented, but very problematical in many ways.

TW: And you yourself have written a book, you’re a co-author.

AO: Yes, I am. And it was published by Samuel French in 1985. It’s a survival guide to regional theatre. It lets you know- It’s called See the USA with Your Resume, and it lets you know how to- literally how to survive—where to buy your laundry soap, where to buy your stage makeup, what good restaurants are in the area, what kind of housing the theatre has, what kind of a town you are in—so that when you go to all of these various strange places, which people in our business tend to go to, although I tend to less than other people, you have some kind of a fix on where you’re going to be. It’s a- It can be very disorienting and I don’t- I like information. I don’t like to wander 39:00into a town and then just kind of find out about it. I like to know something before I go, and I would like to have a backlog of information that would make living there more comfortable, so I wouldn’t constantly having to be questioning people about where do I, and when do I, and how do I, and where do I. It can be very exhausting because every place is a strange place if it’s a new place to you. And this book endeavors to make every place that you might have to go in regional theatre, on the ??? circuit, make all these places accessible. I found out after it came out that all kinds of interesting people like doctors and lawyers and people who do travel were buying it because they found it very useful, which delighted me a lot. 40:00TW: You’ve also been a director. You direct.

AO: Yes, and I do love to direct. I haven’t directed anything very recently but I hope to be getting back to that soon. I think that in many cases actors make wonderful directors. Jon Jory was a wonderful actor before he stopped acting, and I think that’s one reason that he’s a splendid director because he does understand. Very often directors who have never done that have, they have less of a connection with what agony you may be going through or what, even what fun you may be having, you know. It’s just something that is experienced in the viscera when you do it, and that experience never goes away from you—the feeling of acting is an extraordinary high and- I mean I just, I don’t know of any other way to make a living that is conceivably as much fun. 41:00Well, music, of course has the same kind of enriching immediate return. It’s wonderful to play in front of a house full of live people. It’s difficult to explain why it’s so incredible, but I talk to people who make films and who have been actors in front of the live people, in front of live audiences, and there’s a tremendous amount missing when you do a film. You have to do it for the crew, and for the director. And then, of course, part of what do may end up on the cutting room floor. But it’s all yours, it’s all of a piece. You get out there and for two and a half hours you communicate extraordinary feelings and hopefully enlighten and enrich people’s lives. 42:00TW: When you find out what play it is you’re going to be in, what’s your procedure for becoming that character?

AO: Well, it kind of goes back to ears, what I said about ears. I feel that what the playwright meant is obviously right there, on the page. There is of course what we call in the theatre a subtext, which is not there, that eventually comes to me somewhere latish in the rehearsal process. I am not a classically American kind of actor. I am more of the English school. I work from the outside in. American actors work from the inside out. And I usually offer the director, very early in the rehearsal process, a voice, physicality, an attitude, 43:00if you want I mean you can use simple words like a pose or, the big word is a characterization. I try and offer them something which is my version of, it’s my reading of what I think is in the script. Sometimes they don’t like it at all, and most of the time they are absolutely right. But I do work in that manner. Then when these- and it’s very odd because both ways work: inside out works, outside in works- after you become, on the surface of your body, you know, in your skin, and in your- you know, in the outside surface of your form, and your psyche, your being, when you become that- when you start to become that person, when you get closer to becoming 44:00that person, you start feeling what that person feels. But most, many people work the other way around. They work on the feeling first, and then they allow the outside to manifest the feeling. Well, I guess maybe it’s because of my training at the University of Washington. It was very pragmatic, very practical and also if you’re doing a play every six weeks you have to learn to act, rehearse, create a little faster, than if you had three months to do a play, which is the case on many college campuses, and God knows it’s the case in most of Europe. When we have a European director and they come here they look at us like, How can you do it so fast? Because they have the luxury of, well, very often six to nine months to do a play. And if I did have six to nine months I’m sure I would love to do it the other way around, and I think I would be capable of it. But this is the way I’ve always worked, 45:00and I fancy that I am moderately successful at it because people have told me, people who admire my work in the audiences have told me that one reason they like me is because I’m different. Because I’m- because I always have another face, another- sometimes another body, another voice, and that they do feel that I’m another person. So, I guess in my case it works. It may not work in every case but I hope it does in mine.

TW: So you read the play-

AO: Um-hum. Very often the simplest way to do it is to read the play aloud to yourself, or, while you’re reading it silently to really concentrate on what it is your character is saying, what that character is trying to express, what emotional difficulties or triumphs or whatever that character is going through. And then the next step is underlining the words, (laughter) and I just finished doing that on—I left it at home—but I just finished doing it on “Trip to Bountiful,” 46:00and I had to go lie down. (laughter) It’s one of the biggest roles I’ve ever played in my life, it’s just a gigantic role. I think the most recent very large female role, done here, that I as a female got to do was Miss Marple. I was- it was a very long role, but I think probably this is a longer role. It’s a beautiful role. It’s an extraordinary role. I’m very much looking forward to doing it. But, then, in the rehearsal process the director, of course, gives you clues, gives you cues, as to which direction he wants you to go. Sometimes I make my choices too early, and then you have to back off and you have to let more of his concept, if he has a strong concept about what he wants, come in. It’s all a very collaborative—collaborative, that’s the way that A is sounded—collaborative process. 47:00It can be negatively likened to creation by committee, but I mean I don’t mean that in the negative sense, I mean it in a very positive sense. It’s astounding to me when I actually sit down and logically consider what it is we do, that it gets done. It’s very very difficult. And you have to work with people who you can second guess, who can second guess you. In many cases you have to work with people that you’re really psychically hooked up to. That you have the same mindset about most of what it is you do, not just the same dedication or the same attitude about what a wonderful thing it is that we do, but people whose- you know, it would be big help if we could read each other’s minds, and we do come very close to it, in the theatre. Very close to it. There is a kind of creative exchange that’s almost like osmosis. 48:00Sometimes you don’t have to talk about it. It’s there.

TW: Do you already know who the other actors are going to be, and who the director is?

AO: Very often, no. With “Steel Magnolias” I knew two of the other people, the- is that right?—two, un, un, un—there six of us- oh, I knew three of the other people, and then two were unknowns to me. Both of those folks I had heard of and I knew them by reputation. I had never met the director before. So, it’s all not only a process of learning who your character is, it’s learning who you’re working with too. That’s very important, especially a play like Magnolias which is such an ensemble piece, and it is very important to bond as soon as possible. 49:00But I must say women don’t have any trouble doing that at all. When we did “Quilters” we just all went Phiiit!!—we were all like together right away. And it was wonderful. Larry did another very interesting thing as well as making a quilt, he asked us on the first day to- we just sat around the table, we didn’t, hadn’t even read the script yet, to talk about our backgrounds, just as you’re asking me to talk about my background, and to talk about the women in our families, and what we remembered of them and what their focus in life was, and it was amazing because it didn’t matter where the women came from, but oddly enough most of them came from the Midwest or the west—I mean their families did. They may live in New York now, but they came from the center of the country. They were all basically striving for the same kind of thing. And I imagine that’s because of the generation they were in, they were all striving to survive in a kind of a hostile landscape. Course now the hostile landscape is New York, for most of these young women. 50:00TW: For instance now, with this play that you’re doing, have you already sat at the table? Or is your-

AO: “Trip to Bountiful”?

TW: Yes.

AO: Oh, no, I’ve never met anybody. I’ve met the director. She came here and saw the first act of “Stained Glass” in a rehearsal, she saw a lot of the rest of the festival but she couldn’t see “Stained Glass” cause we were added so late. I have met one of the board members, I have met the technical director, and I talk practically every day who is the Sandy Speer there, and her name is Eloda Patten, but they are all unknowns to me. I know none of the people, and we’ve never sat down and read it. They called me on the telephone in October. They saw me in Barbara Damashek’s, also the composer and the author of “Quilters,” they saw her drama with music “Whereabouts Unknown,” about the homeless. And they said they had been talking about me all summer. So I said, “That’s wonderful, what have you been talking about?” And they said, “We want you to come to Austin and do “Trip to Bountiful” for us.” And I was overwhelmed. 51:00And I said yes right then, and then I started thinking, gee, maybe I should have asked how much they’d like to pay me. (Laughter)

TW: You act as your own agent.

AO: Yes, I do. Yes, I don’t have an agent. But if I ever want to do film it’s perfectly obvious that I would have to get an agent. And also fly around and audition, which wouldn’t make me tremendously happy, but I think if I could make one film a year I wouldn’t have to worry, you know.

TW: When do you go to Austin?

AO: I go to Austin one week from tomorrow. Yes. That’s May 19th. And I’ll be there until the 20- well, we close the 23rd of July.

TW: Do you usually work in the summer?

AO: No, as a matter of fact, because I’ve been working at Actors for so long and they’ve been very long, hard nine month seasons for most of the time I’ve spent here. I would certainly rather not work and most of the time I have not worked, 52:00it’s just- when you’ve worked that hard for nine months you feel you need a vaca- Sometimes I feel very much like a public school—elementary school teacher—because I understand they take three months off because they they’ve worked very hard for nine months and sometimes I feel not unlike that.

TW: What do you think of reviews and critics?

AO : Ahh. Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think I think what Christopher Fry thinks. There’s a wonderful book, which is out of print now, which is called An Experience of Critics, and I have a copy of it and I treasure it very much, and I even have Xerox, which I’ll send to you, I’ll send you a copy of this, because it’s really extraordinary. But he- He has a number of feelings, he feels—and I’ve always felt this, it’s probably not something that can be achieved but it’s something that I would certainly like to have more people think about and try to move toward—and that is to have a critic, if they can’t come to the theatre with a sense of openness, 53:00innocence and wonder about the experience, then they should come to rehearsal and watch us. That will either give them a sense of wonder or totally exhaust them—I don’t know which it would do. But I think it’s incredibly important for a critic to be open to what he’s or she’s going to experience, and in this book there’s an enchanting story about Christopher Fry taking, I believe, his young nephew to a Christmas pantomime in England, and the first act so overwhelmed this child that he would not leave the rail, the gallery rail—they were sitting right on the edge of the balcony—he wouldn’t leave it, he didn’t want an ice, he didn’t want a cold drink, he didn’t want a cookie, he didn’t want anything, he didn’t want to leave, he kept his eyes rifted on the curtain waiting for it to go up again. And Christopher Fry said that when the transformation scene came—I don’t know enough about English pantomime to describe to you what that is, but it is obviously something where, like in “Midsummer 54:00Night’s Dream” a character turns into a jackass and then back into a human being kind of thing. But it is- It’s a piece of magic in the theatre which although grownups know, but this young man had never seen it before, and after it happened he turned to Christopher Fry and said, “Well, we didn’t expect that, did we.” And that’s what I wish more critics would come to the theatre with. And use in their reviews more. Even if they want to say “I hated it and I didn’t expect to,” but I would like to- I would like there to be a more fresh eye in the theatre, a more innocent eye. I don’t have a quarrel with any of the critics here, sometimes—or anywhere—sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. They’re right when they adore me and they’re wrong when they hate me (Laughter), or the play I was in. But it’s such a subjective thing. Sometimes I want to write to them after a review and say, “Are you sure you were there last night? Where were you sitting? Are you sure you saw the same show I was in?” because from their viewpoint, from what they wrote in the paper it didn’t sound like they saw the same show I was in. But it is totally subjective, 55:00this experience of going to the theatre and watching people create two and a half hours of other people’s lives.

TW: So you read those reviews.

AO: Oh, I do. It doesn’t bother me. Occasionally I’ll read one and possibly a word that the critic has used will stick in my craw, as they say, and not be too positive an influence. I think I’ve told Dudley Saunders this, but if I haven’t he’ll feel it now, and I Iove Dudley very much and I admire his writing tremendously. Once he wrote that I had a self-conscious French accent in a play and the word self-conscious 56:00is what got me. And every night, and it was difficult because everybody else was speaking with a Scots brae, it was “What Every Woman Knows,” every night as I said my first line it was like “self-conscious, self-conscious, self-conscious, self-conscious,”—it was in my brain. I still, it was o.k., I made out all right, I don’t know if it got any less self-conscious, but it sometimes can be a mistake to read them and take them to heart. I know a lot of actors who simply won’t read them. Period. They won’t even read them after the fact. Rita Gardner who was just in “Steel Magnolias” said that she reads on the plane going home, but she won’t read them. But, yet, after the review came out, in the dressing room, she said, “Well, just tell me, was it good?” And I said, “Yes, it was a great review. It was wonderful.” I guess I’m just too curious. I’m too curious to see how they felt about what we did. 57:00TW: I spoke with Yandel Smith, and it was about- I was asking him about Susan Kingsley, and he said, “Ask Adele when she found out that Susan was special.”

AO: Alright, this is a lovely story. It’s probably my favorite theatre story. Susan was working in the box office in the old theatre in the train station. And she desperately wanted to work in the theatre besides selling tickets, or whatever it was- let me see from this program what her actual designation- no, you only have the cast of characters so we can’t find out from there.

TW: Well, it says box office, and- It has box office staff and then has three or four people-

AO: And Susan was in that-

TW: Box office staff.

AO: Well, at any rate, she’s doing that, and Jon was evidently- she had gone to Lee Anne I understand and talked to Lee Anne about 58:00how much she wanted to do this, and Lee Anne said, “Well, lets talk to Jon.” So Jon took many of his lunch hours and would work with Susan. She’d come out of the box office, he would go into the theatre, they’d meet, she’d work, he’d work, you know. She’d act, he’d help her, it must have been wonderful. And I can’t imagine a better way to spend a lunch frankly than with Susan Kingsley. And so eventually- well it wasn’t too long in that first season that we did “Hamlet,” I don’t believe, it was two or three shows after the beginning, and he decided to cast Susan as the lady in waiting to Gertrude, which is the part that I was playing. Of course she was working in the box office much of the time we were rehearsing and so she wasn’t always there for the first tech with the costumes and the makeup and the lights and action and all that. There she was. And at one point she was supposed to hand me a napkin, as they say in Shakespearean 59:00parlance, a handkerchief, to mop my husband Claudius’s brow. And it was a moment where we as women were connecting because we were worried about Hamlet, and we were worried about Claudius, and we were wondering if the whole family was going to be falling apart, and that’s the basic subtext of what was going on. Well, I turned to Susan in that moment and she handed me the handkerchief and I looked in her eyes and I went up, because she was there in a more immediate sense than I had ever seen anybody be there, especially on the first time, in the first moment that you’re there with the rest of the people on the stage. I mean she was incapable, absolutely incapable of a dishonest performance. She is the broken mold. There is not another Susan Kingsley wandering around and there probably will never 60:00be. She was one of a kind and as immediate and as accessible and as extraordinarily honest as a human being and an actor (Tape 47, #1 of 2, side 2, ends mid-sentence)

(Begin Tape 48, #2 of 2, side 1)

TW: This is the beginning of Tape 2, side 1, Interview with Adele O’Brien on May 11, 1989 at Actors Theatre.

AO: I just want to tell you what a good interviewer you are.

TW: Oh, you are easy. (laughter) Believe me.

AO: Really, really you are.

TW: Let’s go back to “Under Milkwood” and then what happens- just recoun-

AO: Well, actually I think- I think that Jon probably said this to everybody, but, uh- I came for two shows, as I said, I came for “Under Milkwood” and “The Killing of Sister George.” And after he saw Milkwood, after he worked with us all, and Sister George 61:00ran in repertory with a play called “Staircase,” and also we had what promised to be a breakthrough but Equity wouldn’t let us do it. It was called a tan- uh-

TW: It was called tandem?

AO: Yeah, I think it was called a tandem evening in the theatre where you could see two plays for the price of one, so on alternate nights you would get “Sister George” or “Staircase,” both plays about homosexuality, one about female homosexuality, one about male homosexuality, and for the combination of the evening you could see Neil Simon’s “Star Spangled Girl.” And it was a wonderful evening in the theatre, people really liked it. They could stay there for two plays, it was amazing. But after, after he saw this company that he had, which included really an amazing group of people, Ken Jenkins being one, he kind of asked everybody if they’d like to stay around and he decided he’d like to do “Hamlet” for Kenny, and it just ah- it grew like topsy, 62:00you know. He just kept us all on and changed the season entirely. What he said in the papers, as a matter of fact this Sunday, is so much like Jon. He really does like to be flexible, he really does like to be able to change in mid-stream. Whether or not the subscribers adore that I don’t know. But I think it is more exciting for us, for him, even for the subscribers. Who knows what new wonderful play, or what old wonderful play he might choose to do suddenly and delight people. Obviously it worked. And it still seems to be working. Um- I see the reference to “Charlie’s Aunt.” That was such a lot of fun, and the story I told in the twenty-fifth anniversary booklet about one of the actor’s noses falling off-

TW: (laughing) Oh, but listen, I want you to tell the story- its’s enough 63:00that we have it-

AO: It’s really one of my favorite things that ever happened in the theatre. It’s just so silly. It was very close to the end of the play and George Ede, this wonderful character actor, who was playing Spettigue, had constructed this magnificent nose. He just thought he had a very pedestrian nose, he wanted to, you know, add a little some- because he’d just played Claudius—I beg your pardon, not Claudius, Polonius—and he really wanted, like all actors try and do if the audience is seeing them again and again, change themselves a little bit, so he made this magnificent, magnificent prosthetic piece, which I believe was just derma wax. So- derma wax does have a tendency to slide and one night Max Wright, Alf’s Daddy, walked over to me, I was standing at the fireplace, it was very close to the end of the show, we’re all elegantly attired, and he said out of the corner of his mouth, “George’s nose is falling 64:00off.” And I went, “What?” And he said, “George’s nose if falling off.” So I—course I’m very nearsighted on stage—so I squinted my eyes up and I could just make out off in the distance this big crack opening at the top of George’s nose between where his nose in dead skin and then goes up to the forehead and he’d built it up into the forehead so it looked almost like a rubber nose. Well it really was separating and I thought, Goodness what will happen if it falls off? And just about the time I thought, “What will happen if it falls off,” it fell off. And he made some kind of a melodramatic turn, and it plopped on the oriental carpet. And he, uh- Spettigue is a Scott and he had across his beautiful tails, his formal attire, 65:00a big swag of plaid and he grabbed the end of it and covered up his nose. Well, that just made everybody scream, and one by one the company started to kind of like puddle on to the floor—I don’t mean in the literal sense, I mean in the figurative sense, I mean people were literally hanging on to furniture and each other to not fall on the floor laughing because it was such a funny sight. And it was a big- you know, when it hit the floor it kinda went **** and flattened out , so it was this big pink blob on the floor. And I thought I was going to be terribly professional and pull this all back together, because as each person had a line they’d go **** and they couldn’t go on. So when my line came up I decided I could say my line, well, I could but the only problem was I had to walk over the nose, and I had to pick up my skirts 66:00to walk over it. Well, the audience was screaming ever harder and at the end of the play, which was only, thank God, about four or five minutes away, we all came out with something on our noses and the audience cheered and hollered and hooted and it was really a wonderful thing. But those kind of things—losing wigs, losing petticoats—it happens all the time. That’s part of the reason why audiences love to come see us because who knows what will happen.

TW: We didn’t expect it.

AO: Exactly. Well, we didn’t expect that did we? And that’s one of the greatest fascinations with live theatre. It’s dangerous because they’re alive and anything can happen. The costume can literally fall off a person—that has never actually happened to me but I’ve been worried at times that it might.

TW: You were here during the time ever since Paul Owen has been here. Does he come and talk to you all or, when do you find out what the stage is going to look like?

AO: Well now Paul is, of course, one of those incredibly 67:00intuitive people, who after long experience with this amazing space, which is a very odd space, out of his fertile creative gray matter comes these amazing sets. And we have to see a model the first day of rehearsal, and that’s always wonderful, and we know what we’re working on, even though where we are rehearsing is a flat floor with colored tape on it designating stairs, and- then of course they do have rehearsal furniture and rehearsal props. But if it’s something like the set for “Oedipus” which was stairs from the prep room literally to within six feet of the grid, that was incredible. There’s no way you can do that on the floor. But 68:00you have to be careful when you are rehearsing. If you take your time to put your foot in that taped area, which means you’re walking up- you know, which indicates that you’re walking up stairs. Working on Paul’s sets is just amazing. A set that he did here- I mean, they’re all memorable and they’re all gorgeous but one that he did here which was a particular delight to everybody was the set for “Mornings at Seven” which is the back of two big clapboard houses, and the back yard, and one night I’m standing on the porch and I look over and there’s a praying mantis about three, four inches long crawling along the porch rail, it had come in with all the greenery that they’d brought in. Oh, another wonderful Paul Owen story: When we took “Tobacco Road,” which was back in the- um, ah, that was the end of, that was the closing performa- the closing production of the first year- I believe that’s right. At any rate, they, it was in the train station and the lighting was right on the edge of the balcony, much 69:00of it, I mean literally perched on the edge of the balcony. People’d have to kind of look over lights to see the stage. And they got this scraggly old tree, because of course in “Tobacco Road” the very ground is poor, you know, the people are dirt poor and the dirt is dirt poor. It produces very little but turnips and angst. And they got this wonderful tree, which just was shocking, I mean it just looked like it was going to fall over. They propped it up, they put it in vermiculite, it was right near the lights and about two weeks into the run the damned thing bloomed. And it was like a dogwood or something. I mean it literally bloomed. It liked theatre that much. It was gorgeous, but they didn’t want to take it away, but here was this amazing image in the midst of all this degradation, 70:00this poverty, this sadness, and this incredible humor too. I mean this play is a- it’s an extraordinary piece. Here was this magnificent pink blossomed tree. I love that.

TW: Do you all talk to each other after- Do you- How do you feel about talking to the co-actors outside of rehearsal, concerning your all’s performances?

AO: Outside of rehearsal I think it’s fine. Ah- It’s funny, one reason—this may sound odd but it is the truth—one reason that I was not enchanted with New York, was that because of the lack of work in New York, because everybody’s always looking for work, when somebody would get a showcase, when somebody would get an off-Broadway role, when somebody would get, who knows, a soap, 71:00when somebody would work for Joe Pap. What people did after the show was go to a bar and talk about the show. And it always kind of amazed me because we never did that, when I was learning. You did the work, where the work was done, and because the work is hard and because it fries your brain, you know, I chose not to talk about it. And I always used to say to people in New York, I didn’t do that much work in New York but I did some, and people would say to me after the show—not unlike somebody might say as an interviewer, you know, How did you- What did you- you know—they would say, “Well, how do you feel about what you did?” or “Can you tell me how you did that?” And I would always say, “Did you see it?” And if they said Yes, which of course they did, they wanted to talk about the play, I would say, “OK, well, if you saw it then that’s it. I don’t have anything more to say about it. That’s 72:00it. I can’t explain to you what I did. I can’t- I can’t rhapsodize about the experience. It’s- We just did it.” Didn’t you see it? Well if you saw it then let’s talk about the world. That’s kind of a- I guess maybe it’s kind of a adamantly anti-intellectual stance that I have about the theatre but it is, it is not easy, and it is hard on your soul. It’s also incredibly enriching, it’s incredibly- I mean I always marvel at actors who are in therapy because I think acting is therapy. I don’t know why people need therapy, if they act. But then again, I’m not them, so I have no right to judge, but- Oh there was one thing I, just crossed 73:00my mind that I was going to tell you and now it’s gone.

TW: Do you get nervous before you perform?

AO: No, I don’t.

TW: You don’t?

AO: No, I don’t. I get excited. I just get excited. Now, this lady who’s in this picture with me in this twenty-fifth anniversary booklet, Nan Withers, who is now teaching at Northwestern. In this particular production, standing off stage one night in one of the earlier acts, I looked at her and she was green, kind of like that leaf over there. I said, “Nan, what’s the matter with you?” She said, “I’m sick.” And I said, “Why are you sick?” And she said, “Because I get so frightened I get physically ill.” And I said, “Do you think you should be doing this?” Then . she said, “No, and I’m quitting after this show is over.” And she did. (Laughter) I think that’s- I believe 74:00that’s the last show she did. But she said it tied her in such knots. Oh, I know the story I was going to tell – remind me to talk about tiger balm. It tied her in such emotional knots that it was no fun, it was no fun, even after she was out there. Now a lot of people get very very very intense and very nervous before they go out there, but when they get out there there’s just this kind of wonderful euphoria that takes over and you don’t feel all that pain any more. And it can be, I understand, very painful. But I’ve always felt very excited, very happy. Occasionally my hands will, you know, do a little shaking business. Occasionally, very occasionally, I’ll get just a little weak in the knees. I got so excited before “Quilters” I really was like hyperventilating, and I had a very interesting experience—I will get to tiger 75:00balm—I had a very interesting experience- This is all about me, is that all right?

TW: I’m telling you, Yes. Of course.

AO: Before “Quilters” opened, for some strange reason—I don’t know if it was a drop in blood sugar or what it was—but I woke up the morning of the opening and I was convinced I was in the wrong business. This has never happened to me before. I was convinced in the wrong business that I would never be able to sing a note, that I would screw up everything that I had to do on the stage, that I would be a total embarrassment, the review would be horrible, the people would not applaud me. I mean, it was like I woke up with this vision of hell, you know, that was going to happen that night. And I laid there in bed and I thought, “Well, you’d better do something about this.” So I decided I would do the simplest I knew of. I would smile all day. And all day I smiled. I forced myself to smile, 76:00when I didn’t feel like smiling. I would- you would see me, I was doing this. And they’re right when they say smiling releases good stuff in your body, because I was about eight feet off the ground that night. I had a wonderful opening. But it did change- Somehow I changed the chemistry in my body, by my attitude. I really do believe it was chemical. I don’t know why it was there. But I- Maybe it just meant so much to me that—and it did mean a great deal to me because of background, because of my grandmother, because of Montana, growing up in Montana, everything—it just meant so much to me, and all the women were so splendid, and I mean telling the story was so important to me. So, maybe that was it. There’s Don ??wick, she’s still in town, the little darlin’.

Um, but for some strange reason, and I’d love to know why smiling works, but it does. And I felt great. Took a lot of vitamin B 77:00 too.

TW: How do you feel after a performance?

AO: I feel wonderful. And it doesn’t matter if the performance is exhausting or depressing or, you know, some plays are really really hard to do and conceivably you can come off stage feeling like you want to go and jump off the Second Street bridge. But I never feel that way, and the more difficult the show is the higher I am when I get off stage. The more euphoric I am—I use that word an awful lot.

Let me tell you this tiger balm story because I think it’s funny. This isn’t an exact- but in my words from the outside in. We did a play by Emily Mann called “The Execution of Justice,” about the Moscone, Milk, murder in San Francisco. Dan White being the perpetrator of that crime and it’s pretty much a courtroom drama, and a lot of the people play different characters. Dan White 78:00plays Dan White period, and he was a wonderful actor. But right from the very beginning I watched him and I realized that this man was tying himself into the tightest knots I had ever seen any actor tying himself into. I don’t know what he was doing to get himself into that emotional state but I would see him in rehearsal over in a corner working himself into this- into this- it was like a fury of pain. It was just amazing, and tears would be pouring out of his face and I knew that inside he was just suffering terribly. And I thought, I can’t do that, that doesn’t make sense to me. Now I had a little tiny role, second role I played in the play, but a very emotional role, it’s the secretary of George Mosconi, who was the person who let Dan White into the office. And she- , when she to testifies she’s supposed to start testifying crying and keep crying all through the testimony. And I thought, “How am I going to do that?” 79:00I don’t cry readily on stage, I mean I cried all the way through the last twenty-five pages of “Trip to Bountiful” today recording my lines on tape, but you don’t cry every time unless you are like some people who do cry every time. And of course I’m so jealous of them, I love it that they can do it and I just- I just find it so glorious, but I’ve never been able to do it every time, ever. Now I have a secret. I woke up in the middle of the night about three or four days into rehearsal, and I’d already seen this man cutting himself up in little pieces, and I literally woke up in the middle of the night and went “Tiger Balm,” which is a Chinese analgesic and you put a little on your fingers and you rub it right into your eyes, and the camphor from the analgesic causes your eyes to tear. Now this is the interesting part: When your eyes start to tear you really do start to cry. You do indeed. 80:00Your physical mechanism takes over . You aren’t trying to cry, as a matter of fact you’re trying not to, which is maybe where people are when they know how to cry on stage—they try to play against it and they cry, in spite of it. But it’s an amazing thing and I’ve told people who do film about it and they’ve been very grateful. Now I understand that people in Hollywood are literally saying, and I’ve never heard of them saying it before, when somebody dries up on the set, ”Get the Tiger Balm.” Because they used to, what they used to do was to put glycerin, drops of glycerin right on the edge of the eye with an eyedropper, and then that would do it. But now they’re using Tiger Balm, and I, you know I flatter myself that I’m the one who started the trend. But it is amazing because I was full out, emotionally full out, really crying, really sobbing about, I can estimate 81:00about twenty seconds after my eyes started to tear. I was not doing anything funny, I was crying. But I was not dying inside. I was not thinking of all the people I love who’ve died, I was not thinking of all the people I love who might die, I was not thinking of the holocaust, I was not thinking of hideous tragedies which is, you know, that’s what we do in the theatre, we recall moments of terrible pain in our lives and that’s how we make ourselves weep, that’s how we make ourselves become emotionally wide open. Well, I guess I just like happiness too much. I’d rather use Tiger Balm. Besides, it’s fool proof.

TW: Tell about international touring.

AO: Oh, it’s wonderful. I mean, I was the kind of actor who never liked to get on planes. I finally conquered 82:00that. And then after I conquered it, it just seemed like I was on a plane rather regularly. The first tour was extraordinary. That was to Yugoslavia, Ireland, and Israel. We were out and went to those three countries, it was like a six, I think it was like a six week tour. We played three places in Yugoslavia, played the BITEF Festival, and ??? Two One Two, which is a theatre I had read about in college you know when I was learning theatre history. And I got to walk on the stage and watch while they opened this huge hydraulic door in the roof, or- or- I guess that’s what you call this, it’s like a big trap, that opened in the roof and I never did get a satisfactory answer from anybody at ??? Two One Two, but my suspicion is that that theatre was, once upon a time, a European circus building, because European circuses used to be in buildings. As a matter of fact, most of them still are, small circuses. And I know that because Glen Hughes, who founded the- who’s head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington and who founded the Penthouse 83:00Theatre, got the idea of theatre-in-the-round from visiting European circus buildings. They’re permanent buildings, where the circus lives. And the reason, of course, they need to open the roof is because circuses smell, and at intermission they open the roof to let air in and let sunshine in. But, at any rate, I got to play on that stage, and then I also got to play on the stage in Israel- play on the stage of the Habima. It was the New Habima Theatre, and of course I’d learned about the old Habima Theatre in school. And I also got to play on the stage of the Olympia in Dublin, at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

This is a fun story, I like this story: When we played, like I said, it was Yugoslavia 84:00first, then Ireland, then Israel, and then we came home. When we were opening, getting out at the Olympia—the Olympia is a very oddly shaped house and you come in the lobby doors and there’s this kind of long hallway and the box offices are on you right in the wall and then you kind of turn a left corner and then this theatre kind of opens up. Well from the street you don’t know there’s a theatre there. I mean it’s a little, you know three or four doors, then suddenly BAM! This is big theatre. Well our dressing rooms were kind of in an odd place, they were like off to the side and our dressing rooms literally overlooked most of the audience section of the theatre, I think we could see the stage house out to the left, but then you could almost see into the street, not quite, but almost. 85:00So we were kind of back from the street, and I was all ready about ten minutes before we were ready, well we were all pretty much all ready but everybody was kind of sitting looking at themselves in the mirror like uhuuuu. But I was feeling wired, you know, like wonderful things were going to happen and so suddenly I heard these bagpipes. And I thought, Oh, my God, bagpipes, I have to go find those bagpipes, so I ran downstairs and I ran to the stage door. Now it was a girls’ bagpipe band and they were in green plaid, and I don’t know what Irish plaid it was but it was a wonderful green plaid, and they were marching down the street in front of the theatre. And when I opened the stage door they were marching right past this alley that I was looking down, and at the moment I opened the stage door they segued from whatever they were playing into “My Old Kentucky Home,” and I burst into tears. And it was very difficult to go back upstairs. I just wanted to run out into the street and cheer.

And we had the same kind of emotional 86:00experience, all of us had it, when we opened at BITEF because at BITEF—this was amazing, they will have it in the Victor Jory I believe this fall for the Moscow Art Theatre—they have headsets in each chair, so that you put the headsets on, you listen to the show in translation. Well, at BITEF, they have a very kind of formal introduction to each company as they open, and so in Serbo-Croatian there was this man with a wonderful voice talking about Actors Theatre of Louisville, and of course all you could recognize was an occasional word like Louisville, or Actors—well, not even Actors, well not even actors I think that was another word. I believe Jon’s name I think you could recognize his name. But after this introduction then they would play the anthem of the country that the theatre was from and we were all standing in the wings waiting for the show to go up and they started to play “The Star 87:00Spangled Banner” and we all burst into tears. We were all a mess, you know. It was very difficult for us all to pull it together to get on with the play. But, you know, traveling is wonderful. And to travel and work, to do theatre, and to be paid for it is heaven. And to do it with people that you really love and people who are wonderful is just—I can’t describe it, it’s wonderful. It’s an extraordinary experience.

TW: What’s it like performing before people from a different country?

AO: It’s wonderful. One thing that I think you have to remember is that most of the world is more hooked on theatre than we are. Most of the rest of the world has long theatre tradition. And so they’re just like, uhuuu, they’re avid, they’re so eager 88:00for it, and when we do the USIA tours, which are a whole different animal, where we’re in very very small arena theatre which looks like a little tiny circus building. And there are indeed translators beyond a very thin wall and there are little like museum cassette, or little museum radio things where the people take these and they hear the translators in their ear, little things they hold to their ear. It was fascinating in Greece because the translators were with us right from the very beginning of the rehearsal period in Greece and as we went through the script they realized that some of their lines were longer than ours and vice-versa. So they got so good that you never heard them speaking when you weren’t speaking. 89:00Ever. If you had a line that was very short and they had a line that was very long, they would go trrrrmp so it would fill the same time that it took you to speak, so that the audience would get that experience of real simultaneous translation. The only thing that is spooky, and I’m sure you’ve heard people say this before, I mean, I can’t remember who I last heard say it, it may have been Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronin, or somebody like that, but, because they did “Gin Game” all over the world, it is very funny if the translator is not right on top of you, very often you have to literally stand there—if you can hear them, if they’re in a room that’s fairly close and you can still hear them burbling on—you realize that you’re going to have to hold for the laugh, if there’s a laugh there. And very often you say your line, you hear (mumble sound) and, you know, there’s another insie winsie bit of a moment and then suddenly BLAM, 90:00the laugh comes, but its very much delayed. It can be very spooky. But they’re wonderful audiences, they’re extraordinary audiences. The people who come to those international theatre festivals are—I mean they’re just (Tape 48, #2 of 2, side 1, ends mid-sentence)

(Begin Tape 48, #2 of 2, side 2. Begins mid-sentence)

AB: and we never even worked together.

TW: Now you did say that it was different to work with directors from foreign countries.

AB: Um-hm. Um-hm. Yeah, it’s dif- I think the major difference, aside from a language barrier, which can be enchanting and infuriating at the same time, I think the major difference is that they have to get used to the fact that we literally do do it faster. We don’t have as much time as they do in our- the way our theatre season is structured. So they have to learn to work at a different meter, they have to learn to work at a different pace, than they’re used to working and sometimes they get very frustrated and literally are pulling 91:00their hair out wondering how they’re ever going to get everything accomplished in the time they need to accomplish it. I do love the fact though that because of the language barrier they often say the most amazing things that an American director would never dream of saying to you. There’s a wonderful director who’s worked here a number of times, and he has, he has literally said things to people, like—because his English is not as refined, you know—he’s literally said things to actors like, “Don’t do that darling, that’s boring.” Well, an American director would never do that, or if he did, or she did, they’d be in a little bit of trouble for a couple of minutes there. But, you know, you can also take it with a grain of salt. That’s partly a very blunt European way of saying, “Cut out the shit.” But, you know, sometimes we do do things that are boring. 92:00We have to be told we’re being boring, that we should bring it back to a level of reality instead of doing a lot of acting.

TW: What was it like to take a play like “Getting Out”?

AO: It was very exciting, because the people who saw it in Yugoslavia, in particular, were amazed that the American government would allow such a negative play about American life to be shown in a Communist Bloc country. And we all said, “But this is not a negative play. This is a- At the end of this play there is tremendous hope.” And they said, “But- But, you can tell that society has ruined this woman and that society is going to kill her if she doesn’t pull herself together and- ” Well, they’re right. It is a negative play. It does say very negative things about our society, about a strata of society. But it is a play that is more inspiring than any twelve plays I’ve done. It’s an amazing play.

TW: Would you give a summary of that play?

AO: Well, the play is about Arlene who is a woman 93:00who has been in and out of prison, for various and sundry infractions of the law. She’s just been let out of prison when the play opens, and you meet her younger self, Arlie, who talks with her, inside her head but is also on the stage with her and interacts in other times and spaces in the life of this woman. So you see the two women, the older woman who is trying to pull herself together, and the younger woman who had this incredible spirit. And of course what you are afraid of, as you view it, is that the spirit has been killed in this older woman. Well, by the time the end of the play comes, you realize that the spirit’s been there all along, she just had to reawaken it. And Arlie, 94:00her old self, talks to her and helps her reawaken it. But she has a hard row to hoe. She’s got a pimp who contacts her as soon as she’s out of prison, wants to put her back on the street again. Her Mother is a very unsympathetic woman who drives a cab and really doesn’t know what to do with her daughter. I played a character who I really love a lot, the upstairs neighbor whose name is Ruby, and she is very helpful in helping Arlene find a way through all this madness. And, of course, you know, it was so splendid to work with Susan in the play. And I had not done it here, and I didn’t do it in New York. I did it only on the international tour and I really- oh, God, it’s a wonderful part. I got probably one of the biggest compliments of my life when I did it. One of the people who works in the technical end of the theatre here, Bob Horning, came up to me after the show and said, “That’s one of the most courageous 95:00things I’ve ever seen in my life.” And I didn’t really know exactly what he meant, but in retrospect I do. It was a performance that- where Jon stripped away every single bit of technique—or acting—so that he really got down, got me down to a real human being, I mean a human being who really and truly was a match to be on the stage with Susan, because she is such a real human being. And I say is, defiantly. And so I do understand what Bobby meant, I mean I wasn’t using anything except what was absolutely right there on top of me. There wasn’t a lot of theatrical effect in what I was doing. So it was very exciting, and it was a big breakthrough for me and now those are the parts that I gravitate 96:00towards, when I can. But then again, the Countess is a very theatrical person, and I just adored playing her. She’s a very elegant, very- elegant. That’s the only word I can think of. Elegant, intelligent woman.

TW: What do you mean when you say those are the parts you gravitate toward?

AO: I just- I really- I love the- I guess the phrase that I use with Jon most is I love to play real people. There are- of course you try and make all of the characters you play real people, but because of the structure of some plays and because of the way the character is delineated by the playwright, there’s just no chance to make them real. Like- A character like Miss Fancy in “Sly Fox,” which is a sendup of Volpone, you know. There is no way to make her real. She is almost a caricature, she is a symbol. 97:00And a lot of characters are like that. I mean, even in Greek tragedy it’s hard to make Greek tragedy real because you have to be larger than life to do those. You have to have bigness of movement, bigness of conception, bigness of voice, bigness of- I was thinner then, actually, when I did that. But um- um- And then, of course, in much comedy it’s very hard to be quote real because of the demands of comedy. Comedy is such a technical and difficult endeavor, that very often you have to sacrifice the humanity of the character to get the laugh. So- But those are the kind of things I really love to do and- I felt very much that way about the psychiatrist in “Agnes of God.” 98:00She is a-

TW: That’s the next thing I was going to ask you about.

AO: Good-

TW: Tell about “Agnes of God.”

AO: Well, that was- That was a wonderful experience. I loved working with John Pielmeier. I just taped his “Courage” on television. It’s just so moving.

TW: I watched that.

AO: Yeah, I taped it.

TW: I didn’t see it here.

AO: I saw it here too and it was wonderful. Interestingly enough though, because of the demands of television they did change his makeup a great deal, and I think much for the better. Because the makeup that he had to do it on the stage aged him too much and you could see- I mean, I know John’s fade. It’s a boyish face. And it was more impressive this way as I saw it on television because you could see, in the older man, the boy. With the other makeup, the makeup was almost too heavy. It was lot of prosthetic pieces—a brilliant job, and you know you couldn’t see if you didn’t really know, you’d think “My God, what an incredible 99:00old man.” But, at any rate, John is a wonderful man to work with and it was a wonderful company, both the other ladies were very special women. And Patoniak and ??? and the director Walton Jones. And it was- ah- Well, it was thrilling, I mean, what can I say, it was a thrilling experience. It’s one of those kind of plays that while you’re doing it you feel there is a texture to the air. You can feel that the audience is holding their breath much of the time. I also told John Pielmeier that he wrote one of the most difficult chores for an actor, that is to chain smoke through an entire act. But it was good because eventually, after the show closed, I realized I really didn’t want to smoke any more. And I think it was the play that kicked me over the edge. And it is- it is very difficult, it’s very difficult to coordinate: lighting, 100:00putting out, lighting, putting out, lighting, putting out cigarettes all through an hour long act, when you’re talking a lot of the time.

TW: Did you all sit around the table, and-

AO: Yes, that is something that has to be done initially. That’s the easiest, quickest way to relax everyone, to make the play come out without any kind of, you know, frilly edges to it. That’s what they call table work. You sit down and you read the play. And, when you get up on your feet then the whole other dynamic begins to work, which is where you add physicality, you add all the little fill-ups that need to be added. But table work is where you get to know each other and you get to know the character, you get to know the director, and you really get to know the words. And you study with the words, you can look at each other, you can interact with each other, but you don’t do anything, you just hold the script 101:00and read it.

TW: This was one of the new plays, one of the- during the-

AO: Yes, absolutely.

TW: So, was this a situation where-

AO: There was not a lot of rewriting. Not a lot. Nothing like the rewriting that we did on “Stained Glass.” Nothing like that. But that was amazing because a lot of that was being done by Fax machines, you know, he was faxing us stuff from Switzerland and we were faxing him back stuff.

TW: Adele, what would you say is the impact of this festival of new American plays, which is now The Humana Festival, for the theatre goer, the playwright, the theatre, the actor, Louisville—Actors Theatre?

AO: Well, let’s go backwards. I think for Louisville it simply puts us on the theatrical world map, period. And that’s all there is to it. People come from all over the world to see plays here and it is a great source of pride, to me and I’m sure to everybody who is involved in this theatre that people come from all over the world 102:00to watch us. And they are wonderful people, and now I literally have some friends who are in the world theatre. You know, I- One of my best friends—I mean I see him once a year, but I have a very very loving, close relationship with him. I always try to be the first one who hugs him when he comes—is the dean of Irish critics. His name is David Nolan and I first met him in Dublin, and he just loves me and loves my husband and we just love the heck out of him. He’s just a splendid man. And seeing him every year is just wonderful, you know, you really look forward to seeing those people that you’ve become close to every year. And I think as far as the theatre is concerned I don’t think there’s any way to say it- say it any differently: I think that we do feed into the mainstream of American theatre a lot of great work. Also 103:00some work that may not go any place after Louisville, but at least it has had its shot and very often there is another shot, you know, or there is a rewrite, or in the case of “Last of the Four Likens,” there’s a Georgia Finland, you know. And that’s happening in about 3 weeks, they’re going to Finland to an international festival there. So- And as far as the actors are concerned, many actors have kicked off major careers from here, playwrights—obviously Marsha Norman is the first one that comes to mind, John Gilmeier-

TW: Beth Henley.

AO: Yes, Beth Henley for sure. But Beth was like- she was from outside, she was not- you know Marsha was here, and John had been in the company, so in a way they were like family. Beth was a gift from outside. They were gifts from within. Um- You know, major careers have been started here and ah- ah- Well, I mean, I can’t- I can’t envision 104:00anything more exciting than being able to do that, every year, and I know that that has to be true because all of the people who come here to work in Humana, or in the case of the two folks who came new to “Steel Magnolias,” I mean they were just in awe of all this that was going on. And it’s wonderful and it’s exhausting, and sometimes you’re infuriated because you think, “My God, I’m going to do this play, we’re going to open this play and I really haven’t had two run-throughs.” And literally sometimes that does happen. Well, sometimes it’s a positive, sometimes you just pull yourself up by your boot straps and do an extraordinary performance, sometimes you ??? about, you look for a couple of days until you find your way. But by the time the international press comes everybody is pretty comfortable in what they’re doing, and confident. Comfortable I suppose is the wrong word, confident is a better word. 105:00TW: Do you ever have to audition for a parts you might have in the season?

AO: I have had in the sanspat when I did the drama in music, “Whereabouts Unknown.” I taped to the musical director. Oh, I also did the same thing for “Quilters.” I sent a tape of myself singing something. So they would know what kind of a voice I had. I don’t really know whether my tape went before Jon said,”Yes, use her,” or whether it went after he said, “Yes, use her.” In many cases Jon has simply said, “This is a woman that you can use in this role. She will be fine.” In the case of “Stained Glass,” I think in a funny way I auditioned when we read the play the first time for William 106:00Buckley because he seemed to be delighted with everybody who read it. And I ultimately played the role. Very seldom have I had to audition because I’ve worked for Jon for so long and I’m not what you’d call an unknown commodity. He does know what I can do, what I cannot do, what I’m too old for, what I’m too young for, whatever.

TW: I’ve heard that we don’t have a stage door at Actors Theatre. The only way the actors can leave is-

AO: Um hm- Well actually you can come through the back of the theatre if you really want to run home fast. But most actors prefer to go and have a glass of wine, or a beer, and I do often, but I do it less and less. I do it on opening night, and I guess the reason I don’t do it as a regular thing is because I’m not a bar or club person 107:00any more, like I was about fifteen years ago. I mean, we’ve all changed that, you know. A lot of us, we just don’t hang out in bars any more. But, I love doing it, I love talking ab- I love- Who wouldn’t love going out there and hearing people say, “I just loved you tonight.” That’s enchanting. Here’s a story along those lines that I always love to tell because it shows that when people see you in the theatre they very often forget that you’re who you are. They think you’re the character, or they think you- they’ve identified so much with you as the character that they think they can treat you as that character. When I did the daughter in “On Golden Pond,” I wore a kind of a smooth blond pageboy wig. And one of the apprentice’s father and mother was there and she wanted me to meet them after the show. 108:00Well, of course I took off my beautiful smooth blond pageboy and went out to meet this young woman’s parents and with all this fuzzy hippy curly hair that I have, and when I went out she introduced me to her Mother and then she turned and introduced me to her father and he didn’t even say hello. He turned to his wife and said, “I like her hair the other way.” And it was like I was his daughter, or something. He had become my crotchety father in “On Golden Pond,” you know. And I went, Oh, Boy! You know, its- sometimes it is just too strange. But it is also enchanting because a lot of people who don’t come to the theatre a lot, like I had a group of young friends that I hung out with about ten, fifteen years ago, musicians, and they would come to the theatre and they weren’t 109:00people who had been brought up with the theatre and occasionally I would come out and one of the guitar players would say to me, “I tell ya, I tell ya you just great in the movie, I mean play.” Because it wasn’t- it isn’t like the really know what that is that we do. That’s different- that’s different than movie. That’s live. But since movie was their point of reference that’s what always popped out of their mouth first.]

TW: Do you work with the apprentices at all, or how do you all-

AO: Yes I have. Yes, I’ve directed apprentice showcase pieces and I wish there were more time. If I were involved more actively in the apprentice program that would be possible, but there literally is not any time. The people who run the apprentice program are the people who do the class work. Those in the company who can direct apprentice showcase pieces do as often as we can, when we’re asked if we have the time. But, sometimes when you are playing a show for three hours every night—I mean, you aren’t really playing it for three hours but half-hour you have to prepare and then you’re usually not home until close to eleven—and 110:00doing a full five hour rehearsal day, you’re a little burned. So that the time that you have, the very brief time that you have in the morning and the very brief time you have on your day off is taken up with washing and cleaning the house, and cooking for the rest of the week.

TW: That’s what Mary ??? said.

AO: Yeah, yeah. That’s what you do, in order to maintain some kind of a life. You do have to, and sometimes two or three weeks go by and we get lots of little balls, because we have nine cats, and a Siberian husky, and we get lots of little balls of hair which we call starters, meaning it looks as if we’re starting another litter of kittens in the corner.

TW: Will your husband go to Texas with you?

AO: He’s going to drive me down, 111:00and then he’s going to use my plane tickets, since I’m not flying, to fly back to Louisville. But he’ll come down for opening, fly back, and he’ll fly back down to drive me back. I mean, I drive. I shouldn’t sound like I don’t drive. Indeed I do drive, but I don’t drive well at night and I simply, I just don’t like driving at night, I never have. He drives real well, period. He can get behind a wheel and drive probably for twelve hours and not be terribly exhausted. And, you know, I just- This is the first time we will have been apart in a long time and I just want him there as much as he can be there, and he needs to, you know, he needs a break from Louisville too because he’s been working a very hard year. He’s a carpenter in the production studio. And it’s been a very hard year. It’s been a very exhausting year. Some big stuff has been built, not the least of which is the Ming Cho Lee set that’s going in for Tempest right now. I just went over and looked at it and it’s, as we love to say, humongous.

TW: That’s something that’s very exciting that our theatre is getting to have now isn’t it?

AO: Yes. Yes.

TW: Do you think that Louisville 112:00is more culturally rich than other towns-

AO: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I’ve never been to another town that I felt had the same kind of connection to the arts as Louisville does. Although I must say that Seattle—because of the man who educated me, or whose drama department educated me—Seattle had a very avid theatre going public, the Cleveland Playhouse, where I worked for four years, on that Ford grant, was- you know, it was forty years old when I went there and Cleveland had grown to love the fact that they had a world class theatre in their town. But, I mean, I really think that basically theatre is such a wonder and such a delight to people that all you really have to do is get a good theatre going in the town and the town comes to the theatre.

TW: Do you have anything you’d like to add to this interview?

AO: Gee, I don’t think so. I think I’ve just talked on and on and on. Just that, 113:00you know, it’s been a wonderful twenty years and I hope that there are more years ahead where I can trod the boards of ATL.

TW: Thank you, very much, for your time.

AO: Thank you.