Inside the Mind of an Actress

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite games to play was dress-up. I would invite a friend over, and my mother would take us to the attic, where she kept the evening gowns and fancy dresses she wore only occasionally. She would unzip the plastic box-like garment bags and pull out three or four that were old enough or out of fashion enough to stand up to the rigors of little girls’ play. And then my friend and I would start the great transformations that turned us into movie stars or princesses or some variation of Cinderella.

For my friends, dress-ups were all about the glamour—the satiny dresses that whooshed when you moved, the sparkling costume jewelry, the high-heeled shoes that were several sizes too big. But that was never enough for me. I always wanted a story. I wanted to be someone traveling the world, recovering from a broken heart, or disguising herself to get into the ball so as to speak to a visiting prince. It was the same when I played with my dolls. The story was always the most important thing.

I think of this when people ask me about acting. I suppose the seeds of my performing were sown way back then. Lucky for me, I’ve had the opportunity to be all sorts of different people and to act out their lives. And, happily, I’ve usually done a convincing enough job that audience members want to know how I do it. How do I become someone else? What are my secrets? How do I prepare? And, most often, how do I remember all those lines?

The last question pops up most frequently at my one-woman shows. Since 2001, I’ve been writing and performing plays based on the lives of historical women. I’ve been Galileo’s daughter, Amelia Earhart, Abigail Adams, Sarah Bernhardt and many others. For about an hour, I’m alone on the stage, subsumed in these characters and talking non-stop. And people are amazed.

The first thing that they usually ask is how I remember the whole piece. That’s probably the toughest question for me to answer. I can tell you that it helps that I write these pieces, that I know my writing style and how I tend to string words together. I can explain that each character assumes her own voice, and, once she does, I actually hear it in my head. But the simple truth is that I don’t know how I remember lines. Doing so has just always come easily to me—and that’s as true with a play written by someone else.

I learn lines by reading a sentence silently and then closing my eyes and trying to repeat it. When I have one line down, I move onto the next, stringing them together. For some reason, they eventually travel to their own "filing cabinet" in my brain and are easily recalled when I need them.

What helps in the process, more than anything, is the character’s story—who she is, what she’s like and what she’s been through. All of that supports the lines and makes them make sense. And when the lines are sensible, they’re much easier to remember.

I am currently performing in the Naples Players’ production of The Women of Lockerbie, a heartbreakingly beautiful play by Deborah Brevoort, based on the true aftermath of the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. I play the part of Hattie, a local cleaning woman who is deeply involved in the plan the women have developed.

The first thing director Anna Segreto asked each of us in the cast to do—before we even began rehearsals—was to read the play several times and then write our character’s autobiography up to our first entrance. We were to give attention not only to chronology and details of setting but also to emotions—what we were feeling and what the people with whom we interacted were feeling.

That was an extremely helpful exercise. Writing out "your life" forces you to get inside your character’s mind, inside her skin. You begin to think the way she does, and from there it’s a relatively easy step to standing, moving and talking the way she would. Hattie is not a refined or highly educated person. She’s a cleaning woman. Her posture would reflect that. No standing erect and confident for her—at least not until she starts to voice her convictions. Naturally, she speaks with a Scottish accent, not an easy one to master. But more important, I think, than getting the Scottish burr just right is finding her speech rhythms and the emotions that propel her words. And the easiest way for me to do that is to get to know Hattie intimately, so I can believe I’m feeling what she would feel.

In the spring of 2008, I was fortunate to be cast by the Naples Players in the lead role of Wit, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson. For an hour and a half, I was onstage—without a break—telling the story of Dr. Vivian Bearing, a college professor renowned for her expertise in the poetry of John Donne. She was also undergoing experimental chemotherapy for stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. That was one of my lines. It’s also a glimpse of what I had to portray.

As the play progressed, Vivian—I—grew sicker and sicker. The defenses, the personality, that had carried her through her life crumpled, and she—I—became a new person. Yes, all of that was reflected in the lines. But I had to remember to portray that physically as well. I had to look sicker and more vulnerable as the play proceeded. It was probably the most challenging role I ever had. It was also the most gratifying. Out of some 20 performances, I received standing ovations at all but two. People wept—and stayed in their seats or in the hallway afterward, just to thank me. Others told me I actually seemed to get more pale and frail as my "death" approached.