A Theater of My Own

A Theater of My Own

My grandmother, Annie was a seanchai, an Irish storyteller. She was the only great actor I have known intimately. Her stage was the kitchen of her cottage in the West of Ireland and her stories were about her friends and neighbors. She recreated their trials and triumphs and with her talent for mimicry accorded each a speaking part. Her one woman show held me spellbound. She commanded my tears and fits of laughter depending on the content of her story or dictated by a whim. It was she who made me stage-struck years before I even saw a stage.

I was thirteen before I acted my first conventional role. My high school English teacher, Mrs. Doyle, directed us in Strindberg's Motherlove. I played the mother. We explored the work in class and interpreted it aloud in rehearsal after school. We wrote papers and memorized text, learning the language of our character. In her classroom and on her stage, we played Chekov, Wilde, Coward, O'Casey and Shakespeare. Just as my grandmother revealed to me the drama of theater, Mrs. Doyle introduced me to its literature.

During my sophomore year, I acted in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano. After I read it in French as La Cantatrice Chauve, I was never again content with a translation. The next year, I directed my classmates in a French speaking production which we performed for the school. My insights into literature and language came always through my exploration of both on the stage.

It was a novelist and not a playwright, however, who was to have the most significant influence on my later course of study. The assignment was to read an American author who had not been discussed in class. Rather by chance, I chose Isaac Bashevis Singer from...

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...o adapt and direct Chaim Grade's novel and the subject of my thesis, My Mother's Sabbath Days.

Before I can do this, however, I need to develop a firm foundation in traditional theater. I would like to train formally as an actor. For a number of reasons, I hope to study in England. As well as being accustomed to training students from diverse backgrounds and cultures, there, the emphasis is on preparation for a theatrical career as opposed to one in film or television. What draws me most to the English theater schools, however, and indeed to England, itself, is their appreciation and mastery of comedy. Comedy is the most difficult and exciting aspect of performance; it is also the most entertaining. After I complete my training, I plan to gain experience working professionally as an actor. Eventually, like my grandmother, I hope to have a theater of my own.