As an actress, Judith Ivey has won Tony, Drama Desk and Obie awards for her work on and off-Broadway (Hurlyburly, The Lady With All the Answers), appeared in popular television shows (“Designing Women,” “Nurse Jackie”) and films (Flags of Our Fathers, The Devil’s Advocate). But the legendary performer says she has a new ?passion: directing.
“In some cases I have chosen directing over acting because it intrigues me more right now,” Ivey says. “It’s got a bigger learning curve, and I like to challenge myself.”
That’s why she felt compelled to send an e-mail to Alliance Theatre’s Jennings Hertz, Jr. Artistic Director Susan Booth last year, reminding her that she’s a director, too.
“And you know,” Ivey laughs, “timing is everything. She called to ask if I’d like to read a script and meet the playwright, and I said, ‘Yes.’”
That script turned out to be Carapace, a 90-minute piece by David Mitchell Robinson that won last year’s Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. A play she couldn’t put down.
“I was completely mesmerized by all the characters, especially the lead character, Jeff,” Ivey recalls. “It’s a beautifully written story, very compelling. It’s definitely a tragedy, but he’s such a charming, charismatic guy that has a way of speaking, and his attempts to make everything all right and joke [things] off … it’s really something.”
Exploring character is one of the things she enjoys most about the rehearsal process, whether she is acting or directing. “It’s all just an exploration of character,” she explains, from the way actors approach their roles to how a designer lights a scene, constructs a set or builds a costume. The difference is that when you’re acting, no one expects you to focus on anything other than your part. Ivey’s unusual ability, as an actress, to see the big picture is what led to her first directing job in 1993, when she was asked to direct Two for the Seesaw at the Westport [Conn.] Playhouse. She hasn’t looked back since.
Working on new plays is a particular passion of hers. “When people ask me what my favorite play is, I often say, ‘I don’t know because it hasn’t been written yet,’” she laughs.
While she was appearing onstage as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie with the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles last fall, she also spent some time working on Carapace with playwright David Mitchell Robinson. “Center Theatre ?was kind enough?to give us a two-day workshop, at the end ?of which we gave a formal presentation to an audience,” Ivey says. The play read in California was a slightly different version than the one that won the competition. But one thing remains the same — the central metaphor of the carapace.
“The fact that the carapace is the shell that protects the tortoise is a great concept about how we deal with things in our lives — how protected we are; how naked we are,” Ivey explains. “Sometimes that shell has to go away, and we need to be vulnerable. There are times we think we are protecting ourselves in a good way or protecting others in a good way, and we are not.”
Carapace plays the Alliance Theatre Feb. 11-March 6, 2011.
