Tag Archives: Actress

Interview

Brandy Carson

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In “Holiday Memories,” Truman Capote portrays Sook, his aunt and childhood “friend,” as a warm-hearted, eccentric woman who taught him life lessons in a delightful way and found joy in the simplicity of life.

Now at Oregon Cabaret Theatre, Sook is played by Brandy Carson, warm-hearted and perhaps slightly eccentric herself. After studying speech and drama in college, she landed in Los Angeles with a vacuum cleaner, a cast iron skillet and a Siamese cat named Marco Polo. “I thought I had packed,” Carson said.

After 20 years of doing theater and television, Carson came to Ashland. She has appeared at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and numerous other venues in the Rogue Valley.

Brandy and I chatted with Cabaret Artistic Director Jim Giancarlo after viewing the spectacular vaulted attic set for “Holiday Memories.” We discussed the qualities that make the play so appealing.

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Interview

Judith-Marie Bergan

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Judith-Marie Bergan
Judith-Marie Bergan

Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Judith-Marie Bergan is back for another season. Last year she performed in Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance” at Yale, then she was directed by Libby Appel in Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie” in North Carolina. Judith is delighted that Bill Rauch has invited her back for OSF’s 75th season. We met at Starbucks next to the Southern Oregon University campus.

EH: How long have you been with OSF?

JMB: I’ve been here for 10 years, but there were a couple of years where I did other things: the Guthrie Theater, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and the Old Globe. But I just love it here. I just vastly respect this company — the range, the fact that they are always reaching to better the theater, to find new things and new projects. I think it is certainly the best regional theater you could work for.

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Interview

Livia Genise

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Livia Genise
Livia Genise

Camelot Theatre Artistic Director Livia Genise constantly brings new energy to the theater. Camelot’s new theater building is to be constructed and open by 2011. Genise is currently portraying the incorruptible nun in “Doubt.” And there will be general auditions on Nov. 7. I met her at Starbucks in downtown Ashland to discuss what it takes for the creation of a successful theater company.

EH: What steps have you taken to build the Camelot Theater Company?

LG: I have general auditions every November. Then what I do is to take those pictures and resumés and I put them in the files of the shows for next year for callbacks. After I finish with calling back and casting one show, I’ll take the appropriate pictures and put them in the next file.

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Interview

Shirley and Bill Patton

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Shirley and Bill Patton
Shirley and Bill Patton

As I visited with Shirley and Bill Patton in their exquisite Ashland hills home, I got to know two people who have shared a creative life together in theater. Their efforts led to the formation and success of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Shirley is now starring in “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” at the Camelot Theatre in Talent.

SP: Bill was the first person I met when I got off the bus.

BP: She came up to Ashland to audition in the summer of 1958 when I was general manager.

SP: Then he became the executive director. Bill’s position evolved over the years and as the festival grew. As theaters were added with more and more staff, his job description kept changing dramatically.

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Interview

Shirley Patton

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Shirley Patton
Shirley Patton

After an acting career spanning 30 years at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, playing such roles as Ophelia in “Hamlet,” Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Bianca in “Othello,” Shirley Patton finds her acting talents delightfully in demand by Ashland’s alternative theaters. She is currently starring in “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” at Camelot Theatre in Talent. I visited with Shirley in her idyllic Ashland hillside home.

EH: How did you get to Ashland to begin with? How did this wonderful life come about?

SP: I was a student at Stanford. I kept hearing how wonderful it was to spend summers in Ashland, because you got to work with the greatest playwright ever in this four-play repertory. By a great fluke, at the last moment, I went on as Viola in “Twelfth Night” at Stanford. Angus Bowmer came down to see it and remembered me fondly from that.

After I graduated, I applied to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I guess they were looking favorably on my application, but the last part of it got lost in the mail, so I didn’t hear anything from them. I wrote Angus a letter saying how one of my goals was to someday work in his company, and if he would be so kind as to tell me my areas of weakness, I would work on them until someday maybe I would be worthy.

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Interview

Helena de Crespo

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Helena de Crespo
Helena de Crespo

Helena de Crespo’s “Shirley Valentine” has found overwhelming success at Oregon Stage Works. However, Helena is more than an actress. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has established theaters in Colombia, Costa Rica and in the United States. She currently is building a theater in Cambodia and organizing a multicultural theatrical experience here in the Rogue Valley. She regularly acts and directs in Portland.

As we dined on Callahan’s garden deck, Helena told me how she happened upon her remarkable career as an international theater director.

EH: You seem to be a person who has had a mission.

HdC: It turned into that, and I don’t know that that was conscious on my part. I was teaching at the University and the National Drama School in Bogota, Colombia. One day this guy came to me from Peace Corps.

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Interview

Helena de Crespo

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Helena de Crespo
Helena de Crespo

The extraordinary tour de force performance of Helena de Crespo in “Shirley Valentine” at Oregon Stage Works has made the one-woman-show a phenomenal success. Many who have seen the production see it again and bring their friends.

Helena de Crespo engages her audience in the interior monologue of Shirley Valentine, a woman struggling to reinvent herself at a time in life when the empty nest has become a solitary cage. Shirley Valentine weaves her saucy tales with “a laugh and a joke for everything.”

Helena’s performance reflects her exceptional talent, education and experience, plus her spirit of adventure and pure unadulterated courage. As Helena and I lunched on the deck at Callahan’s Restaurant, she gave me a few insights into her life in the theater.

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