Currently playing at the Randall Theatre Company of Medford is “The Odd Couple: The Female Version,” written by Neil Simon and directed by Dianna Warner. Warner, a talented actor and singer, most recently was featured in the Randall’s “Man of La Mancha.” We met for lunch along with Mike, her husband of 40 years, at the Wild Goose in Ashland.
EH: I’ve enjoyed many of your performances through the years, but you also direct?
DW: I taught for 36 years, and for most of those years, I directed students in high school and middle school. I also directed two plays, “Shakespeare in Hollywood” and “Lend Me a Tenor,” at the Camelot Theatre.
Camelot Theatre’s next production features Shirley Patton and Steven Dominguez in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Driving Miss Daisy.” The play explores the growth of a friendship between an elderly white Southern lady, Miss Daisy, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, during the 1960s and ’70s.
Patton came to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the invitation of Angus Bowmer in 1958. Her career as an OSF actor spanned 30 years. Before coming to Ashland, Dominguez spent 20 years as a professional actor in New York City. One afternoon, the three of us chatted at Boulevard Coffee.
Randall Theatre’s recent production of “Man of La Mancha” featured Pam Ward as Don Quixote’s revered strumpet, Aldonza. Ward makes her living recording audio books for numerous clients, including Ashland’s Blackstone Audio. She soon will be performing in “Black Friday,” opening Nov. 8 at the Randall in Medford. We met at Bloomsbury Coffeehouse in Ashland and discussed the art of acting.
PW: People are fascinating animals. Being an actor, you think about the opportunity to create characters, to explore other life stories, other personalities, other corners and wrinkles in another person’s personality. I get to explore little crevices and nooks and crannies in my own personality that I might not have the nerve to explore in real life.
Every time you work with a new character, you bring pieces of your own personality to that character. That’s inevitable. You have to base a character on someone real, and that’s whom you have to work with. But I also find that I bring something back with me. I find something new about myself every time I create a new character. It can be just some interesting little thing that I didn’t know about myself, or it can actually be life changing.
One of the reasons that I am so passionate about the role of Aldonza is that she genuinely changed my life when I did the first productions of “Man of La Mancha” in my 20s; and she changed my life again this year. She tapped back into a state of mind, a level of passion, that I didn’t expect to experience again.
Julie Oda has been very active raising a family since leaving the Oregon Shakespeare Festival five years ago. Before joining OSF, Oda graduated from Mills College, trained at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and acted in New York. She and her husband, Raleigh Grantham, own Ashland’s Tudor House vacation rentals.
We visited in her colorful and inviting Tudor home, while her children napped.
JO: I was with the company for eight seasons, from 2000 to 2007, and cast in a wide variety of roles, including Cecily in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Celia in “As You Like It.”
Diane Nichols’ play “Tigers in the Entry” appears in Ashland Contemporary Theatre’s summer readings, “Moonlighting 2013,” Saturday and Sunday at Grizzly Peak Winery. Her play “Tomatoes” was recently produced at Barnstormers Theatre in Grants Pass. Over tea one afternoon, Nichols gave me her perspective on theater as a playwright, director and actress.
DN: It’s magical. I think we get to live vicariously through these other characters and experience intense things. It makes us expand. There is something mysterious and wonderful about theater. I love the stories.
Camelot Theatre Company’s musical “Jekyll & Hyde” opens this week and features exquisite choreography by Renee Hewitt. An exceptional actress, dancer and singer, Hewitt has played numerous iconic roles throughout her career. We met in the Excalibur Room at the Camelot.
EH: Why have you spent your life in theater?
RH: It’s my passion. That’s the only way I can explain it. If I were to have to live without it, I don’t know what I would do. It’s how I express my soul; it’s how I express the deepest parts of me. I’m finding out now, that not only can I do that by being on stage, I can actually do that through choreography. I’m more anxious, more nervous, and more excited about this opening than I am when I’m a performer.
Shae Johnson is now starring as Suzy in Oregon Cabaret Theatre’s “Winter Wonderettes.” Johnson studied opera at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music after graduating from Ashland High School. Returning to Ashland, she performed in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “The Music Man” and in OCT’s “The Marvelous Wonderettes.” She played Debbie Reynolds in Oregon Cabaret Theatre’s “What a Glorious Feeling.” Johnson is now the lead singer of the Rogue Suspects. We met for coffee at Mix Sweet Shop in Ashland.
SJ: I love live theater; I love being in front of an audience, which is very different from being in front of a camera. A camera just stares at you without any emotion. With an audience, it’s very in the moment; every show is different, because you have a different audience every night.
The goal of the actor is to be able to communicate to the audience, to make them feel what you’re feeling and have them relate to what you’re feeling on stage. You can see it. Sometimes when you look out into the audience, you can see when there’s someone in particular who is understanding what you’re doing. As long as there is just one person in the audience who is really loving it, that’s enough for me.
Ashland Theatre 