Blair Brown
It's interesting that you were one of the first people to read The Clean House when you judged the Blackburn playwriting prize. What did you like about it as a reader?
I was laughing as I read it, and by the end I was in floods of tears. At first I didn't actually credit the play; I thought I must be in a mood of some sort [laughs]. I put the play aside and read the other finalists, then came back to it and had the same reaction. When you read it, it's transparent; it's like water over your hand. The writing doesn't call attention to itself. There are certain plays in which the writing is so distinctive—Shaw or Tom Stoppard, for example—you're very aware of the author. In this case, I wasn't. It's deceptively simple and moving in ways that are quite unexpected.
Could you picture how the play might be presented?
Actually, I could. I've read a lot of the magic realists—Borges and Marques and Isabel Allende—so the whole Argentinian and Brazilian connection really took me there. And I was so touched by the fact that two Latin women very gently, almost by example, guide these WASPy women into understanding profound truths about life. I found that terribly moving.
I was struck by the fact that the four main characters are women, which is still too rare in the theater.
Had you worked with Jill Clayburgh before?
Your physician character [Lane] and the housewife Jill plays [Virginia] couldn't be more different. Do audiences choose one of you to root for?
Why do you think you're cast so often as an authority figure?
You've been a police commander, a prosecutor, a general…
Early last year, you directed Leslie Ayvazian's play Lovely Day on Theater Row. How did you become interested in directing?
What do you enjoy about directing?
It's interesting that you say that because it seems like you haven't made career choices on the basis of what's going to get you a lot of attention.
So you support yourself with a wide array of jobs these days.
I was fascinated to read that you did the pilot for a remake of Dark Shadows a couple of years ago.
You strike me as something of a rarity in that you're equally comfortable playing leading and supporting parts.
What do you enjoy about musicals?
New York theatergoers didn't get to see you do A Little Night Music at the Kennedy Center. What was that like?
Would you like to do more musicals on Broadway?
Overall, are you satisfied with your life and career?
Did you celebrate your 60th birthday this past year?
Is turning 60 a big deal?
Well, 60 is the new 40.
See Blair Brown in The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre.
Some do and some don't. Last night, they were not buying it, so we were girding our loins this afternoon because Wednesday matinees have a combination of the oldest and the youngest audiences, which doesn't always mix well. But happily for us, old and young alike were absolutely on to it. It's not about age—it has to do with who's open to the experience and who's not. You know, we're used to flights of fancy in the movies and even in television shows. When I did Molly Dodd, my dead father constantly made an appearance. That's now a cliché on a lot of television shows, so I'm a little surprised that theater is being held to a different standard when it's the most imaginative of all the entertainment media.
Isn't that amazing? I did a panel the other day with Blythe Danner, Swoosie Kurtz and Julie White, and we were talking about the fact that Swoosie and Laila Robins were lucky to be in a play together [Heartbreak House] and Jill Clayburgh and I are in this together. You very rarely get to work with a female peer. For guys, there are endless buddy movies and tons of plays with men the same age, but if there are multiple women's parts in plays, it's usually an older woman and a younger woman.
No, never, and that [problem] is precisely the reason why: Even in the classical repertory, there are very few plays with two women the same age.
Sometimes. I call myself "the white oppressor" because I'm the whitest of white bread people out there. Audiences will take to me or to Virginia in the first act, then in the second act it kind of levels out. Once you see the pain that Lane is in, people who have been pro-Virginia and think Lane is just a bitch realize something else is happening. In the end, it feels like we come out the same. Jill and I have joked about how in the second year of the run we can switch parts, like Othello and Iago.
Because I'm so damned bossy, I guess [laughs]. I have too many opinions and people think, "This is the way to channel it: Let's put her in one of those parts."
It's thrilling to play women with ideas, and it usually follows that type-A women have had to work harder at what they do than most men. I loved it when I played a general. At first I felt like such a girl, putting on this big uniform. Man, after a while, they could barely get that hard hat off me. I was ready to go into combat [laughs]. There was a scene in that movie [Majority Rule, on Lifetime] where my character is going in for minor surgery and she has to say, "You'd better hurry up because I'm a very busy woman." I'm on the operating table and I say the speech, "Da da da da da, because I'm a very busy man." The crew started laughing hysterically. I said, "What?" and they played it back. I'm very much a girl in this life, but I must have been a man in a past life [laughs].
A couple of years ago, I was playing a man's part, "Prospera" [Prospero], in The Tempest [at McCarter Theater], and Jeff Goldstein, the wonderful costume designer, and I spent 45 minutes talking about the color blue [laughs]. Later, he called me and said, "I don't know you that well, but have you ever thought about directing for the stage? You think like a director." I had been told this by other directors. I remember once Philip Bosco and Michael Cumpsty and I were doing a talkback after Copenhagen and someone asked, "How do you choose what you're going to do?" I said, "I choose the best play." And both Michael and Philip said, "You do?" I said, "I would rather play a small part in a good play than a great part in a bad play." And they said, "No, no, no, no, no!" It's been an interesting experience to act in this play after having directed a couple, with plans to direct more. I can sit back and think, "This is not my problem!"
Just getting to look at the whole play. Because I've acted for so long and have played so many wonderful parts, there aren't that many things I'm aching to act in. I'm aching to do Camino Real with Richard Easton and Ethan Hawke and Hope Davis. We did that briefly at Williamstown and have tried a couple of times to get producers to do it again. I'm aching to do Prospera again, because what happens to The Tempest with a woman in the role is very interesting. I was going to do The Glass Menagerie [at the Guthrie] but the dates conflicted with The Clean House. I want to play Amanda Wingfield far away from here. I have no interest in running the gauntlet of New York criticism; I just want to play the play.
No. In that way madness lies, I think. Some people can do it, but I think you pay a heavy price for that. As Joseph Campbell says, you just have to follow your bliss and try to make a living at it. That's the hard part. There's so much about this profession that involves luck.
My life changed after my son's father [actor Richard Jordan] died when he was 11. Because it was just him and me, I had to stop traveling. I was not going to raise him in Los Angeles, so that meant going back to the theater. In many ways, it was fantastic. I did The Dead and Copenhagen and Cabaret, and I thought, "Oh, Broadway is quite fun" [laughs]. I didn't realize how rare it was to get that confluence of shows; I haven't been on Broadway since because there's been nothing to play. When I settled in New York, I was poorer but happier. But at this point, I can't continue to go into debt for this theater habit of mine. I do narrations and audio books; I've done four independent films this year, and they don't pay a thing. So I'm in search of a TV job to pay for my theater habit. My friends who are not in the theater are shocked when they realize that actors work for less than unemployment at some very well-established off-Broadway theaters. When I directed the play on Theater Row, my actors were making $225 a week. They could have made more working at McDonald's. And that's really, really wrong.
Exactly; you piece it together month by month. I am a wage slave. I don't have any financial cushion. What I earn is what my son and I live on, and it's not easy. There are fewer venues for making money [in TV] than there once were. When I finished doing Arcadia with Billy Crudup and Robert Sean Leonard [in 1995], I could call my agent to pick up a miniseries or made-for-TV movie. Those jobs aren't even available now. There are no miniseries and very few television films.
I loved that! Martin Donovan and I played this hideous brother and sister. We were absolutely over the top. I think we scared the networks half to death. I haven't gotten a pilot since then [laughs]. I had my hair in a French twist and wore really gaudy jewelry, and I thought, "Here I go. I can't wait!" But they didn't ask us to dance. I think they missed out. A big, campy, flamboyant version of Dark Shadows would have been great.
I guess. You know, I went to the National Theatre School of Canada, which fed people into the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, then I spent two years at the Guthrie before coming to New York. The route I took was different than most young actors today. My dream was to be a rep actor. It still is!
The sound of the orchestra. It's thrilling, every time. I never got jaded. In fact, when I was doing Cabaret, we'd all run downstairs to hear it and then go back upstairs to finish getting dressed. We were talking about this backstage the other day, because The Clean House is not an easy play to run. In musicals, the tone is set: The songs are the songs and the dances are the dances; boom, you're there. Plays are trickier beings. They can slide around more in good ways and bad ways. You don't have a metronome.
It was a lot of fun, but it was also a bit like doing a show at Williamstown in that you run on adrenaline. You don't really have enough time. There are lots of clothes and lots of production values, and you're scampering around. I so wanted to be able to do that show for a longer period of time. I loved it.
I would love to. I don't like going to musicals; there aren't that many that I like [laughs]. I hate the books of most musicals, but I got lucky because Cabaret is a proper musical with a book that stands alone. The Dead was a proper story, and long ago, I did Threepenny Opera, based on John Gay's Beggar's Opera. Those have solid tales to tell.
I am. What makes me concerned is the economics of theater in New York. I see so much good work that doesn't get done, or gets done and isn't seen because it's so difficult and expensive. Without having subsidized theater in this country, it's very hard. What we lack in the theater are not artists, writers, directors, designers or actors; what's missing is good producers. We need people to figure out new financial models in the theater, both in the profit and nonprofit worlds. I think it would be great for a business school to teach that!
It really is. He's a wonderful boy who's doing all these interesting writing workshops now. What form his writing is going to take, I don't know. He also takes reservations at the Blue Note, this boy who went to Yale. He's listening to great jazz—Etta James, Jane Monheit—and I said, "Wow, I think I'm going to take reservations at the Blue Note so I can hear all that for free!" [laughs] Now he says he wants to learn to be a locksmith, so it's like "Okay, that's good!" I think this is all part of developing the writing life for him.
No! The New York Times has me a year older than I really am. I was born in 1947. Why would I lie about one year? It came from an article in which I said I was the same age as Bill Clinton. I didn't mean it literally, but the paper of record has perpetrated this, and what can I do about it?
No, I just wish time wasn't going so fast. There's so much more to do. Age is such a relative thing. There are people I know who are much older than I am [in years] and yet much younger than I am [in spirit] and people who are much younger than I am and yet much older.
In a way! I've been to two birthday parties for women turning 90, and in both instances they are still working. One of them, Rosamund Bernier, gives lectures at the Metropolitan Museum, and another is a friend of mine's mother who is a nutritionist in Los Angeles. They are working at 90, and it's not pretend; they're still doing the careers they have always done; they just reinvent themselves over and over. I said, "That's it! That's the key."