Spring Break
Alumna discusses leap from Brandeis to 'Blackbird'
by Daniel Baron
Arts | 3/3/09
Posted online at 8:56 PM EST on 3/2/09
Marianna Bassham stars in the Speakeasy Stage Company's production of Blackbird, running through March 21. Bassham has been acting professionally for almost 10 years, becoming an equity performer even before her graduation from the MFA program at Brandeis University in 2002. An experienced, versatile actress (she has performed in shows ranging from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire to Sophocles' Antigone), Bassham is also a grounded, friendly young woman who appreciates innovation and hard work in the theater. Blackbird is a great example of such innovation, a show with a plot twist so unexpected and integral to the show's impact that the press kit for reviewers requests no one give it away. The Justice talked with Bassham in late February.
JustArts: Did you know what the show was about before you read the script?
Marianna Bassham: No, I did not know about the show before I read it. I had heard some of the things about it, which is that it's about a relationship, two people who haven't seen each other in 15 years … who were seeing each other again for the first time. So that's sort of all I knew. So I was excited when I read it. … I knew it was a part that I really wanted to do.
JA: And how you end up doing this show?
MB: Well, I heard through the grapevine that David Gammons was directing it. He had directed Titus Andronicus. … He won the Elliot Norton Award [for Outstanding Director] for it. He did a lot of work with the Actor's Shakespeare Project, which is a company that I've also worked with, but we had not yet worked together. … I was really interested in working with him particularly.
JA: Was it especially difficult to do this show, since you two were really the only performers, there was no intermission, and you were on stage the whole time?
MB: Here's the thing. That sort of thing always seems really daunting before you get into it. I started running the lines about a month before we went into rehearsal. I worked on them on my own before we started, and as for the movement for the scenes, [director] David Gammons gave us a lot of freedom … and it all came naturally. ... This is the second time I've done a two-person show, and what first seems like impossible is possible. Each moment leads you to the next moment, so you don't feel like "Oh my god, I'm on stage for 90 minutes-what happens if I forget 20 pages?" There's some safety in that. I feel real safe doing it.
JA: What do your friends and family think when they see you in something like Blackbird or some of the more unconventional shows? How do they react?
MB: Most of my friends are theater people, so they understand the work that I'm trying to do. We all, you know, are colleagues. When it comes to my family-my family's not really invited to [Blackbird]. There are a couple of shows over the years that I didn't feel comfortable inviting my family to, if it has something sexually explicit or if the topic was something that I thought would be difficult for my parents to handle. I think Quills they weren't invited to. [Laughs.]
JA: What sparked your interest in acting? How did you get into this?
MB: Oh, my gosh. When I was little I actually did a couple plays in elementary school. And then I did a production of Oliver Twist. I played Nancy. … I didn't do anything again until my senior year of high school, really.
JA: How did you get your first professional job?
MB: At the time that I was a third-year student, the Brandeis MFA program had a relationship with the New Repertory Theatre, so we got the chance to either be in or understudy for a show that was going on at the Rep. Luckily, somebody turned down a part in Tartuffe, so I got it and that was my first sort of breakthrough.
JA: What brought you to the MFA program at Brandeis?
MB: I studied theater in college, and then a year after I graduated I went back home to Ohio, not sure of what I was going to do. Then I was in a production if Richard III that was happening in Cleveland. …. It was directed by Bartlett Sher, and at the time he was getting famous. He's a very well-respected director.
JA: Do you remember some of the shows you did at Brandeis?
MB: Yeah, I did, let's see, I did a production of Lion in the Streets, and that was a really exciting, dark piece that we did. I did The Three Sisters. I played Masha, and that was a really great production directed by Adrianne Krstansky [THA]. And I did a really interesting, African-American play, and I played an African American. It was a beautiful play.
JA: What was it like playing an African American? How did you prepare for that?
MB: Well it's interesting. I just decided that I was mixed race, a person who lived in the same neighborhood as all the other characters and who grew up with them. It was interesting. ... [The character] was a crack addict. She had a very overbearing mother. … I prepared for it the same way I would anything else.
JA: What did you take away from your experience at Brandeis?
MB: One of the things that's good about the Brandeis program is that they really … let you figure out what works best for you. What might be a good way to do one character might not be the way to do another character. So I feel like Brandeis really gives you, you know, a really solid bag of tools to approach different kinds of work. I certainly felt like that was the case when I was there. I don't know what it's like now. The teachers that I worked with, they were all from different schools of thought.
JA: How do you go about getting more work once a show is finished?
MB: A lot of the casting happens during the summertime. They have general auditions, and you show up, … I have my season figured out by the end of the summer. The same thing happened last year. … The scary time is May through July, when you have to figure out what the next year is going to look like.
JA: During Blackbird, how do you keep your feelings under control?
MB: I have to be as committed as I can possibly be to what my characters are going through. When I am experiencing emotional distress or anger, it's essentially coming from a fairly real place. ... In order to do justice to these characters and what they're going through, I think you have to go there as much as you possibly can, and I'm willing to go there, so I just do it. And it's exhausting.
JustArts: Did you know what the show was about before you read the script?
Marianna Bassham: No, I did not know about the show before I read it. I had heard some of the things about it, which is that it's about a relationship, two people who haven't seen each other in 15 years … who were seeing each other again for the first time. So that's sort of all I knew. So I was excited when I read it. … I knew it was a part that I really wanted to do.
JA: And how you end up doing this show?
MB: Well, I heard through the grapevine that David Gammons was directing it. He had directed Titus Andronicus. … He won the Elliot Norton Award [for Outstanding Director] for it. He did a lot of work with the Actor's Shakespeare Project, which is a company that I've also worked with, but we had not yet worked together. … I was really interested in working with him particularly.
JA: Was it especially difficult to do this show, since you two were really the only performers, there was no intermission, and you were on stage the whole time?
MB: Here's the thing. That sort of thing always seems really daunting before you get into it. I started running the lines about a month before we went into rehearsal. I worked on them on my own before we started, and as for the movement for the scenes, [director] David Gammons gave us a lot of freedom … and it all came naturally. ... This is the second time I've done a two-person show, and what first seems like impossible is possible. Each moment leads you to the next moment, so you don't feel like "Oh my god, I'm on stage for 90 minutes-what happens if I forget 20 pages?" There's some safety in that. I feel real safe doing it.
JA: What do your friends and family think when they see you in something like Blackbird or some of the more unconventional shows? How do they react?
MB: Most of my friends are theater people, so they understand the work that I'm trying to do. We all, you know, are colleagues. When it comes to my family-my family's not really invited to [Blackbird]. There are a couple of shows over the years that I didn't feel comfortable inviting my family to, if it has something sexually explicit or if the topic was something that I thought would be difficult for my parents to handle. I think Quills they weren't invited to. [Laughs.]
JA: What sparked your interest in acting? How did you get into this?
MB: Oh, my gosh. When I was little I actually did a couple plays in elementary school. And then I did a production of Oliver Twist. I played Nancy. … I didn't do anything again until my senior year of high school, really.
JA: How did you get your first professional job?
MB: At the time that I was a third-year student, the Brandeis MFA program had a relationship with the New Repertory Theatre, so we got the chance to either be in or understudy for a show that was going on at the Rep. Luckily, somebody turned down a part in Tartuffe, so I got it and that was my first sort of breakthrough.
JA: What brought you to the MFA program at Brandeis?
MB: I studied theater in college, and then a year after I graduated I went back home to Ohio, not sure of what I was going to do. Then I was in a production if Richard III that was happening in Cleveland. …. It was directed by Bartlett Sher, and at the time he was getting famous. He's a very well-respected director.
JA: Do you remember some of the shows you did at Brandeis?
MB: Yeah, I did, let's see, I did a production of Lion in the Streets, and that was a really exciting, dark piece that we did. I did The Three Sisters. I played Masha, and that was a really great production directed by Adrianne Krstansky [THA]. And I did a really interesting, African-American play, and I played an African American. It was a beautiful play.
JA: What was it like playing an African American? How did you prepare for that?
MB: Well it's interesting. I just decided that I was mixed race, a person who lived in the same neighborhood as all the other characters and who grew up with them. It was interesting. ... [The character] was a crack addict. She had a very overbearing mother. … I prepared for it the same way I would anything else.
JA: What did you take away from your experience at Brandeis?
MB: One of the things that's good about the Brandeis program is that they really … let you figure out what works best for you. What might be a good way to do one character might not be the way to do another character. So I feel like Brandeis really gives you, you know, a really solid bag of tools to approach different kinds of work. I certainly felt like that was the case when I was there. I don't know what it's like now. The teachers that I worked with, they were all from different schools of thought.
JA: How do you go about getting more work once a show is finished?
MB: A lot of the casting happens during the summertime. They have general auditions, and you show up, … I have my season figured out by the end of the summer. The same thing happened last year. … The scary time is May through July, when you have to figure out what the next year is going to look like.
JA: During Blackbird, how do you keep your feelings under control?
MB: I have to be as committed as I can possibly be to what my characters are going through. When I am experiencing emotional distress or anger, it's essentially coming from a fairly real place. ... In order to do justice to these characters and what they're going through, I think you have to go there as much as you possibly can, and I'm willing to go there, so I just do it. And it's exhausting.
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