Ellen Ratner Goes From Insecurity to ‘Personality’

Faster than you can say “multiple personality,” actress Ellen Ratner has become one.

She’s gone from 30-year-old Heather to Heather’s overbearing mother Lorette, to a cha-cha girl, a waitress, a game-show lady, a very proper housewife, an opera singer and Miss America. It’s all part of “Personality,” a sassy one-woman show--co-created by Ratner, Gina Wendkos and Richard Press--at the Odyssey through Nov. 15. (Another Wendkos piece, “Boys and Girls/Men and Women,” is playing concurrently at the theater.)

“Gina and I met at summer camp when we were 15,” explained the 32-year-old Ratner, “then we hooked up again in New York seven years later. I did (her) ‘15-Minute Love Affair’--and from then on, every time she did a project there was always something for me. If not, she created it.

“So ‘Personality’ became our voice. We said, ‘OK, we’re 30 years old, we don’t have husbands, we’re career-oriented--but what kind of career?’ When I was growing up, I had friends who knew where they were going; they had neat hair. But I don’t have neat hair. These kinds of things make a difference in life.”

Old pain--and getting past it--is not only a theme in the show, but also in Ratner and Wendkos’ lives.

“Gina and I are very similar,” Ratner offered. “We’re the same age; we think alike, feel alike. Gina’s father passed away when she was very young, my family split up when I was very young. It meant trying to understand at 8 years old where my father was going: ‘What do you mean, he’s got another apartment?’ You work it out. But later on, it mulls around in you like a volcano, and you don’t know why you feel sad and afraid. You don’t know why, when someone says ‘I love you,’ you think, ‘When is he gonna leave?’ ”

There’s insecurity in the present too. “Just a couple of weeks ago--but it feels like a million years--I was in New York, thinking, ‘If I don’t get on a stage soon, I’m gonna die.’ Then this Odyssey thing came through. I’d been doing temp work as an assistant bookkeeper for someone, and I told him, ‘I hate to tell you this, but something’s happened. I’ve taken care of everything here, but I’ve gotta go. I hope you understand.’ He didn’t understand--and didn’t pay me my last paycheck.” She sighed. “He never saw me onstage. He never saw me .”

Skating between actressing and making-ends-meet work is not new for her. Two years ago, Ratner and Wendkos bowed a shorter hot-off-the-presses version of “Personality” at the Odyssey before a successful European tour.

“So one day I’m playing to 350 people at Spoleto, then the next day I’m in New York: tending bar, no boyfriend, no one applauding me, giving me a standing ovation. It’s really, really hard. On the other hand, I don’t know if this will ever stop. So I’ll keep working both jobs, for as long as it takes. People see you going four months without work and they (lose faith); even my dad suggested I go to bookkeeping school. I had to tell him, ‘I’m an actress. This is my life.’ Doing theater makes me happier than sex, love, money, anything. So yes, a man will always come in second.”

Growing up in a household “with very funny parents--there was always comedy around the house,” Ratner began experimenting early on with different voices.

“I’d do Ed Sullivan, James Cagney and John Huston, and it’d knock them out,” she recalled. However, not till her junior year at New York’s High School for the Performing Arts did she seriously begin sniffing out stand-up work. “I went to the Improvisation and they told me to assemble 3 to 5 minutes for the first time. Well, it took me about five years to do that: I mulled it over, went to college, graduated. One night, at about 2:30 a.m., I went on. It was underwater; I can’t tell you what happened. My brain was fried.”

Since then, she’s acquired a great deal more confidence--but not to the point of those comedians “who can say, ‘I think I’ll wing it tonight.’ I could never do that.” Although her “Personality” character quick-changes are scripted, “When I flip out at the end, I’m in another world. I don’t know what’s going on. My body is gyrating, because I feel Heather’s pain, her frustration--and it’s mine. I want to punch the air, I want to get it out. It’s like dancing: First you learn the steps, then you don’t have to think about them. You’re flying, you’re in the moment. And nothing feels better.”