Hogan Makes Sense of ‘Idioglossia’ at Odyssey

When most actors learn their lines, they learn words. Beth Hogan learned gibberish.

“It must sound more difficult than it actually is,” said the actress who plays Nell, a young Appalachian woman--isolated from the outside world--who has developed her own language in Mark Handley’s “Idioglossia” (at the Odyssey Theatre). “ Hotten is hot, guh-few is food. Rye-prow means very good. Durdadaw is during the time. Rye hong is hungry. Duray, done rye hong means today, very hungry. And holdate is hold the potato.”

At the onset of the story, Nell is found in a lonely cabin, and comes under the care of a team of behavioral and speech therapists, who set about to decipher her “Nellish” and introduce her to English.

“Mark (Handley) made a tape of the Nellish, with that Appalachian-hillbilly accent,” Hogan said. “The lilt of the language really helps, because it does have a rhyme and cadence to it. Of course,” she said with a smile, “initially you have to get over feeling like a nerd-head. But it also gives you a great sense of freedom. Suddenly you’re not restricted to the way people think you can say the line--because they don’t know what you’re saying.”

If the role wasn’t challenge enough, Hogan had her friends’ funereal reactions to contend with. “Well,” they said gamely at the end of the first preview, “it’s always good to see you on stage.”

But the next night, Hogan says, the audience was totally different. “They accepted the play--and that gave me confidence. I have felt uncomfortable in that (theater) before. But not with this character. She doesn’t have any anxieties, because she’s not trying to prove anything. So she lets everyone into her world. If you want to be there, fine; if you want to leave, you can. It’s the same thing with her communication. She says: ‘It’s important what I’m saying. It’s less important that you hear it.’ ”

Hogan began acting at a Catholic women’s college in her native Iowa. “It was one of those theater departments where you didn’t have men around, so you got to do everything,” she said with happy nostalgia. “We built the set, did the lights, acted in the plays, made the costumes. You really got a sense of not just acting, but being in a community and how a play happens--that community feeling.”

Accompanying a friend on an audition for the graduate acting program at UC San Diego, Hogan was encouraged to do a reading--and was later chosen for the program, one of four women picked from nationwide auditions.

“So I went to La Jolla with my big Midwestern shoes and a car my dad had bought me,” she said. “We called it Desiree. It was a huge white boat, a Chrysler Newport--it was just not cool. That was also the first time I had acting classes. Before, we’d just done the play. I didn’t know anything about studying, what honesty was supposed to be about, breaking down a script. I felt so left out: the car, the clothes, the shoes, the haircut, the accent.”

In 1977, Hogan moved to Los Angeles, where she began teaching poetry, English and morality at a private high school. One night she happened upon a Grotowski workshop conducted by Odyssey artistic director Ron Sossi; out of that came a role in the Odyssey’s “An Evening of Dirty Religious Plays.”

She later became a member of the theater’s ensemble, appearing in “Three Top Hats,” “A Voyage to Arcturus,” “Edmond,” “Mary Barnes” and “Mother Courage.” Nowadays--in addition to performing in this play--she divides her time between the theater’s subscription office and teaching acting at Santa Monica College.

But that’s where she parts company with most of her colleagues. In an industry town, where every actress really wants to be a star, Beth Hogan is on a different track. She tells her age (36) without a moment’s hesitation, balks at the phoniness that’s expected of her in a casting situation. And she refuses to chase the almighty dollar.

“You have just so much time,” she said. “And to drive all over town (to read) for four lines, then drive somewhere to go ‘Yum!’ in a commercial--well, it’s hard for me to say, ‘That’s what I’m going to dedicate my life to doing.’ I have a real pride about theater. And the nice thing about (the Odyssey) is if they like you, you can stay.”