‘Ourselves Alone’ : Donna Deitch carries female sensibility into directing Devlin play

Donna Deitch knows there are people who refer to her as a woman’s director. “It’s a dirty job,” she cracks, “but somebody’s got to do it.”

There is more pride than defensiveness in her words. And though her list of mainstream credits is short, it is noteworthy: the lesbian-themed feature film “Desert Hearts” (1986) and the recent ABC miniseries “The Women of Brewster Place.” Now Deitch is making her stage-directing debut at the Tiffany Theatre in Irish playwright Anne Devlin’s “Ourselves Alone,” the story of three women in modern-day Belfast.

“ ‘Ourselves Alone’ is the English translation of Sinn Fein , the political arm of the IRA,” explained the director, dressed smartly in corduroy jeans and silver-tipped cowboy boots. “In America, women are socialized to be in conflict about their love lives and their work.”

In a world where the Irish Republican Army is prominent, she continued, “there’s another element thrown in for these women: Their father is an official in the IRA. So they grew up with a responsibility to what was happening politically in Ireland. And it’s taking up all their lives.”

Although there are male characters in the story, Devlin, on the phone from London, acknowledged that the piece is first and foremost about women. “There didn’t seem to be any awareness of how women were living their lives in Ireland today,” noted the playwright, who once spent time in Andersonstown, the IRA stronghold where the play is set. Devlin, who is based in London, is writing a play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“I left Ireland in 1975 because of the level of violence, and obviously I wasn’t a supporter of those kinds of politics,” she said. “But I wanted to look at these women’s lives and understand what made me different: what made me survive, made me get out. I’m not putting myself on any higher moral ground here; it’s definitely, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ These women are of my era, my generation.”

Carrying that female sensibility into the director’s post seemed a natural progression.

“I think they always wanted a woman director for this,” Deitch noted, sipping strawberry-guava juice in her art-filled Venice office. “I know that on ‘Brewster Place,’ they intended to have a woman director. And I loved making that movie. I feel lucky to have been able to do it because I’m not the sort of person the network normally hires for a four-hour miniseries. I mean, I’d never worked in network television before.”

Her foot in the door, of course, was “Desert Hearts.”

Although Deitch allows that the film’s graphically depicted lesbian affair (between Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau) may have raised a few eyebrows, she believes that it did nothing to hurt her commercial career. “If anything, it was the opposite,” the director said cheerfully. “A lot was written about the film--and part of it had to do with the subject matter, sure. But I didn’t experience anything bad in the industry as a result of doing it.”

Deitch thinks much of a project’s success relies on casting. “You hire the best person you can. That’s half the battle. The rest of it is getting the best out of them--which involves a lot of manipulation. I mean, it’s not manipulation in the bad sense of the word. But every actor is different--as we all are--and each one needs a different sort of handling. There’s a different rapport: social, psychological.”

In her present stage detour, Deitch is finding a whole new set of work dynamics.

“The big difference in theater is that there’s so much time spent rehearsing, relative to the time there is on a film,” she said with a happy sigh. “There is only one camera angle--the angle of the audience. And in theater, it’s just you and the actor. When you’re making a film, there’s so much going on behind your back all the time: a whole camera crew, and, if it’s television, all of these producers who come and watch and talk and have their own opinions.

“The minute you call ‘Cut,’ chaos erupts on the set. The hair and makeup people rush in and touch up this person; the producer tells her secretary to return calls; someone brings in a new prop. You have to just shut it out. Because to me, so much of directing is being able to recognize your intention--and to hear it, respond to it. All of that other stuff makes it more difficult to focus. So you have to systematize your brain: hold onto that impression, that moment.”

When she’s away from the set, Deitch is most likely to be found at S.P.A.R.C., or Social and Public Art Resource Center, a nonprofit arts organization--located in the old Venice jail--which she co-founded in 1975. Deitch herself studied painting and still photography; she has a bachelor’s degree in art from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in fine arts in film from UCLA. Her early film work (mostly experimental or documentary) includes “Portrait” (1971), “Woman to Woman” (1975) and “The Great Wall of Los Angeles” (1978).

Deitch credits “years and years of therapy” with helping to ease life’s occasional inevitable traumas. When people are unkind, “I say, ‘This is not about me. This is about them: their insecurities, their overwhelm.’ When ‘Desert Hearts’ came out and there were some bad reviews--with the good ones--I was devastated. I took it personally. But eventually that feeling evaporated because there was nothing for it to attach itself to.”

Her future plans? The director pauses for a moment, her serious gray-blue eyes suddenly dancing with the possibilities. “I would like to be the art czar of the world,” she said finally, her mouth curling into a grin. “I’m only kidding. It’d be much too big a job for me. Besides, it’s too bureaucratic. What I’d really like is to get the money to make the films and theater I want to make. That’s really the only obstacle. Just getting the money.”