After 10 Years, Director Joan Darling Returns to Acting : Director Joan Darling Returns to Acting After 10-Year Layoff : Theater: Forsaking Los Angeles for Santa Fe, she wants “work that’s worth getting out of bed for”--and found it in “The Waiting Room.”

It has been a long time since Joan Darling was on the stage. Ten years, to be exact. The actress-turned-Emmy-winning director-acting coach is appearing in Jean Colonomos’ “The Waiting Room,” one of two soliloquies in “Crossing Boundaries” at the Company of Angels Theatre in Silver Lake through Sunday.

“As a director, I’d been feeling that I wasn’t developing myself as an artist,” Darling explained of her return to the stage. “I was in service of other people’s visions. My vision may not be any better--but I have to succeed or fail on my own. Also coming back now, I’ve found the women’s movement has really changed women’s roles, and the availability of parts for older women. It may be the end of work in the commercial world, but it’s the beginning of an artistic life.”

Such is Darling’s current stage role: 50-ish New Yorker Ethel Rosen, whose mate has checked himself into a mental hospital.

Ethel’s Jewishness was also an attraction--and a point of connection. “I understand her complexity,” Darling stressed. “I know who she is. I cherish those women in my own life--my mother, my aunts, my friend Sylvia Shapiro--who bring those gifts from the culture: love, dedication to life, gallantry, humor, nobility. It’s a wonderful spirit. And as much as I think of myself as a modern woman, deep inside me there is an Ethel Rosen.”

Darling’s satisfaction extends to the entire experience. “This opportunity was mine ,” she said. “I’m not trying to win awards, make money. It doesn’t matter what people think. What I do is no longer tied to effect. And it’s changed my attitude towards directing. Now I won’t take jobs if the material isn’t good. I want work that’s worth getting out of bed for.”

And traveling to. In 1978, Darling and her writer husband Bill Svanoe (and for a time, her ex-husband Eric Darling) chucked life in L.A. for Vail, Colo.; for the past 1 1/2 years, home has been Santa Fe.

“I can feel the difference,” she admits of working in the business while living on the outside. “Not a lot of people know who I am, the way they used to. So sure, a little part of me says, ‘Am I dropping my career?’ Another part doesn’t care. I’m very selective now, anyway. And the nature of the business has changed so much; the kind of shows being done, the material I’m right for--and would be willing to do--is becoming less and less.”

The bottom line? “It’s not worth it for me to give up riding my horse, reading my books,” Darling said firmly. “When you get enough acclaim and win enough awards, you satisfy yourself in different ways. Yes, I have twinges--but less and less as I get more secure about my own value system.”

There’s one segment of the community Darling insists on staying close with: her acting students.

“Teaching is the best experience,” she rhapsodized of her popular four-times-a-year, all-weekend workshops. “I’m not sure what’s better. I’ve been doing it since I was 18; it’s always been in my life. You know those things where you’re the best you can be: the smartest, most alert, most non-judgmental, most talented? Well, I’m all those things when I teach. And it’s reinforced every time. Also, the relationship with the students--it’s a very happy class.”

Darling (an Emmy nominee for her direction of the classic “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a Directors Guild of America winner for the 1985 “Afterschool Special” “Mom’s on Strike”) fell in love with the movies at age 4.

“I thought you got to be a doctor, a lawyer or a movie star for two hours,” she recalled of her early impressions, “and I wanted to do everything, experience it all. But there’s really not enough time to live out all those lives. So the closest thing we have to multiple professions is being an actor.”

Educated at Carnegie Tech and the University of Texas, Darling set off to become a great Shakespearean actress (“as bright as being a blacksmith, in terms of getting jobs”).

After appearing in the political satire group the Premise and on Broadway, “I sold out,” she said cheerfully. Moving to Los Angeles, she appeared in a Steven Spielberg-directed episode of “The Psychiatrist,” followed by a regular role on “Owen Marshall.” In 1975, Darling had segued into writing TV scripts, when Norman Lear (“a second or third cousin--and the nicest, most generous person in my career”) gave her her directing break on the late-night comedy “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”

For Darling, it was more than a personal coup. “When I first broke through, there was a lot of attention attached,” she noted. “This was right in the midst of the women’s movement, and I was in the right spot at the right time. So it was important to see if I could--as a woman--handle a crew, take care of business, get a show done on time and under budget. It was scary, sure, because I was really unknown to myself as a director.”

And she found? “That I was capable of developing my own vision. Whenever I’ve trusted that vision, I’ve always been right.”

Review in Stage Beat: F14