Woolf’s at Her Door Again

In recognition of her 80th birthday last year, actress Uta Hagen returned for the first time to a role that helped define her early career. In a sparsely staged reading at Broadway’s Majestic Theater, she once again played Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” the part she created in 1962 in the original Broadway and London productions. Even though the 1999 reading was performed only once, as a benefit for HB Playwrights Foundation, where she has taught since 1947, critics raved, calling the reading one of the top 10 events of the year.

The best-selling author of “Respect for Acting” and “A Challenge for the Actor,” Hagen most recently was seen on Broadway in the title role of “Mrs. Klein” (1996-97) and off-Broadway as the celebrated writer in “Collected Stories” (1998). Widely recognized as one of the greatest actresses of the American theater, this afternoon at 2 she reprises the reading of “Virginia Woolf” at the Ahmanson Theatre as a benefit for HB Playwrights Foundation and Theatre (named for its late founder, Hagen’s husband Herbert Berghof) and the Center Theatre Group. She shares the stage with Jonathan Pryce as George, Mia Farrow as Honey and Peter Gallagher as Nick, under the direction of William Carden, artistic director for HB Playwrights.

In a recent conversation at her Greenwich Village apartment, where she has lived since 1947, Hagen laughed, acted out and talked gregariously about Martha, her art and her passion for the theater.

Question: When you decided to do the reading of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” did you go back and relearn the script?

Answer: I didn’t memorize it, but obviously I worked on it a lot. And a lot came back to me.

Q: And now, are you nervous again?

A: Sure. I’ve got 18 “Virginia Woolf” scripts all over the house. And again I’m feeling like I’m not working enough. I’m at that point in the play now where everything reminds me of it. Like when [a friend] just brought me a drink, right into my head popped the line “He’s a good bartender . . . , a good bar nurse, the S.O.B. He hates my father.” [laughs]

Q: Did coming back to the play bring something new to you?

A: It’s brilliantly written, so what grabbed me again was the accuracy of Edward’s ear. How he hears how people talk. If you change a word order, it just isn’t right. Because it’s so accurate. And young people, my students, who came to it and didn’t know the play, they were stunned--it could be now. The only thing is, it’s no longer shocking! It was very shocking then. Do you realize there’s not one f-word in the whole play?

Q: Going back to your preparation . . .

A: Frankly, I was so worried about it, going back to it after 37 years. What if I made a fool of myself? My heart was not in it, and then I was ill all summer long, and I was feeling guilty that I wasn’t working hard enough. Really, up until the disastrous dress rehearsal, where we had the stage only for two hours in which to do sound cues, body mikes, everything--the play is about 3 1/2 hours long. That it came off this way was to me a miracle!

Q: Did you feel that it was working during the performance?

A: Almost right away. But there was one thing I want to change. When we came on--and I love that first scene, it’s like lace, and we worked so hard on it--they started clapping to the point where everything stopped. Which ruined the first scene. It was nice applause, but it ruined the first scene. It was celebrityville. It didn’t ever occur to me that it would be like that.

Q: From what people wrote, it was the performance of a lifetime!

A: It wasn’t that good; it was received that well. I could do it a lot better.

Q: Is that what attracted you to do it again in Los Angeles?

A: No, I just was so thrilled that it was received that enthusiastically. It was thrilling! As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure about doing it again at all. But then I was talked into it again.

Q: You’ve written about how you really don’t have to be the right age to play a role, and yet you say you worried you were too old to play Martha now.

A: But 40 years! I’m talking about a reasonable age difference. An actress came up to me and said, “You assigned me Ruth in ‘Epitaph for George Dillon’ [by John Osborne].” I said, “Yes.” She said, “But she’s 40!” I said, “How old are you?” And she said, “32.” I said, “Listen, when you’re 40, you’re not going to feel one ounce different than you do right this second.” People have such preconceptions about age.

I saw a production of “Three Sisters,” at Moscow Art. And Irina was about 18, Masha was about the right age, 30. Olga was 60, and she was the best thing in it. You never questioned her age.

Q: Isn’t it the same for Martha?

A: I was only 40 when I [first] played her, and she’s supposed to be 52. I think what I was dreading now is that essential part of the woman--the voluptuousness, the exploitation of her sexuality. If somebody’s too old, it can be really unpleasant to watch. That’s why we don’t do any real kissing or anything. I might throw up. I think there’s a limit.

Q: So a reading is the appropriate way to handle that?

A: I think so. They asked me afterward--they were thinking of a revival. And somebody said to Edward, “Don’t you think she should play it?” And he said, “Would she play eight performances?” I said, “Of course, I’d play eight performances--way ahead of all the people who are 40 and are too tired to play eight performances.” [laughs]

Q: Stamina is not a problem?

A: No, it’s not a problem for me.

Q: What’s your favorite role you’ve ever played?

A: The one I’m working on, usually! No, I loved “A Month in the Country” by Turgenev. I loved “St. Joan.” I loved “Streetcar.” As a matter of fact, the only play I was very glad when it closed was [Clifford Odets’] “The Country Girl” [1950]. Because I didn’t like the play, I didn’t like the last act, you were ashamed to be onstage saying those soap-opera lines. It was the only time I ever said, “Thank God we’re closing.” Usually I’m sobbing.

Q: Do you like to originate roles?

A: Makes no difference to me. I love the classics. I don’t even think about it as originating--whether it’s Desdemona or Martha.

Q: Do other actors’ interpretations influence you?

A: Never. The only time I would say that it influenced me--I was asked several times to play Amanda in “Glass Menagerie” and said no because I will never get Laurette Taylor [who created the role] out of my head. Maybe if I had actually accepted and started working, I would have shaken that image, which was so powerful to me--still is today. I probably would have gotten over it.

I’ll tell you another I turned down because it was so perfect--Jessica Tandy in “The Gin Game.” She actually called me, she was going to take off for the summer, and I said, “No.” If you see something that’s all there, why would you want to work on it?

Q: If you were looking for a role to play right now, what would it be?

A: Anything. [laughs] I’m going to play at Stratford Festival in Toronto this summer, I’ll do “Collected Stories” again. And also in Montreal, so I’ll be gone three months.

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist?

A: Oh, yes, indeed I do. I think it’s a much overused word. I think of an artist as being like somebody in a church, who really means it and spends their life pursuing it.

Q: How much time does it take you to prepare for a part?

A: Well, I like eight weeks’ to three months’ rehearsal, which is almost impossible to get. And less than that I find amateurism. Now you get 3 1/2 weeks for a Broadway production! The process really of working at it, until the part is in your bones and is yours, even with eight weeks’ rehearsal, which I had with my last play . . . it takes me another month.

What I consider ideal, when I say I’m flying, is when there is no thinking about “then this, then that.” To really let it happen, so it exists right then and there as if for the first time. That’s my goal. And that takes forever to achieve.

Q: So it’s basically not until midway through the run of a show?

A: The end is always twice as good as the beginning. I’m always crying when it’s over. When I did “The Cherry Orchard”--which I didn’t do for very long, only three or four months--on the closing night I said, “I just figured out how to say goodbye to the cherry orchard! And I can’t do it again!” I was so frustrated.

Q: Has teaching changed your work?

A: My teaching and writing have taught me so much about acting, you have no idea. When I first started teaching, I said to Herbert Berghof, my husband, “I’ve never taught before. . . .” He said, “But you know how to act, can’t you try to pass that on?” Which thrilled me as an idea. And then I found that whenever I couldn’t articulate something, it’s because I didn’t really understand it.

People get so mystic about art. [sticks her tongue out mockingly, then laughs] The whole idea of creation is mysterious and wonderful. But within that, you are creating a craft. It’s a bottomless craft, which is why I love it so much.

Q: Your books make it seem so simple. I’m not an actress, but reading the books, it almost seems I could be.

A: The moment you got up and tried it, you would realize you couldn’t yet. There is a real technique of looking, listening, experiencing something, then finding the actions for it. Finding which way the actions are correct for the character is not a mysterious process.

Greatness, I think, comes from selection. In other words, we look at something, and we see the same thing. But, what I perceive and you perceive will be two different things. Then out of this perception, what I choose to do about it, the choice I make, is what makes for a real artist.

Q: Give an example.

A: Say I’m playing a clown. All it says in the stage direction is, while she’s talking she drinks. And I take a drink. And we’re talking and I go . . . uhhhh. Now that might not occur to somebody else. It’s a wildly oversimplified example, but it is the selections of behavior and actions that make a character.

Acting is what fills the words. It’s from life. I was in a car accident [some time ago], and they pulled me out of the car, and I was sure I’d lost my eye. But I had one desire--I had a little poodle which was thrown out of the car--and I wanted that poodle. Everybody around who gathered very quickly, they looked at me and went “ay!” They’re screaming, I’m not. And the conventional actor who plays that is going to go, “Oh, my eye!” Whereas in life, you see, I’m saying, “Where’s my dog? I’ve got to get my dog!” Which is chilling. Much more so than crying and carrying on. Learning these kinds of choices from life is wonderful.

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“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, today, 2 p.m. $50-$75, (213) 628-2772; $125 (preferred seating) and $250 (with post-show reception), (213) 972-7690. During the two weeks after the performance, Hagen will teach master classes at the Howard Fine Acting Studio, 7801 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Information: (323) 951-0302.

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Hagen also will appear Saturday at a question-and-answer seminar and book signing at the Writers Guild Theatre, 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills; 7:30 p.m. $25-$50. (323) 655-TKTS.