It’s all in her wrists

When Mary Lou Rosato strides down the ramp at REDCAT in “Peach Blossom Fan,” the key to her performance is in her flexed wrists. The gesture communicates the essential “who” and “what” of her character: the Prime Minister Ma Shi-Ying, who props up an idiot emperor to serve his own ends.

It is power strutting by way of a hand movement.

“That little turn of the wrist -- it has symbolic meaning: It’s a push-down, a force,” Rosato says. “There’s a rigidity to it that’s in the spine of the character, and yet it’s graceful.”

As an actress, Rosato, 55, is always looking for the trigger -- that certain gesture that reveals the character. In this case, “the man behind the curtain.”

“Peach Blossom,” a classic kunju opera from 1699 tells the story of an untouched courtesan, Shiang-Jun, who falls in love with a young poet, Hou Fang-Yu. A playwright, Yuen Da-Cheng, offers the couple his protection but when they refuse, he plots against them, offering Shiang-Jun to the impish and cruel emperor. Despondent, she smashes her head on the floor, losing her mind. At the end, after the emperor is overthrown, Hou Fang-Yu returns from exile to his beloved but she walks away.

The heroic cavalier, Ma Shi-Ying, played by Rosato, is a man who sees no wrong in his ruthless pursuit of power. As an introduction, Rosato sings: “And though my heart is made of steel / In early spring, I begin to feel / My hard heart harden.”

Movement was especially important in preparing for “Peach Blossom,” as stylized steps and hand gestures are essential to kunju. “Every movement had to be clean and exact and sculpted,” Rosato says. “I think it’s very hard for Americans, we’re steeped in naturalism.”

Director Chen Shi-Zheng, who has re-imagined this Chinese opera, provided subtle guidelines. “I got so much information from him just him raising his eyebrow,” Rosato says.

“Not everybody can play a villain and be that comic and so rich in detail,” Chen says. “You see when she comes on stage, the sparkles just come out in her eyes.”

Chen first saw Rosato in another CalArts Center for New Theater production, “King Lear” in 2002. She played Kent -- another male role -- in the avant-garde production, which featured an all-woman cast (including fellow CalArts faculty member Fran Bennett, who also appears in “Peach Blossom”).

“Good heavens! I’ve spent my entire life observing men,” she says, noting that one gestural distinction between the sexes is in the walk. While women “instinctively float,” men “want to feel they’re straddling the earth.”

Born in Miami, Rosato was a member of the first graduating class of Juilliard’s Drama Division. With fellow graduates Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone, she was an original member of the Acting Company, the acclaimed theater troupe founded in 1972 by John Houseman.

She remained in New York for 35 years, during which time she appeared in Broadway and off-Broadway shows ranging from “Three Sisters” to “Once Upon a Mattress,” as well as a number of films, including “Quiz Show,” “The Hudsucker Proxy” and “The Wedding Banquet.”

In 1996, she came to Los Angeles to play Flaminia in “Changes of the Heart” at the Mark Taper Forum, and in 1998 joined the faculty at CalArts, where she teaches Shakespeare.

Her various roles have drawn critical praise. In the New York Post, Donald Lyons wrote of last year’s “The Winter’s Tale” at the Classic Stage Company in New York: “The most intriguing character in the play is Paulina, a strong woman ... brilliantly portrayed by a feisty Mary Lou Rosato.” When she played several women in the 2001 production of “Baptiste” at Hartford Stage in Connecticut, the Boston Globe wrote that with “comic precision, Rosato has a charming savoir-faire as Madeleine Bejart and a delightful offensiveness as the cantankerous, theater-bashing Queen Mother, Anne of Austria.”

Next month, Rosato travels to Italy where she’ll be performing in medieval mystery plays. Until then, she’ll be at REDCAT, surrounded by current and former students in “Peach Blossom.”

“I think they like being on the stage with us,” she says of the teacher-student collaboration. For Rosato, the rewards of teaching go beyond the stage: “I get to live in the ideals of my youth.”

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‘Peach Blossom Fan’

Where: REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2nd and Hope streets, Los Angeles

When: Today to Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

Ends: Saturday

Price: $34 to $38

Contact: (213) 237-2800