ANDY DRACHENBERG: You’ve previously directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Have you approached the material differently as an actor than you did as a director?
AMY MORTON: Acting and directing are two entirely separate disciplines. As an actor, I’m in charge of one track; I have to make sure that Martha is holding up her end of the story. As a director, you’re overseeing everything. You’re casting a much wider net as a director. As an actor approaching this, it’s a very large role and it’s a very difficult play to do, so you just kind of start with page one and memorize it. It’s very difficult language to memorize, too. You treat it as you do any other play; you just sort of try to psychologically piece your way through it. You try to have it make sense from one moment to the next.
AD:How do you prepare to perform such an emotionally and physically draining play eight times per week?
AM: I don’t do much during the day, quite frankly. I sleep a lot. I eat a lot of protein. It’s not like I can go museum-hopping during the day and then do the show. It really is about conserving your energy because you know that for three hours it’s going to be incredibly concentrated and you’re going to have to be very focused. It’s physically and psychologically taxing, so I just store energy all day.
AD:How has your experience with this production differed from your past Broadway experiences?
AM: It’s more difficult. August: Osage County was the same routine because that was also a three-act epic in which I was on stage a lot. Not as much as I am in Virginia Woolf, but it was still a very difficult role, physically and emotionally. I learned from August how to conserve the energy. This is the hardest role that I’ve ever done, but it’s not all that dissimilar from August in terms of what I have to do during the day to make sure I’m up for it that night.
AD:How did you personally connect to Martha’s psyche to understand her better as a character?
AM: This was not an easy role for me to do. It just wasn’t easy to connect to emotionally and psychologically. It didn’t really click until a month after we opened in Chicago. She leads her life in a very different way than I do. She’s very sexual, whereas that’s not something I ever put on display in the way I move through the world. That’s just one example of having to wrap my head around a woman whose M.O. in the world is very different than mine. It took a very long time for me to get confident in the role.
AD:You’ve spent a good deal of time with this production through its many incarnations since it premiered in Chicago in 2010. How have different layers of the play been unveiled to you over time?
AM: When Jeffrey [Richards, producer of the Broadway production] told us that he would love to take this production to Broadway but not until the fall of 2012, we knew that would be a lot of time off. We were worried that we would lose it, so we got together every couple of months or so just to run the lines because we didn’t want to have to start all over with rememorizing the play. It turned out that the time away was kind of great. When we went back into rehearsal, all of us were more confident and it was a deeper experience doing the play. I think that it’s a very different experience for an audience watching the play between Chicago and now.
AD:You previously worked with Tracy Letts on Broadway when you starred in his Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County. How has your experience working with him as an actor differed from working with him as a playwright?
AM: I worked with Tracy as an actor well before I ever worked with him as a playwright. This is something like the sixth or seventh time we’ve been married to each other in a play, so I’m very familiar with how he works as an actor. I’ve also directed him in many shows. He’s probably the person that I’m most comfortable working with in any capacity in theatre. I’m just very used to him. We have shorthand that allows us to get to the nitty-gritty of a play really quickly. And that holds true every time I work with him, be it as an actor or director or playwright. I don’t feel that I’m ever working in a different way with him; it always just feels like I’m working with Tracy again. That’s the joy of company. There are very few actors who are lucky enough to be in a company, particularly one that’s lasted as long as Steppenwolf’s company. It’s quite an anomaly. The shelf life of an ensemble is usually about 5-7 years, and our company is going on 36 years or something. It’s an artistic luxury. I feel really artistically lucky to have relationships that have been going on for years now, and I think it shows up in the work.
AD:What is your personal favorite moment in the production?
AM: [laughs] Would it be terrible to say the end? ‘Favorite moment in Virginia Woolf’ is sort of an odd statement. There are moments…I don’t know. I really am happy when it’s over. This is not to mean that I’m having a terrible time doing it. There’s just something about this play: you get on the train and you just keep riding the train. It takes you on a very large journey, and you spend it all on stage. It’s great, but there’s something about feeling depleted and exhausted at the end that tells me that I’ve done my job.
AD:Given your extended history working on Virginia Woolf, what aspects of the play are relevant to contemporary society 50 years later?
AM: Well I don’t think relationships have changed much. I don’t think relationships have changed that much in thousands of years, quite frankly. The same joys and sorrows still exist, and I think that’s a lot of what this play is about. So that’s also why I think artists still love to do it and why audiences still want to come see it. There’s something in it that reverberates or strikes a chord in everybody, which is not to say they’re in some sort of weird marriage. But they can recognize it in other people. They can recognize certain things in themselves. There’s a universality to Albee’s writing that I don’t think will ever get old.
Amy Morton (Martha)is an actor, director and member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. As an actor, she has appeared in over 30 productions for the theatre, and has appeared on Broadway in August: Osage County, (receiving Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Best Actress), as well as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Film credits include: Up In the Air, The Dilemma, Rookie of the Year, 8mm, Falling Down, and the soon to be released independent feature film, Bluebird for Killer Films. She appears throughout Season 2 in the Starz series, “Boss.” Prior to joining Steppenwolf, Amy was a member of The Remains Theatre Ensemble for 15 years.