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There is also, she believes, a big untapped pool of people who don’t have particular theatre friends or connections but who are a potential audience local theatres are not always reaching out to touch. “There is this feeling that you have to keep doing the big musicals and other popular shows that are going to bring traditional audience spouring in. But how do we train up the next generations of theatre goers among young people who are so multi-media oriented? With them it’s always got to be quick-fast. ‘I can get it on my computer immediately.... I can see it on television or whatever without leaving home.’”
When we talked last month, she recalled the value and power of her own theatre apprenticeship. That started when she was a Pittsburgh high school student taking classes from a dynamic drama teacher and mentor named Kay Miller. “I had the wonderful opportunity of spending time with her this past summer, looking back on all she did for me. She’s still working as a drama therapist, doing workshops all over the country as well as serving clients in Pittsburgh. . . She was never your traditional drama teacher. This was in the seventies, and we were in tights and leotards doing improv movement. Right from the start I was fascinated. . .
“I had the incredible opportunity under her of playing Robinson Jeffers’ Medea when I was a senior. . . Years later here on the Peninsula, I then had the wonderful experience of being one of the three women in the chorus of a production of MEDEA directed by Joseph Chaikin.”
After high school, study for a BFA in Acting at Boston University provided Teresa with her own chance to develop what has been a lifelong passion for teaching. “I was able to work with a number of people at Boston to create drama education programs in the local schools, and from that corps group of actors I worked with at university, three of us were hired by the same professional children’s theatre company in San Jose. It’s now called the California Theatre Center. In the days I worked for them it was the California Young People’s Theatre. We performed at a theatre in Sunnyvale and also toured local schools. In the midst of all that I married a California boy and after that started moving around the state with my husband Eric as he was finishing training as a physician.
“I got my Screen Actors’ Guild card doing commercials in San Francisco and pretty much managed to land a job teaching drama everywhere we went. I kept that up until the first couple of years after we moved to the Monterey Peninsula in eighty-five. I taught at former Briarcliff Academy which is now part of Stevenson School. Unfortunately my life has since gotten too busy to do that. But it’s something I have always loved and hope someday to do again.”
Office management has not, however, kept her from taking on a series of leading roles on local stages. Among these, she counts the alcoholic Terry in Warren Leight’s SIDE MAN and the Bosnian refugee Zlata in NECESSARY TARGETS by Eve Ensler the most challenging. “Terry was a really tormented character. Since the play spanned a thirty-year time frame I really had a chance to show many different aspects of this woman. . .
“With NECESSARY TARGETS, we as a cast did a lot of research. Our director Jeanne McCulloch brought in refugees living locally who gave us their first-hand experience. Since performing the play I’ve had the opportunity to travel not to Bosnia but to Croatia, and it was amazing to see the context of what we’d performed and to experience the strong emotions people in the region still have.”
Teresa suspects that she has all but cornered the local market on Jewish mothers, having portrayed them, in various modes and moods, in productions like Neil Simon’s BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS and BROADWAY BOUND and Alfred Uhry’s THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO, all at MPC. Another “really over-the-top” mom was the title character in Terry Kingsley-Smith's STAGE MOTHER for Unicorn. “That was a great character to play, and it was fun that Joan Fontaine, a friend of Terry‘s, came to see the production and liked it.
“I’ve been directed by Peter DeBono more than any other local director, and I love working with him. We have a great understanding and a shared vision of what he wants to do with a show.”
Asked about roles she hasn’t played but would like to, she said at once, “I’d love to do Martha in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? I was just talking about that to Peter DeBono. I’ve always tended to play characters older then I am, as Peter knows, having cast me in all those Jewish mother roles. People would say, ‘Oh you need to be playing ingénues,’ but I found myself doing these wonderful older women. But now that I’m approaching Martha’s age, I am looking at her and at some of the classic roles that are in my real age range.”
 STAGE MOTHER with Jennifer Muniz Unicorn Theatre 2005 |
“It’s also important to find the character’s activity. Many times actors are stuck for what to do on stage. They wait for a director to give them their choice. I prefer to find out for myself what my character is doing in that scene - setting a table, doing some mending, serving food. Discovering and doing that brings more reality to the character.”
Teresa has been an enthusiastic member of the Monterey County Film Commission, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. “I was one of the original board members, and it’s been a really wonderful creative outlet. It’s an economic development non-profit that tries to bring more film and TV and related industries to the Monterey Peninsula to help our local economy. Over the last ten years or so there’s been incredible competition all over the world for film dollars. Monterey has such an amazing film history: so many films shot in this county. But our area is also a very expensive place to come to and stay. One of our challenges is to promote this location as a unique place for film work, to lure film business here. We work with the local hospitality industry to provide incentives for casts and crews to come and work and, of course, stay in local hotels and patronize local businesses. I don’t think I’ll be on the board after this next year, but I may still be involved, possibly on an advisory board."
The commitment to regular active work in theatre, however, is going to continue. “I am the more relaxed on stage than in anything else that I do. Even playing the most intensely neurotic character, I am so focused on what I am doing that I am able to relax. Whether that’s from my formal training or my life experience, I don’t know, but it’s a matter of being able to put yourself in that position where all your stresses as a person leave your body and you become that character. Other actors who’ve worked with me tell me this makes them feel they can trust me to be totally in the scene with them.
“But as I get older it’s harder to memorize those lines. There are people who come to the first rehearsal knowing all their lines. I don’t do that. I really learn lines in rehearsal, in the context of actually working with the other actors. . . But I’m so fortunate! I have a husband who is happy to work lines with me.
“He and I joke about the possibility, as our business slows down, of running away to go and do just theatre for a year. It’s tough for so many local actors who are working full time and then rehearsing at night. It’s a real commitment, and that’s one of the reasons I pick and choose what I want to do. Devoting that precious piece of free time means I want it to be something worthwhile, a piece of work that I know I am going to get something out of and feel proud that I‘ve done.”
