Guthrie's Sally Wingert gets an unusual co-star: her boss
Artistic Director Joe Dowling returns to the stage after a 20-year hiatus
Mike Habermann
The Guthrie’s announcement that its 2009-10 season would include Faith Healer by Irish playwright Brian Friel wasn’t a huge surprise. Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling, a fellow countryman, has long been a champion and interpreter of Friel’s work. The shocker was that Dowling himself would be taking to the stage to play the title role, his first stage appearance in 20 years. Guthrie mainstays Sally Wingert and Raye Birk round out the cast as the faith healer’s wife and manager, whose complex monologues weave an emotional and contradictory tale about a man’s life and work. The play begins previews Oct. 17 and officially opens Oct. 23 with a run through Dec. 6. Wingert, who has appeared in more than 75 productions for the Guthrie since 1985 and is known for her comedic timing as well as dramatic breadth, chatted with The A.V. Club about hazing Dowling, what makes a good director, and capital-A art.
The A.V. Club: So, the big question: What's it like sharing a stage with your boss?
Sally Wingert: Oh, it's hell on wheels. [Laughs.] No, here's the funny thing—we're in a play together and it’s very exciting to be in a play with Joe, but I spend zero stage time with him. The play, when it was written, was really a very modern and astonishing departure. It is four monologues, and he bookends the play—he's got a monologue at the beginning and a monologue at the end—and as far as I’m concerned, he doesn't exist anymore. So I'm in rehearsal with Joe because he's directing me and that's not new; he's directed me a lot, although I don’t think I've ever been in a process with Joe where he's been so incredibly excited, so warm. It's been a great process but I'm interested in what’s going to happen when we're in performance and he's not directing us anymore, when he's got to be one of the gang, getting nervous beforehand. Raye and I are trying to figure out some really nasty things we can do to initiate him into the brotherhood and sisterhood of acting. [Laughs.] I'm teasing, of course. He has been an actor before, a very accomplished actor, but he has been away from this sort of performance thing for 20 years. He's probably going to be shitting his pants a little bit.
AVC: Do you think directors want to get back up onstage?
SW: I've never directed, so I’m going to project how I would feel if I were directing. There is such a control feature in directing that it sings its own siren song, that the more you direct, likely the less need [you have] for actual stage time. On the other hand, I think every good director I have ever had has been an actor at some point, so that must live inside of them somewhere.
AVC: Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that Dowling’s last production of Faith Healer was “pitched at a whisper.” Is this production similarly subdued?
SW: Joe has absolutely stressed from the first read-through that this should feel like you are having a conversation with one person. It is certainly a performance, ultimately, but the idea that you are giving a lecture or telling a story to a lot of people should fade to the kind of candor you can achieve if in your mind it is an intimate explanation to one or a couple of friends sitting around your living room, sitting around the bar and telling the story.
AVC: Why this play and why now?
SW: There is a huge metaphor in this play about the elusiveness of your art. It's not that [main character Frank Hardy, the faith healer] can muscle it, or he can force it. It works or it doesn't work, and there seems to be nothing he can do to make it happen. As artists we come into the day hoping that everything you know and the atmosphere is right for art with a capital "A," and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. That's the big and beautiful reason for doing this play. The other reason is that Joe is very familiar with this play, and he loves Brian Friel and wants to maintain Brian Friel's words and presence in the Guthrie. I think that it happens to be economically very handy to have a three-character play. It is one set, three characters, and the recession, good God, it has hit art organizations. It doesn't mean there is anything penny-pinching about this play, but I imagine it was a good fit this season.
AVC: What do you do as an artist to make the right conditions for art?
SW: I try to be really open, I try not to shut down things that are said. I try to listen more than I talk, which is a very hard thing for me. I try to put away my fear of being foolish and looking stupid because you almost invariably experience both on your way to art. And I try to get a good night's sleep.
