She's In Over Her Head

Ferocity, thy name is Elizabeth Marvel

by Kathryn Walat

Elizabeth Marvel is a force of nature—a unique creature in performance and in person. You can't take your eyes off her on stage, not just because her presence is electric but because you have to see for yourself just how far she'll go. Off stage, she's known as something of a live wire, a woman with an Ibsenesque inclination to embrace life with vine leaves in her hair.

The Hedda Gabler reference is apt, because this winter at New York Theatre Workshop Marvel transformed Ibsen's self-destructive, contradiction-ridden Hedda into a thoroughly modern anti-heroine. The image of Marvel's Hedda kneeling downstage center while Judge Brack dribbles tomato juice into her mouth and down the front of her pink satin slip is not one that audiences will soon forget. Nor have they forgotten her Blanche DuBois, from three seasons ago at the same theatre, leaping gracefully and fearlessly face first into a bathtub, then striding the bare stage dripping wet and naked.

Marvel's ability to go virtually anywhere—and to access whatever it takes within herself to get there—is coupled with a technical virtuosity that allows her to share that element of danger with an audience. Her performances in Dutch experimental director Ivo van Hove's NYTW productions of Hedda Gabler and A Streetcar Named Desire may have unofficially earned her the title of Downtown Diva (officially, Streetcar earned her an Obie award, as did her pair of 1997 performances in Misalliance at the Roundabout Theatre Company and Thérèse Raquin at Classic Stage Company). But Marvel's impact has been felt far beyond Manhattan's lower shores: Her work spans new plays and Shakespeare, New York City and regional theatres across the country.

In her first year out of Juilliard alone, she worked at Ontario's Stratford Festival, Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater and American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., before making her New York debut as the Diane Arbus character in Silence, Cunning, Exile at the Public Theater. Most recently audiences were treated to her in Woody Allen's 1950s-set A Second Hand Memory at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, where she played bad-girl big sister Alma Wolfe, who left Brooklyn behind to sleep her way across Europe. In the beatnik uniform of black turtleneck, blue jeans, black flats and bangs, she delivered quips such as: (deep drag on her cigarette) "Can I help it if those geniuses in Detroit made a car with a bed in the backseat?"

While Marvel was brushing up her Brooklyn accent by day in Second Hand Memory rehearsals, by night she was still performing Hedda in van Hove's abstract, emotionally raw production—barefoot and restless, opening and closing the vertical blinds, stapling flowers to the walls, playing the piano like a cat walking back and forth across the keys. The director's singular vision of Ibsen's play seemed to empower Marvel to tap the depth of her own intensity—to discover just how far she is able and willing to go—in a performance wrought from their unique collaborative relationship.

"When she finds someone like Ivo, she's able to give him complete trust," remarks New York Theatre Workshop artistic director James Nicola. "I don't know that I've ever seen anything else like that, in any other actor-director relationship. Complete trust. He says let's try this, and she goes. Fiercely."

Over the phone from Antwerp, van Hove describes how that works. "Sometimes I'll suggest something and Elizabeth will say, 'No, Ivo, you're not serious,' and I'll say, 'Yes, I am serious, for this moment.' But she is always prepared to do whatever I suggest. When I say, well, jump over this, she does it. And then I think, well, let's put it 10 centimeters higher. Then she does it, you know?"

Van Hove's theatre makes huge demands on the actor's voice and body, and Marvel, 35, with a tall muscular frame and a surprisingly varied vocal range, is physically up to the challenge—as much as she is intellectually and emotionally. "She has a huge emotional intelligence," says van Hove, "so I can talk about the most complicated things, the most perverse things—things that people don't talk about—and she is able then to translate it into theatre."

The same set of skills makes Marvel a Shakespeare diva as well. Dramaturg John Dias got to know Marvel while working with her on a production of King Lear at the Public Theater, in which she played Regan. "She's got a real musical sense about her," he says. "And that's the thing about Shakespeare—you have to get inside that rhythm, yes, in a technical way, but also in whatever way it is when people have musical talent. To get inside and make sense of the rhythm."

Dias watched Marvel do the same thing with the role of Cressida in the Public's 1995 Central Park production of Troilus and Cressida. It was Marvel's performance, he says, that gave the complex play a strong emotional throughline, as she performed with a consciousness not only of her character but of the play as a whole. That holistic awareness might be due to the fact that, according to Dias, "She reads the play every single night after rehearsal. The whole thing." But Marvel doesn't just do homework for Shakespeare. Her work ethic makes all of her collaborators take note. Nicola has branded her a "leading lady," in the old-time-theatre sense of the word, describing how she naturally emerges as a leader in the room because of her total commitment to her process and her absolute lack of compromise.

Loretta Greco directed Marvel in an adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel Meshugah, in which she played Miriam Zalkind, a sexy young Holocaust survivor, married to one man and mistress to two others—a role she reprised from an earlier production at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, N.J. While the play is "brutal" on Marvel's character, Greco notes that "because she is working at such a pitch, it sets a tone for everybody in the room—a really professional tone that is full of rigor, but is tempered by an amazing plentitude of warmth and generosity. So it's like this unspoken challenge to everybody to be their best—because you don't want to disappoint Beth!"

Actor Jason Butler Harner had not met Marvel before playing George Tesman in the recent NYTW production. But he did know there was "a certain reverence for this actress." Harner also admits, "I always heard how intense and how crazy she is. She is a live wire." The two had an instant bond, claims Harner, sharing a dirty sense of humor.

Creating the relationship between this Hedda and Tesman, imagined by van Hove as Upper East Side hipster-socialites, was all about searching for "the most intricate way of getting under somebody's skin," Harner says. "And Beth was unrelenting about the places we could go." On stage, the nightly fun became how Harner could twist a line to make Marvel laugh during the couple's intimate moments on their Swedish-style couch. Off stage, Harner appreciated Marvel's tact and clarity in discussions about something as sensitive as artistic choices.

Jenny Bacon, who played Stella to Marvel's Blanche in van Hove's Streetcar, remembers that the strength that Marvel brought to Blanche turned Williams's play—perhaps inadvertently—into a drama about sisters. It was also Marvel's technique—she never missed a syllable of Williams's text—that gave audiences something to hold on to during the wild ride of van Hove's characteristically unconventional production.

"If you hang around with her," Bacon notes, "you feel like nothing bad can happen to you. That's an incredible strength to have as an actor, because as a fellow actor with her, I felt like whatever happened, we were going to be okay." The rehearsal process for Streetcar was demanding, but Bacon says, "Even when she's afraid, she finds some part of herself to stand on. She would never let a fellow actor down, whether they're willing to go there with her or not. If they can't go, she'll pick them up and carry them."

Many of Marvel's collaborators marvel at her fearlessness. Yet while she was training at Juilliard, one her instructors there, Richard Feldman, remembers how she suffered terribly from stage fright. "Her biggest thing here was just learning how to go on, both literally and figuratively," Feldman says. "There wasn't any question in our minds about whether she had the goods. It was whether she would have the courage and endurance to just keep going."

It was also at Juilliard that Marvel met actor Bill Camp; the two married this past September after 14 years of "shacking up together," according to Marvel's quote in their New York Times wedding announcement. In addition to being Marvel's life partner, Camp has also been her stage partner in productions such as Macbeth at Theatre for a New Audience, and John Guare's epic work Lydie Breeze, Parts 1 & 2 at NYTW (in which Marvel, as the titular character, ages from an idealistic former Civil War nurse to a broken syphilitic woman with rotting teeth over the course of the two plays).

So what's the force behind Marvel's nature? According to Camp, "I think it's derived from a need to get to a really honest place. For her that's really, really important, especially in the work. It means so much to her." Camp also admires her ability to have a distinctly clear boundary between Elizabeth Marvel the actor and Elizabeth Marvel the human being. "She's extremely creative in other parts of her life—she loves to make things, as well. She's made jewelry, she makes gifts for people, she makes little books that are rough, but they're beautiful. She puts a lot of time and effort into it."

Others have noted this healthy split in Marvel's life. They also take notice of her deep commitment to the theatre that doesn't end when she steps off the stage. John Guare says that "she's somebody who really believes that the theatre is a force for moral change—that theatre is a place of large intensity that has to challenge and illuminate the audience, and that's what she lives by."

I recently spoke with Marvel at the East Fourth Street offices of New York Theatre Workshop, soon after she finished playing Hedda there, and while on her day off from the just-opened run of A Second Hand Memory at the Atlantic.

KATHRYN WALAT: How would you characterize your career as an actor?

ELIZABETH MARVEL: I would say that I'm very much a director's actor. I've been incredibly fortunate in my lifetime to work with some of the great directors. And when I start a project, I really show up ready to work and very open, which is a reason why I think some directors do like to work with me—because I will go anywhere. As far as, if not farther than, where they ask me to.

I definitely have no fear in a rehearsal room. At all. When I let my imagination run and think of the worst case scenario, I mean, it's an incredibly safe environment. You're in a room with people who just want you to succeed and develop and create, so it's like being at nursery school. To me, it's just a joyous, thrilling thing to get to do for a living.

People you've worked with all seem to notice the fierceness and the focus with which you approach a role.

Where does that come from?

I think part of it is just my nature. Part of it is that I've had the good fortune to work with people that I saw I could give myself over to. I really didn't have any experience before I went to Juilliard. I knew nothing when I arrived there. I had been an art student—visual arts—and so theatre was a totally new phenomenon, although something that I had always been fascinated by in a very child-like way.

And when I was at Juilliard, Michael Langham was the head of the theatre department, and he became my mentor while I was there. He definitely instilled a work ethic in me, which I think I naturally have. I have excessive energy [she chuckles], and I love when it's bridled and focused. And he also told me, which is something that I took to heart and then did, that if you really want to be a theatre actor, when you get out of school you need to spend at least five years on stage before you do anything else.

And that's what I did. I just constantly worked. I think that helped me enormously to transition from that sort of clunky student technique practice, where you've got all these tools but you don't really know how to assimilate them. Just by doing over and over and over again—actually, I think I did that for more like six years. And then I finally, as we do as American actors, needed to self-subsidize, so I started doing television to pay the bills [appearing for four seasons on the CBS series "The District"].

Are there roles from those six years that stand out?

Oh, so many. I played Rosalind in As You Like It with Garland Wright, which was a phenomenal experience. I did the daughter in A Touch of the Poet, which—God, I was a baby, I was early-twenties, and she has like a four-page monologue, like just one of those O'Neillian marathons that you have to run. So I got to play these epic roles at a very young age. I mean, I played Lady M at twentysomething, and I played Blanche at thirty. And so I think that's also helped create whatever it is that people mention, the fierceness, because I've been given these beautiful opportunities at an early stage in my creative life. And the roles, the women, instill that in me as well.

The characters themselves?

Yes. You can't take it easy or put your feet up with a crossword when you're playing Rosalind or Lady M or Hedda or Blanche. They insist that you work hard.

Did you ever feel like: I'm in over my head this time?

Oh, sure—all the time. All the time. I have horrible stage fright, which I battle with on a daily basis. But I don't doubt the writing. I seldom doubt the direction. And so, I'm safe.

How did you end up at Juilliard, not having acted before?

I went to an arts boarding school, Interlochen Arts Academy, and they have a very well known music program, dance program and art program. A lot of people went to Juilliard, so I had heard of it for years and always thought that sounded pretty great. But I was [she pauses with gravity] a very bad kid in high school. I was very bad. The exact opposite of how I was when I landed at Juilliard. I was a little bit of a black sheep in my class there as well. But all the things that most people do in college—I did in high school. So I ended up being a visual art student.

After I got out of there, I went to London for a little while, and I saw a lot of theatre when I was over there. And I had one of those lightening bolt experiences. I saw Vanessa Redgrave in A Touch of the Poet, and I sat, like, two rows away from her, and that's when I knew. That's what happened. I saw her, and I was so fascinated—it was like watching Harry Houdini escape from the milk bottle, or whatever his famous trick was. It was magic to me. And I wanted to learn how to do that.

Some of my most striking memories of your performances are images from Streetcar and Hedda Gabler.

People often talk about images from those productions, and I wish I could see either of those shows, because I have no idea what they look like, and I can only imagine what it must be like to watch them. Inside of them, all of it is something you feel. It's like currents running through you. All of the lights, although I can't see them, I can feel them. It's all connected into some kind of mass circuitry of the piece that goes through me, and I would assume anyone that's in it.

How do you plug into that?

Because I've played the titular characters in those productions, I feel that I'm the filament in the light bulb, so much is just emanating out from me.

Giving birth to Hedda was a long, protracted labor. We didn't come up with the end of the play until the day of our final dress. There was a point where I was going to run against the wall and smash my head and we were going to have blood come out and I was going to slide down the wall with this sort of smear of blood. And then I was going to do this sort of insect-like, cockroach scurry. Another idea was that I would crawl inside the piano and shoot it. But the tomato juice—there was so much hacking away at lunch meat that came with that, that I don't even remember where that started.

You seem to have found an artistic home here at New York Theatre Workshop. How has that influenced your career?

I am so blessed to have this theatre in my life, as a champion of me and my work. I know how rare this is in this day and age with the state of arts funding, and the bottomline of Off-Broadway theatre, and not being a celebrity—just being a hard-working actor without a big name or a bunch of movies under my belt.

And it has had an enormous effect on my creative work. I've gotten to work with phenomenal people, international artists. Ivo has changed me and formed me, and made me the actor I am. I took a huge leap forward when I first worked with him as an actor. And every time I go, I feel that.

How does that happen? Does he push you into different places as an actor?

I never feel pushed by Ivo, at all. But I understand what you mean. He just engages my mind in a way that I've never experienced, and encourages the impossible in me. When you find that—it's incredible. It's incredible. And this place has given me the opportunity for that. And I do job out. I work at a lot of theatres in the city, and I feel very fortunate to do that, but this place is very rare.

So you grew up in Pennsylvania?

That's right, in the country, in a really small town.

And as a Quaker.

Yeah, I mean, in a very modern sense. We certainly did not go to Meeting very often, but my father was raised a Quaker and his father said "thee" and "thou" when talking with his sister. But I am a practicing Quaker. And I do go to Meeting on 15th Street, and it does have a big part of my life—my faith and my practice. Thank God.

I think that's another thing that allows me to go where I go in my work, because I'm tethered by something that's bigger than me, that at the end of the day I can surrender to and ultimately feel safe.

I think because of my experience with it as a young person, I think faith, in some ways, is like technique. It's something that's just innate, once you have it, that even when you forget it or don't use it, it's there.

I also know your mother's a photographer. Do you think that having another artist in the family was something that influenced you?

Oh, certainly, certainly. I can't think of a time when she and I weren't making things. She always encouraged my creativity. She always let me dress myself, from when I could. So I was notorious for in the summer wearing snowsuits, and in the winter wearing little sundresses, and she'd let me go to school. When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I can't even begin to talk about the things that I wore—I was obsessed with costuming myself when I was a child. She'd get calls from the principal all the time, and she would just gleefully encourage me.

I was also a very spooky, morbid child. I spent a lot of time at the cemetery, and I was obsessed with death and UFOs and anything crypt-like. And she had no problem with that. So, yes, I would say that my mom is my original creative cheerleader.

In making your life in the theatre, what has been most important to you? Is it about challenging yourself in a particular role or the actual creation of the show itself?

It's definitely not about roles, because I don't tend to have an agenda. Like with Hedda, I never wanted to do that play—I never wanted to do that play. And I never thought of playing Blanche, I always assumed I'd play Stella.

So did you take on those projects from a desire to work with Ivo?

I was asked. I was simply asked—which is the nature of a lot of my career. There's no master plan. But I am a very curious person. I love learning. I find working in theatre just fascinating. It's fascinating. Every day, whether it's from just basically studying human nature or looking at great texts or the research one does around a play.

But certainly the collaborative experience is what really fascinates me. Because I can come up with ideas, I can do work—but I love getting ideas from other people, I love sharing ideas, I love creating something together. That's the wonderful thing about theatre, and I think that music and dance share that, that you don't find so much in film or television. Theatre is truly a collaborative art and that—maybe that is influenced also by my Quaker background, I don't know.

Do you have any new projects coming up?

There are a couple that I'm very, very interested in. I'm very, very interested in re-examining Pygmalion. I think it's time to look at that play again—to examine it in a truly Shavian way. I think if you really look at the play—if you can somehow remove the musicals and somehow remove all of the pretty productions of it, and really get at what's there—I mean, this is a street person, this woman. Really looking at the guts and the bones of this play, it's amazing. It's an amazing play, and it's not just a lovely, charming linguistic exercise.

How did you rediscover it?

You know, someone mentioned the film, with Wendy Hiller and what's-his-name, Leslie Howard, and I watched it, and it's a beautiful film. And that began to key me into, what is there? So I just started reading it and reading it and reading it—and I'm still reading it and reading it. I am so intrigued by this play.

It's also a time, I think, where words are very precious and very powerful in the world. And I think if we can be afforded the luxury, we really need to think about what we're seeing and what we're putting out there. I don't think it's time to just do work because you want to feed your ego or to have the great role. It's really a time to consider the audience and what they need right now, over what one's career ambitions are.

So, that's something too that's leading me to reading Sarah Kane, Edward Bond and lots of other writers right now. I'm searching, you know. The great thing about the current environment is that it is conducive for good art.

Because people are ready for it?

Because people are pissed. And people are hungry. Really hungry. They need it. They need the catharsis.

Kathryn Walat is the New York City-based author of the plays Know Dog, Johnny Hong Kong and A Book of Two.