The winner of a Tony (”Twigs”), two Obies (”The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” and ”Tartuffe”), and an Emmy (”Family,”
which ran for five seasons on TV in the late `70s), Sada Thompson is one of America`s foremost actresses. Thompson, 59, makes her home in Connecticut when she is not working. Recently in Chicago to accept her second Sarah Siddons Society award-the first was for her Chicago performance of ”Twigs,” the second for her riveting portrayal of the independent Jewish widow in ”Driving Miss Daisy”-Thompson talked with freelance writer Norma Libman about how acting became her way of life.
I think in a sense all children have an interest in the theater. They may not know that that`s what it is, but from early on they make little productions in the back yard. I hope they still do this, even with television. It`s a way of amusing yourself.
If they don`t have a show in the back yard, with a curtain hung over the laundry line, then there are the winter months when they go through the trunk in the attic and play dress-up and make up their own plays. Or act out whatever they`re reading and be witches and ladies and lovely princesses or whatever comes to mind.
Of course, not all children do go on into the theater professionally. I think for some it`s just more important than it is for others. They develop an interest in how to do it that gradually leads them into the profession.
I do have a memory of the first professional production I ever saw. It was on Broadway and my folks took me when I was 7 years old. I remember a moment when Bob Hope was on stage. He was very, very young then. I remember this figure down there, walking around in the light.
I can`t say absolutely when I knew I wanted to make a career of this. I think I said, ”Oh, I want to be an actress when I grow up,” probably a lot of times when I was little. Because my idea of an actress was somebody who dressed up in lovely clothes and was in the movies. It seemed very great and glamorous. But when I was about 11 or 12 I went to see a production of scenes that were put on by a little drama school in a small town in New Jersey just three miles away from where I grew up. A very good friend of mine was in the class.
I remember sitting there and being so hypnotized and thrilled to see acting and to see all these other people doing this thing. And doing it not in some sort of frivolous way. This was serious. They were really doing it. I went home just imbued. And I asked my mother if I could possibly go to those classes. She talked it over with my father and they thought that they could swing it, so I did. I went to those classes, once a week, from that time all through high school.
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Gradually there just didn`t seem to be any question that that`s what I wanted to do. My parents were very conservative people, but they weren`t conservative as far as a girl`s dreams were concerned. For those days that was very unusual.
My father was tremendously supportive and he wanted me to go to college. So we looked at colleges that had training programs in acting so I could do that and also have a good education. I went to Carnegie Tech, now called Carnegie Mellon University. In those days you really got a lot of acting time in during the school year, as well as all your other courses.
There were the usual sort of courses such as language and history and then there were all kinds of stagecraft and phonetic literature and things like that that were sort of slotted in the direction of the theater. And after my sophomore year I got a job in stock and worked in the summers.
It was in my senior year that I met my husband (Donald Stewart). He had come to the college from the service and was just back from Germany. He was
quite interested in the theater, but he did not decide to go on with it. He had a lot of talent, too, but it didn`t finally draw him that deeply.
After we were married we made a decision about our acting careers. Don said-we were so naive, actually-that I should try acting for a year and then he would try a year. I thought that was great. He got a job and I did the year of acting. At the end of the year I said, ”It`s your turn.” And he said,
”No, I don`t want it.” So I just kept going.
I was fortunate to keep working, though I worked much less when my daughter was small, in those first few years. Then gradually I was working a little more and a little more. The theater was rather different then. There were more stock companies and more touring. You don`t see as much of that anymore. And there was a very active off-Broadway for which you got paid next to nothing. I was in a kind of a network with my friends from school and we would hear about one little job or another and call back and forth and keep each other informed.
It was through one of these friends that I got a job at the YMHA (now the Young Men`s and Young Women`s Hebrew Association), a very active cultural center in New York. They have lectures and concerts and all kinds of things and they have a number of literary people who read from their works. Dylan Thomas had been there a number of times and he`d just written ”Under Milk Wood” and he wanted some actors. He was so unsnobbish about it. There were lots and lots of established actors who would have been interested in being in it, but he wanted some of the out-of-work actors who worked at the Y. So the whole cast was made up of kind of hopeful, aspiring actors. That was the beginning for me.
Things just sort of came in steps. I think that`s one reason that I`ve enjoyed it. There weren`t too many rude shocks. For instance, a quite important step for me was doing ”Marigolds” (”The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” April, 1970, to January, 1971). That was an off- Broadway production, an excellent director and a very good cast of people. But it began so modestly.
Paul Zindel then was an unknown writer. We were just a little off-Broadway production. Suddenly it got attention and I got attention. Everybody got attention. And that led to other things, to other jobs. It turned out to be a decisive thing, but I wasn`t aware of it at the time. And I`m glad of that.
I think it`s better to have these things happen gradually. Expectations weren`t all that high for the experience and then when it happened, it was gravy. It seemed like something very extra special. I thought it was quite enough to have done the play and to enjoy doing it. Then to get the extra attention was very nice.
I suppose I`ve made a few mistakes in choosing scripts. As a matter of fact, I`m sure I have, but I tend to put them right out of my mind. I think for the most part the choices have been good, but it`s very hard to make these choices. And they seem to come all at once. There`ll be several months when there`s absolutely nothing doing and then suddenly one week there`ll be four things and you have to decide between them.
I feel that I have a sense of whether something is right, but I can`t say that sense is infallible. I didn`t want to do ”Marigolds.” It was my husband who thought I should. And it wasn`t because I didn`t like it. I liked it very much, but I wasn`t thinking daringly enough.
It was a departure for me. And high time to have made such a choice. But I had seen it done on television with another actress and I thought, ”She`s right for it and it can`t be right for me.” But Don said, ”No, I think you should read it again.” And I did and that time I saw something in it.
You read a part and it isn`t that you see it fully formed, but I always feel as if I can see a skirt going around the corner. I`m aware of a presence and it`s a presence that I`m interested in and want to find out more about. That`s kind of my criterion for picking a part.
I don`t think that prizes are the great satisfaction in acting. The satisfaction is in doing it. The important part is what you take home in your heart, which is what you`ve done together with other people. But there is a great satisfaction in knowing that people approve of what you`ve done. The Sarah Siddons award is unique in that there are scholarships involved and there`s recognition of local actors. It also shows some respect for the past. Not giving up is the important thing. If you have a gift, it may sleep for a couple years. You may be on to doing something else. Quite frequently it`s just the exigencies of making a living. Perhaps you can`t make a living from sculpting, but you can still sculpt. An actress, of course, has to have an audience there someplace. But you can be involved in community theater. I think after a while, though, a strongly gifted person wants to be in a professional atmosphere. If you are such a person I think you have to keep trying to find that kind of atmosphere. It`s not an easy thing.
I think all of us have to be told that we`re talented by somebody who has faith in us and thinks that we have something to give. From that, you have to develop faith in yourself, but I really don`t know how it`s done. I was very fortunate in my parents, who thought I was terrific. They probably thought I was more terrific than anybody since. But my husband, too. He has been wonderful, just wonderful support. If they hadn`t had faith in me I don`t know if I would have had so much faith in myself. Faith in yourself is most important.