Donna McKechnie, best known for her Tony Award-winning performance of Cassie in ”A Chorus Line,” has performed in numerous Broadway shows, touring companies, television shows and on stages in Tokyo, Paris and London. In 1979 her career was brought to a sudden halt by the onset of crippling arthritis and a medical opinion that she would never walk again, much less dance. Two years later, in defiance of the medical establishment, McKechnie was back on stage in Chicago in ”I`m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road.” In a recent conversation at Harrah`s in Lake Tahoe, where she was starring in ”Sweet Charity,” McKechnie told writer Norma Libman how she conquered this disease and how the experience changed her life.
DATELINE: LAKE TAHOE, NEV. As a young girl, I really felt an overpowering need to dance. Even at the age of 3 I danced around my living room and my mother observed this. I had such a passionate feeling for dance. And I was raised in the Midwest in the
`40s and `50s when sweet little girls were silent and wore little dresses and always smiled. You know: ”Stay as sweet as you are.” I believed all this was true. But when I danced, in a private way, it was mine. I didn`t have to be a certain way; I could just be. It was the closest thing I had to experiencing unconditional love, a relationship with myself, no judgments, no boundaries.
I think, if there was a turning point in my life, it happened when I was 7 and my mother took me to the movies and I saw ”The Red Shoes.” Then right after I saw the movie my mother did something wonderful for me. She took me to a ballet class. And then I studied and that was my lifeline for the rest of my time in Michigan, until I got to New York.
At the age of 15 I ran away from home. It was a very hard thing for me to do. It was shocking; it was worse than getting a divorce. I shamed the entire family. I had planned my escape for a long time and it was a healthy thing for me to do, but I felt so guilty for it that it was many years before I could appreciate the benefits of having done it. I remember thinking, as a child, that I had to get out of there and go to New York. But I knew I was too small and they`d catch me so I had to wait until I was bigger.
Then, when I got my first offer to do a dance concert, I thought it was my big break and I told my parents I was going to go. It was $75 a week, which was big money, and they said no, but I told them I had to go anyway and I ran away. And that changed my life, because it gave me that steeliness that you need. And because I`d had good training in Detroit, I was able to get work as a dancer in New York.
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A major turning point in my career was when Michael Bennett was designing the show for dancers, called ”A Chorus Line.” It opened on Broadway in 1976 but we started working on it long before that. It was tricky stuff because it was very exciting and creative, but there was nothing concrete. We were all improvising and we were writing scenes with the writers as we rehearsed. There was a lot of competitive feeling in the air, which is typical of any show, but here there was no real regimentation. Every day when you came in, you knew that anything could happen.
I knew I was up against something, but I didn`t know what it was. I`d had a modicum of success with such shows as ”Company” and ”Promises” and I thought, this is going to be very important for me if I handle it correctly. I knew I had to bring everything to bear that I knew about theater and about myself and be totally open and trusting. I knew I had to let the work pass through me, not try to control it, not try to own it. A very Zen kind of thing.
I took the subway every day and read a lecture that a yoga had given in New York. I read this every single day on the way to the theater. And, in essence, it said ”you are not great, you are a vessel and everything great passes through you as a creative being.” So you don`t own it; it takes the pressure off you. It`s a very simple concept and it`s really true.
By the time I`d get to the theater I was able to ignore all the petty rivalry that was always there. I was able to go to rehearsal each day and just let Michael see me. And the incredible payoff was the creation of that whole powerful section at the end of ”A Chorus Line.” I`m very proud of that. In any other situation it probably would have been eliminated because it was a very difficult part.
When arthritis swept over my body in 1979 I made a very important decision. I was faced with three very good doctors who said, ”You`ll never be able to walk again. Forget about performing or dancing. You`ll always have to take drugs and injections and this and that.” And I think I had a moment that was very willful; it was like the little girl who ran away. When the doctor said there was nothing he could do except give me drugs, I don`t know where the voice came from, but I heard it say, ”No.” I just knew that I would die because I could not bear the idea of being an invalid in my early 30s and having a nurse 24 hours a day. I couldn`t afford it anyway.
So I heard this silent ”no” and I went away and I read everything that I could. I had a couple of friends who were very supportive, but in this business I felt that I couldn`t tell people. So people were wondering, ”What happened to her?” I had just disappeared from the scene. Meanwhile, I found a doctor in New Jersey, Dr. Sam Getland, who was 95 at that time. He analyzed samples of my hair, urine and stool.
He asked me questions about what I could eat and couldn`t eat, what I could do and couldn`t do. He put me on what was basically a cleansing diet, just raw vegetables, fish and a lot of vitamins. And he told me not to raise my voice and ”no fussin`.” At that point the only show I could watch on television was ”Mister Rogers” because I couldn`t stand loud voices. I was just a mess.
In a matter of three weeks the pain subsided. In six weeks I was able to walk. In six months I was able to start doing yoga and the doctor told me that in a year I`d be able to dance again. Well, in a year I was in Chicago in
”I`m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road.”
I don`t have the answer for arthritis for everybody. But I do know that no matter how much you respect the doctors, you can`t let anybody tell you your destiny. People are getting operations and taking drug therapy they don`t need all the time. I don`t know where the voice came from, but something somewhere wouldn`t let me do that.
Maybe it`s because I`m a dancer and I`m used to listening to my body. A lot of people go into such denial about their bodies. I knew that my body responds to exercise and good food, not drugs. And I think that the arthritis itself was my body`s response to emotional problems.
I needed something to stop me in my tracks. I`d just been divorced from Michael Bennett and my father had died the year before and the sense of loss was so great. The way I was going in my life was to not deal with it and my body just had to stop me.
From the letters I got I know that a lot of people are suffering with this. Women are raised to give and give and put everybody else before themselves. It`s a terrible way to learn a lesson, but that arthritis was one of the most important things that ever happened to me. I would hate for anyone to have to go through that to learn, but maybe I had to. Anyway, the important thing is what you learn from anything. And I came out of it feeling that my life is going to be different.
Now my priorities have really changed. One of the things that I feel grateful for is that it enabled me to appreciate the suffering of other people. I can no longer walk down the street and see someone stricken in some way and not take the time to speak to them. I take the time because I know there is time. I never thought there was before because I was so ambitious. I was always racing-for what, I don`t know. There`s plenty of time to do everything. As a result, I`m able to appreciate everything so much more. I`ve started having a personal life that I really like.
I started traveling and working in Europe and appreciating that there`s a whole world out there. There`s not just New York and Los Angeles. But the most important thing I did for myself was to finally go to another doctor and really work on the problem-the core of my being-and grab hold of it and understand it. My friends thought I was spending too much money on therapy and turning down jobs just when I was starting to get going. But I knew I must do it and I spent every day for three years working on it. What is the point of having a career if you`re not going to be happy? I think it was one of the most important things I ever did.
The first step for anyone with emotional problems or pressures is to look in the mirror and ask yourself what you want, what you need. It`s like an exercise and it`s amazing what happens. You start feeling good about giving yourself the time and that evolves into treating yourself better and then into demanding respect from others and then into having bigger dreams for yourself and bigger goals. Don`t abandon yourself. Don`t let anyone tell you what your destiny is.