Anne Kanengeiser has become a walking CD-ROM of Eleanor Roosevelt. She can name the private girls’ school Roosevelt attended, list the causes she espoused and use the fact that her mother called her “Granny” from the time she was 2 to help explain her low self-esteem.
And when Kanengeiser takes the stage to portray the title role in “Eleanor” at the Marriott Lincolnshire, her very posture, voice and timing create the telling moments that pushed the shy, gawky girl past her early refrain of “I’m not very good at that” into greatness.
Part of this comes from research. Kanengeiser has devoured key biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, read her letters and studied dramatizations of her life.
Much of the spirit she gives the character of the woman who redefined the role of first lady, Kanengeiser says, comes from within, from those parts of her life that correspond to this seemingly different life.
“We are similar in so many ways,” Kanengeiser said. “Older parents, going to private girls’ schools, very East Coast oriented, coming from families that were in the upper crust of their town’s society.”
Kanengeiser was raised in Columbus, Ohio, and received her degree in theater from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. She performed in musicals and cabarets in Washington, D.C., and then left theater completely for six years, working in sales, health and fitness. She moved to Chicago 10 years ago.
“I got to town on a Tuesday, and auditioned on Saturday,” she recalled. “They wanted a beggar woman for `Sweeney Todd’ , and on Sunday I had a show. It told me I wasn’t done with theater yet.”
Kanengeiser, who lives in Bucktown with two cats she admits she spoils, also has appeared as Mrs. Egstrom in the Goodman Theatre’s Jeff Award-winning production of “A Little Night Music,” and at the National Jewish Theater and the Apple Tree Theatre in Highland Park.
As a member of the Illinois Arts Council, she has been an artist-in-residence at suburban and Downstate schools.
Kanengeiser calls the part of Eleanor “a gift, something very spiritual,” and perhaps a turning point.
“I’m approaching 40, and I feel the 40s for Eleanor and for me will be similar, both coming into our own,” she said. “I used to worry whether people would like me in a play. Now, I care more that I have good playmates on stage, that we can connect and touch the audience.”
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“Eleanor” continues through Oct. 29. Tickets are $32.50. Call 708-634-0200.