Mistaken Identity

A Profile of Randy Danson

by Megan Uebelacker

We learn from our mistakes. For actress Randy Danson, a mistake started her career. The headmistress at Danson's high school casually mentioned a summer program for young actors at Carnegie Mellon University. Danson had acted throughout high school but had never thought about training seriously. "I acted for fun. It never occurred to me that you could do it for a living." When she applied, Carnegie Mellon assumed she was a boy because of her name. "There hadn't been space open for women for months, but they put me at the top of the wait list because of their mistake. Somebody canceled, so I got in. It was a complete fluke."

"The scales dropped from my eyes," she remembers. "I realized that acting was something people trained to do and that I could do it and be taken seriously. Life had been solved."

Danson reflected on the name that started it all. "My full name is Randall; it's not even short for Miranda. It wasn't that my dad wanted a boy or some family connection. My parents just liked it." Although she's happy with her name now, Danson remembers hating it as a child. "I would get applications to join the Boy Scouts. I don't care anymore that I get letters addressed to Mr., but it's a drag when you're a little girl. I used to give my dad a hard time about it until I got into Carnegie Mellon. Then I said, 'Okay, dad, all the complaints I ever had - forget it.'"

Of course, Danson's subsequent success in her career has more to do with talent than mix-ups. She is the recipient of an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence and a Helen Hayes Award winner for her work as Shen Te/Shui Ta in The Good Person of Szechuan. Her numerous New York credits include Ain and David Gordon's The First Picture Show, Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, and Elizabeth Egloff's Phaedra. Danson's resident work includes Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Masha in Three Sisters, several roles in Tony Kushner's Slavs, and the title role in Robert Woodruff's production of The Duchess of Malfi. Her previous work at the A.R.T. was Clytaemnestra in The Oresteia, directed by François Rochaix.

Danson jumped at the chance to work with Robert Woodruff and François Rochaix again. "When the theatre called and asked if I was interested in working on these shows, they said the directors were François and Robert. I didn't even need to hear what the plays were." Danson calls working with Rochaix "a complete pleasure." "Your input is always valued. He makes you feel cherished." Danson has fond memories of working with Robert Woodruff on The Duchess of Malfi at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. "He's way out there, which is fascinating and challenging for an actor. He's also an extremely visceral director. He directs straight off his stomach, but it also goes through his brain." Danson felt that Woodruff, like Rochaix, was a director who appreciated actors. "He had a definite idea about who he wanted the Duchess to be, but also gave me a tremendous amount of freedom. He allowed me to trust my instincts."

Danson also trusts her instincts when preparing for a role. "I stay awake. I'll hear something on the radio, see something on TV, read something, pick up a book, see an image in a museum - I don't know when I'll get the kind of information that can send my character to a whole new place." She says she finds her inspiration often when "poking around in a bookstore or library. Sometimes it'll be the artwork on the cover of a book. For Malfi, I picked up Anne Sexton's poetry. I found it in my bookshelf late one night and saw a woman like the Duchess. When Robert and I were in the middle of discussing the execution scene, I happened across a modernization of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It helped us see the scene in a completely different way."

She mentions a "freakishly appropriate" moment when she was preparing for the role of Agave. "I was listening to the radio and the subject was an essay by two brothers who were obsessed with the idea of chasing down a wild animal on foot. This story sparked ideas for me about Agave. I had a wealth of detail about hunting wild animals. I then knew part of why Agave was so proud of her hunting, just by listening to the radio when I was washing the dishes." Danson views Agave as "a forgotten Kennedy sister. She's in a family of power-houses," Danson laughs. "She's always been peripheral, but now she's accomplished something."

Danson loves performing Greek tragedy. "The thing that's fun about the Greeks is the size. It's huge, and you have all kinds of room to stretch out. It will take as much as you can give and more. You'll never be able to fill it, never, never. It's wonderful to feel you can open all the throttles and go."

Megan Uebelacker is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.