Interview: From Revere to Anatevka: The Odyssey of Actress Susan Cella

"I haven't specifically counted," the dynamic actress sitting opposite me replies. "Somewhere between 1000-2000 performances, I think. I've done the role with Theodore Bikel and Harvey Fierstein, on both national tours, and in regional and stock houses all over the country." Susan Cella is speaking of her signature portrayal of Golde, the vehicle which has brought her to the latest stop in her artistic journey, Maine State Music Theatre in a new production of the Bock-Harnick musical, Fiddler on the Roof, that opens July 20.

Cella, who co-stars at MSMT with Bill Nolte as Tevye and with Gary John LaRosa directing, has had the opportunity to work with many of the other legends associated with this show. She reminisces about her various Tevyes. "The show is so perfectly written that I am convinced it is actor proof. It delivers a very human story that moves people and continues to move me every time I play Golde. It leaves room for many different kinds of Tevyes. Theodore Bikel was a real human being and fantastic in the part, and he was very different from Topol or Harvey Fierstein. I loved working with Harvey as well. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to play Golde with both of them. And hopefully, my Golde changed as a result of their different approaches."

Of her current MSMT co-star, Cella says, "I knew Bill from the tour where he played Lazar Wolfe, but this is the first time we have played together as Tevye and Golde. [A week into rehearsal], we are still finding our way and finding new things together, and it has been an exciting process of discovery. I think Bill will be a gentler Tevye than some."

While Cella did only one Fiddler production at the Ogunquit Playhouse where she played Yenta to Sally Struthers' Golde, all her other Fiddler appearances have been as Tevye's sharp-tongued wife. It is a role that she has come to identify with strongly, and she hastens to explain why. In part, Cella says, it is because of her own background - having been raised in a close-knit Italian Catholic family in Revere, Massachusetts. "I am one hundred percent Neapolitan Italian," she adds proudly. "I grew up in a small town where all my relatives lived nearby. It was like our own little shtetl, in a way; it was very insular, and there was this feeling of reliability."

Cella likes to quote Theodore Bikel who once famously quipped, "Why do Italians make the best Jews?" Her answer is a ready one. "I think with both Italians and Jews, it is all about family, family, family. And then," she says with a teasing smile, "Italians add the cooking on top of that! We Italian women are pretty strong-willed, and we can have a mouth sometimes, and these are certainly qualities which Golde has."

Expanding on who she believes this Russian Jewish peasant wife and mother is, she continues: "As Golde, I cherish my children, though I am probably a little less demonstrative than an Italian mother would be. And that is due to the constraints of the story and historic/cultural context. These are poor people scraping out a living, and they don't have time for mushy emotional moments. They are busy figuring out where their next meal is coming from, and how to take care of their many chores. It is very difficult for them to make a living and keep on going, so Golde is not warm and fuzzy with her children. But she does adore them and wants the best for them." As for her marriage to Tevye, Cella says "Tevye thinks he is the boss, but what he doesn't know is that I get my way through circuitous means. Golde has to navigate cleverly to get what she wants because this is before women's lib, but ultimately I can maneuver him without his knowing it."

Cella also talks about the role of God in Fiddler. "He is a major character, and Tevye, especially, has a very personal relationship with God. But for all of us, religion is important. We respect the Sabbath and try to live our lives according to Jewish dictates." The important of religious observance and belief is something with which Cella, herself, can identify. Her Catholicism remains important to her, and she says "I personally believe religion gives people hope that there is something better, some reason to keep going when things seem too hard."

And faith is not the only touchstone with which Cella finds resonance in Fiddler on the Roof. "Saying goodbye to people or to times that have passed are things Golde experiences that I, too, have felt strongly. For example, growing up, I was surrounded by all these wonderful relatives, and now they are all gone. It is sad, and I sometimes wonder if it has been better to have loved and lost....?" Her voice trails off momentarily, and then she continues. "For most of the show, the audience sees a sharp-tongued Golde, but I think they will see in the second act what is really inside - the emotions she has not had the time or inclination to let out before. When she witnesses Chava banned and she thinks she will never see her daughter again and when the family leaves Anatevka, the audience will see a more sensitive side of my Golde."

Speaking of the demands of the role, the show in general, and the production here at MSMT with its very short rehearsal period, Cella replies, "The part is intense physically and emotionally draining. It is a three-hour show with lots of book scenes, and for me there is also screaming on top of all the singing and other vocal demands. And we do an eight-show week. This is not a little skit. It is, of course, even harder for Tevye." The short rehearsal process dictated by MSMT's tight production schedule, however, doesn't really seem to faze her. "Each time I do feel like a continuation of the whole thread of them. It's as if I have just taken a little break. What I do try to do to keep things fresh is to concentrate on playing the show with the people who are here now and not on recreating what I did with another cast or another director. In this case, with the short rehearsal process, we don't know yet where we are all going, and that makes the discovery exciting."

Cella also enjoys working with Gary John La Rosa for the first time. "I had heard wonderful things about him, and I am enjoying every single minute. In my opinion there are some shows that should not be improved upon or updated or changed in personal ways by directors - Fiddler is one, Gypsy another. The Jerome Robbins staging and choreography is so intrinsic to the piece and the story. Gary John knows that, and I am thrilled to be revisiting it with him and watching newcomers learn what underlies this show," she says referring to the young ensemble members whom she calls "nice hardworking kids on a voyage of discovery to understand what life was like in a remote Russian village in 1905."

Yet, if Fiddler on the Roof has run through Susan Cella's more than three-decade stage, film, and television career like a major refrain, the actress has countless other diverse successes that speak to her versatility and range. She recounts how she sang in glee club in high school and studied piano as a child, but "I had no idea what I really wanted to do when it came time to go to college. It happened that I got the bigger scholarship to become a piano major at University of Rochester/Eastman School of Music, and so that's where I went. There I discovered acting through extracurricular activities. Little by little I switched my concentrations to the voice department and then to theatre and musical theatre. When I graduated, I moved to New York, and I must say I have been lucky enough to be able to support myself solely as an actress ever since."

Cella remembers how at first in New York, she was terrified of auditioning. "It took me nine months to get the courage to audition for the Theatre by the Sea in Rhode Island. They asked me if I could tap dance, and I said 'yes,' but then I hurried to take a tap class before the callback. To my amazement I got the job!" That summer she played Winnie from Washington in George M! and Sheila in Hair.

When Cella returned to New York, she continued to work extensively in the city and in regional theatres in ensemble roles in shows, finally acquiring her Equity card after appearing in Finnian's Rainbow at Coney Island. Next stop was Broadway in On the Twentieth Century, directed by Hal Prince, which had its out-of-town tryout in Boston. Cella recalls that her performances there were a grand homecoming. "All my relatives and friends came!"

Other major projects followed. She was the understudy and replacement for Eva in the original 1979 production of Evita on Broadway for three-and-a-half years; she played Lady Brighton with Robert Lindsay in Me and My Girl and later Lady Jacqueline Carstone on the national tour. She began to take on increasingly major roles in regional productions, playing parts like Marie in Most Happy Fella, Tessie Tura in Gypsy, Velma Von Tussle in the national tour of Hairspray, among others. Then came the national tours of 42nd Street, La Cage aux Folles, and Fiddler on the Roof. "When I decided I wanted to get out of the ensemble," Cella says, "my agent began to make a concerted effort to get me auditions for non-musicals as well. Little by little, I started getting more work in straight plays too, and I like not being pigeonholed." Recent successes have included both musicals and plays in roles such as Rosie Brice in Funny Girl, Gloria, Binky, and Arlene in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Polly in Other Desert Cities, Mrs. Brill and in Mary Poppins. Cella has also extensive television and film credits, including the 1991-92 sitcom, Honey, I'm Home, in which she played Elaine Duff, and on other popular series such as Law and Order from 1997-2006.

Of her odyssey, Cella says: " It has been completely random. I didn't really have a strategy. For the most part, if I were offered a job, I took it, and let it take me to the next destination." The destination of the moment, MSMT's Fiddler on the Roof, clearly represents an artistic harbor for Cella, as well as a new departure point. She speaks of what she hopes the production will impart to the Maine audiences. "I hope they will take away a sense of the universality of the work. Fiddler is certainly about Jews in Russia, but it is also about the dynamics of a family, about change, about becoming modern, about religions and peoples who are struggling to accept different ways of thinking and cultures. All these are very appropriate to what is happening in the world today."

Just as Susan Cella is finding new elements to her understanding of character and story in this Fiddler on the Roof, so, too, is this homecoming not only the destination of the moment, but also the departure point for new adventures. What might those next stops be? Without hesitation, she declares, "I hope to play Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and I would like to do more regional theatre, more television and film."

And so the journey continues. From the small towns of Revere, Massachusetts and the fictional Anatevka, Russia, to Broadway and beyond, Susan Cella forges ahead taking on new challenges.

Photos courtesy MSMT

Fiddler on the Roof plays at MSMT's Pickard Theater 1 Bath Rd., Brunswick, ME from July 20- August 6, 2016. www.msmt.iorg