The Funny Side of Marla Schaffel

Marla Schaffel shot to fame playing Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in both the Toronto and Broadway productions of Paul Gordon's musical adaptation of the classic novel, and has since earned a strong reputation as a dramatic singer and actress in Fringe and Midtown Theatre Festival musicals. But in Brian Harris' Tall Grass, currently running at Theatre Row, the Drama Desk winner is finally getting the chance to exercise her comedy muscles for New York audiences.

"People don't normally think of me when they think of the word 'funny.'" she admits before a Saturday matinee. But in Tall Grass, which she describes as "Pinter-esque," Schaffel gets to play three different women in three one-act black comedies that emphasize the bizarre, twisted nature of love. "Everything that's said is open to interpretation, and you're constantly wondering what's going on," she says of the plays. "It makes sense, but you have no idea where you're going, where this ride is going to take you."

The three disparate characters Schaffel plays range from a young businesswoman to a cynical wife to an aging recluse, giving her a variety of emotions and histories to convey in short scenes (each play is only thirty minutes long). But the very nature of absurdist scripts made developing the roles much more of a challenge. "It's a lot harder than you think it would be, because thoughts don't logically stack up," she says. The logic that an actor so often uses to create a character might not apply in absurdism, and the only way to make the characters real was to make them surreal. "I realized in the middle of rehearsal that the best thing to do was to work in big bold strokes of color, like a painting, and then be more specific with time," she recalls. "Make big bold choices with a voice or an attitude or a feeling, whatever it would be, then work from there."

One of the characters struck a particular nerve: a wife in an unhappy marriage "who reminds theatre people of Martha in Virginia Woolf," as Schaffel describes her. "There was a person like this in my life," she recalls, "and I probably made some promise as a child that I would never become like this. I didn't realize that I could not do it in rehearsal... I finally realized that it was because I had this block." To get past the block, she brought the problem to therapy sessions, which she credits with helping her empathize with her character. "We worked on it in group [therapy] so that I could understand from different points of view; and we discussed these women and why they are the way they are... I could not look at her good side because I had such animosity toward her, because she was in my life. I mean, real subconscious animosity."

"The great thing about being an actor," Schaffel continues, "is that we do come across these [problems], and you do get to expand as a human being, or understand yourself better, and that's why therapy, for me, is really great. Sometimes you can't answer your questions by yourself, because you haven't been given the tools as a child or for whatever reason. And we learn how to deal with things by playing these characters that we've been asked to play. We become stronger, more open, because we've had to face difficulties as other people."

Another benefit of acting, she says, is what can be learned from each role. For example, she says, while nobody has cast her as the Jewish woman she is, she has had the chance to learn about Catholicism from playing Maria in The Sound of Music and the title role in Jane Eyre. She praises the ideology of forgiveness, central to the plot of Jane Eyre, and laments that it is not a major factor in Jewish education. "It was a concept I had never really thought of, never really understood, but then was able to experience, and needed to experience, desperately," she says. "It was an epiphany, and it was only because I was working on the play that I was able to have that epiphany. That's why I say no role is less important or less cherished, because they do really add to my life. Each one of them offers me another perspective that I don't have from my life experience."

While she says she would enjoy returning to Broadway in a big musical or play, Marla Schaffel is enjoying her time away from the rigors of musicals. "I'm having so much fun just talking and listening," she says with a contented sigh. "I'm not worrying about getting up at 9:00 so that I can warm up for an hour before I get to the theatre two hours before [curtain]. It takes a little of the pressure off. I'm really having fun."

To post a comment, you must register and login.