Once we got back to New York, I was cast as the lead in Brecht’s A Man Is a Man that opened at the Masque Theater. This part brought me national attention for the first time (the play was reviewed in Time magazine); I was also nominated for an Obie, an off-Broadway award. I would not be able to attend the ceremony because I had landed a small part in a movie filming on location; Louie would attend on my behalf. On the off chance that I might win, I gave him a list of people to thank. When indeed my name was called, Louie strode to the stage, ignored my note, and said, “She deserves this!”
Shortly thereafter, I took a part in a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House only to be fired after my first rehearsal. Clearly being an Obie winner didn’t mean I was safe from rejection.
Louie and I tried to work together whenever possible. Our song was “Moon River”—we were definitely “two drifters, off to see the world.” One of the things we loved doing during our courtship was going to see foreign films—we especially loved movies by Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, and Visconti. Dinner consisted of hot dogs and beer from Grant’s soda fountain between double features.
Tom Brennan cast us together once again, this time in Strindberg’s romantic comedy, Crimes and Crimes. After opening night, the New York Times gave it a terrible review. The reviewer hated everything about the production—except Louie and me. The second night we showed up at the theater and it was deserted! The play had closed, only no one bothered to let us know. Louie turned to me and said, “Well? What next? Let’s go to the movies,” as though we had not a care in the world.
Chapter Eight
SOMETIMES IT SEEMED like my life was one big effort to insist on my own definition of myself. Whenever I felt someone trying to define me, I tried to get there first. I didn’t want to be defined by my ethnicity or my gender or anything that I didn’t choose. When Louie and I decided to get married, we chose to do it in a civil ceremony at city hall. My parents wanted a traditional wedding, in a church, followed by a big reception. Once again, I failed to be the dutiful Greek daughter they’d wanted.
In the end, though disappointed by my decision, my parents came to New York for the wedding. Louie was more nervous than I was (he panicked when he thought he’d forgotten the ring), and our friends Roberta and George stood up as our witnesses. Afterward, we all went across the street to Schrafft’s and had a sherry. We didn’t take a honeymoon; Louie was appearing in Moby Dick on Broadway and had to make the seven-thirty call.
I would be lying if I said being married wasn’t hard for me at first. Something in me resisted it. Three months after we were married, I broke out in a terrible rash. I appeared to be allergic to Louie. I would go to bed, and when I’d wake up, whatever side of my body had been touching him during the night would be covered with red bumps. My system was reacting to this new state of matrimony. It was as though having someone so close, who was not going to leave, was more than my body could handle. If it wasn’t Louie himself, perhaps it was the comfort of marriage that was making me itch: I certainly wasn’t used to living with someone who was so supportive—and, well, so tender.
Along with that hideous rash, I also began to neglect my share of the chores—and Louie. Finally, after weeks of doing all the chores himself—and of very little intimacy—he’d had enough. He pointed out the unmade bed, the unswept floor, and the stack of dirty dishes he now refused to wash. “You’re not even a good roommate anymore!”
As he shouted, something in me snapped and I ran into the kitchen, shouting back at him, “You want me to get rid of these?” I grabbed a plate and smashed it on the kitchen floor. Then I grabbed another. And another. I didn’t stop until every dish we owned was in pieces. Louie responded by walking calmly into the living room and mangling four Greek metal trays we’d been given as a wedding present. Before we were finished, we’d broken or torn every single wedding present. Finally, exhausted, we sat down and started talking. Well, I started talking—Louie listened. I told him I didn’t want to turn into a “wife,” at least not someone else’s definition of what a wife was. He said, “And I don’t want to be someone else’s idea of what a husband is.” We were going to figure out for ourselves what it meant to be married.
By 1962, many of the social mores and institutions that had begun to loosen during the 1950s were starting to give way to experimentation. Both Louie and I had spent our lives trying to understand who we were within the context of our immigrant families and our ethnic communities while also trying to define ourselves as individuals. Now we were trying to define ourselves as a couple. As part of our journey of self-discovery, we, like many couples in that era, had what was known as an “open” marriage. We had a few encounters—all brief, mostly fun—and, mercifully, none of them interfered with our feelings for each other.
In 1965, while Louie was up in Williamstown doing summer stock, I found out that, despite using birth control, I was pregnant, but were we ready? Would we be good parents? My doctor told me that no one was ever really ready and that if I waited until I was “ready,” it was possible my life could slip through my fingers. From that moment on, I knew with every fiber of my being that I wanted this child and it was time for us to “close” our marriage.
I loved being pregnant. I gave up smoking and drinking. Louie and I took natural childbirth classes with Elizabeth Bing, who advocated partner-supported labor and delivery. Louie was in the delivery room with me when I gave birth to our daughter, Christina, thanks to our obstetrician, Dr. Walters. I was a week overdue and the doctor said, “What are you waiting for?” Louie was in Washington, D.C., doing a play, and I told the doctor his only night off was Monday. Dr. Walters said if I didn’t give birth by the following Monday, he was going to induce labor. That Monday I woke up and started having contractions. Louie flew in from Washington and made it back in time to be my labor coach. When Christina was born, she sailed into the world like a brilliant silver fish. Whoosh, and she was on her own.
My mother didn’t offer to visit once during my pregnancy. Then again, I never asked for her help or invited her to come. The fact that we were both now mothers to daughters didn’t help assuage the tension between us.
I never knew that I could love another person so unconditionally and protectively until I had my daughter. Even before we got home from the hospital, a sixth sense began operating in me. One night I awoke in the maternity ward, certain that something was wrong. I immediately went to the nursery, where I found Christina surrounded by nurses; one of them was taking blood. She had become jaundiced and they needed to test her liver function. Fortunately, the problem (which is not uncommon) resolved itself in a few days and we were able to go home on schedule.
Once we were home, my insecurities took over. I again didn’t trust my instincts. I would ask Louie if he thought Christina was warm enough. Was the room too cold? Was she sleeping in the right position? Louie had his own issues; he gave everyone else space to live their lives and now we had no space at all.
When I finally felt stabilized enough with Christina, I invited my parents to come meet her. Becoming a confident mother helped prepare me for the criticism I knew my mother would have. As soon as she started to point out everything I was doing wrong, I asked her to leave my kitchen. She stopped. It was that easy.
Even so, they were delighted by their first grandchild. In the Greek tradition, they showered her with silver coins to ensure good fortune; they also showered her with love and affection.
I went back to work when Christina was about six months old. I took her with me to Maryland, where I did The Rose Tattoo. When I returned, I was cast as Tamora in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, directed by Gerry Freedman and produced by Joseph Papp in Central Park. It’s a bloody, violent story of murder and revenge. Tamora is a force of nature, a complex, powerful, and awesome figure who is at once a woman, a queen, a murderer, and a mother. I got excellent reviews for my work, and though many people assume this is what actors are after, it was very hard for me to take.
> I couldn’t miss what was happening. When I got bad reviews, I felt bad about myself. When I got good reviews, I was supposed to feel good about myself, but this wasn’t happening. In fact, a kind of desperation started to build within my body.
Having reached an impasse, I had left “talk therapy.” I had begun to understand that there was a very real link between our bodies and our emotions, a mind-body connection. Because of the building desperation and terrible anxiety I had begun to feel, I made an appointment to see Dr. S, a bioenergetic therapist.
The philosophy behind bioenergetics is about the physicality of feeling—the idea that our bodies take on our repressed feelings, disrupting the flow of energy in our bodies and in our lives. Dr. S didn’t want to talk, he wanted to observe my reactions to various physical exercises he led me through. In this way, we worked toward getting to the surface the feelings that were affecting me physically.
During my sessions with him, a series of events began to unfold. I began to experience my body as a dark, empty tunnel. Who was I? I couldn’t find me. I had let reviewers tell me how I should feel about myself—good or bad, depending on their point of view. What was the difference between this and letting people define me because I was Greek, or a woman? None.
Then one day my face began to contort and I couldn’t control it. “What’s happening to me?” I cried, clutching my paralyzed cheek. Dr. S suggested I look in the mirror, and what I saw shocked me: it was as though my face had been cleaved in two, with one half at rest and the other in agony. Dr. S reassured me that this was simply the physical manifestation of my inner conflict—my contradictory feelings were coming to the surface and were now written on my face. I couldn’t then think about what that meant, I was worried about how I would go on stage in just a few hours. Dr. S assured me my face would return to normal before too long. At five o’clock I was still sitting there when Dr. S said good-bye to his last patient. My face had returned to normal, but inside I was in a panic. I begged him to give me some drugs. He gave me two aspirin. I said, “This won’t do anything!” I demanded drugs. He told me no, I needed to feel what was going on. “But how can I manage? How will I do it?” He said, “The way you’ve always done it—will power.”
That night I took some smelling salts on stage with me and even managed to give a decent performance. What happened that day was a breakthrough, and I continued to work with Dr. S.
In 1968, pregnant with my son Peter, I was performing in Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum, also a Public Theater production, and something quite wonderful happened. I lost my reason for going on stage. Suddenly, I no longer needed to prove that the little Greek girl from Lowell, Massachusetts, was as good—better—than everyone else in New York. That realization liberated me and now I was free to go on stage and play.
Things were going well for us. I dubbed Louie “Carl Commercial” because he had finally cracked the market and was making money. Christina was there and already had quite a personality. And now we had Peter, our first son—a beautiful child.
I was still working with Dr. S, who encouraged me to take a further step in my therapy—join an encounter group—and he gave me the name of a couple who were putting one together.
The first night of group, I walked into a room of about a dozen people, all between the ages of twenty and forty, all strangers to one another. The group leaders, Mike and Sonia Gilligan, had developed therapeutic techniques in their work with addicts. They had found that addressing repressed feelings in front of others as witnesses helped release those feelings. Sonia began that evening by asking who wanted to go first. I raised my hand and said I wanted to get to my anger, that I had been trying with a bioenergetics therapist but had been unsuccessful, and he had suggested I come to this group.
“Who are you angry at?”
“My mother,” I blurted out.
Then she asked me to imagine my mother’s face on the wall and address her directly. “What do you want to say to her?”
“No!” I felt out of breath.
Sonia gave me a breathing technique and I continued to say, “No. No. No.” Then I began shouting it.
Then Sonia said, “Say I won’t,” and from that I just let all my anger out and was shouting things. What was remarkable was that I connected with all my deep-seated rage and no one was hurt. I was no longer afraid of my anger—what it could do to me—and knew that it was necessary. My anger could be a part of my life, and my work. This technique worked so well with my mother, a few weeks later I put my father “on the wall.” For so long I had felt that most of my inner turmoil had to do with my mother. I had never once confronted my father about his own erratic behavior, about how secretive he was with all of us. It began to dawn on me that perhaps my mother was not just being deferential to him; perhaps she had been protecting him. Or perhaps she had been protecting us. The work I did in group reminded me that there are two sides to every coin, two sides to every story—and two people in every marriage.
Louie was so intrigued by my experience that he decided to join the group, too.
Louie and I learned a great deal about each other through this group work. We learned how to have a good fight, which meant we learned how to say the hard things to each other. To trust that we meant no harm. Louie and I were so good at this encounter stuff, the group leader suggested we start our own group. We wanted one made up of theater couples. I had been talking to Louie about wanting a theater company, similar to the Actors Company in Boston. Maybe the encounter group would lead to that.
The group filled up very quickly. We met twice a week, and by the end of the year, the group had jelled and consisted of theater couples who shared our dream of forming a company. As we began to sketch out our plans, Louie was offered a role in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof to be shot in Yugoslavia and England. It was a great opportunity—far too good to pass up—so we decided to pack up our two kids and go to Europe. At the time, I was three months pregnant. Much to our delight and amazement, six couples who were involved in our burgeoning theater decided to come along, too. In Zagreb, we’d all gather in a beautiful, ornate guild hall and share our various approaches to theater. Thanks to our group therapy work, we all knew how to resolve conflicts and support one another in a community setting, crucial skills for putting together a theater group.
We spent three months in Zagreb and one month in London, returning to New York just after Christmas in 1971. The stewardess on the New York flight from London panicked to see I was then nine months pregnant. I gave birth to our third child, our son Stefan, a few weeks later.
Back in New York, we continued to flesh out our plans for our theater company. This was really going to happen: we were going to launch a company, surrounded by a sizable group of people—nine other couples—who shared the same dream.
I was getting a lot of work in New York, mostly in not-for-profit theater, like the Public Theater and Off-Broadway, neither of which paid a living wage. To supplement that work, I had started teaching acting classes in the graduate program at New York University. I was offered the occasional spaghetti commercial, which helped financially, but I was starting to get typecast. Most of the parts I was offered were either “ethnic” women or prostitutes. Once in a while I got to play an ethnic prostitute.
If I wanted to play more of the roles that were important to me, I would have to travel around the country to regional theaters, three children and all our baggage in tow. That’s why our idea of having our own theater was so important to me: I didn’t want to do that to the kids. I wasn’t even convinced bringing them up in Manhattan was the best thing for them. I wanted them to be able to go outside in a place where they could feel independent and where I would feel they were safe.
We heard about the town of Montclair, New Jersey, from friends who lived there with their children. It was in easy commuting distance to the city, and it was ethnically diverse and culturally aware. It was friendly and safe. It didn’t take us long to find the perfect home, a beautif
ul Georgian-style house, built in the 1890s, on a big lot with a giant green lawn framed by six mature weeping willow trees. I could see beyond the shag rugs and early seventies decor and knew the bones of the house were superb. The only problem was the asking price: the monthly mortgage was three times the rent we were currently paying! Forget renovating, forget eating out—just to keep this roof over our heads would be way beyond our reach. We kept crunching the numbers, and in the end we went for it. Once we had signed the deed and the last page of the mortgage papers and shook hands with the banker, I promptly excused myself, went into the bathroom, and threw up. Then we went back into the city, packed up our belongings and our kids, and moved to New Jersey. Actors with a mortgage: inconceivable.
We had always pictured our theater company in New York City, the center of the theater world, but after we moved to New Jersey, the other couples in the acting company saw the “lifestyle” and wanted to move, too. They were all starting families and Montclair looked as good to them as it did to us. My brother, Apollo, and his wife, Maggie, came, as did my friend Tom Brennan and his wife Tiffany. Tiffany found a space to rent in downtown Montclair in a Baptist church; there was already a theater built adjacent to the sanctuary. We put together a benefit and raised five hundred dollars that we used to renovate the space. Everything was done on a shoestring. One of our members even built the lights out of empty, giant-sized tomato juice cans. We put together our season. I had to go do a play in Williamstown, and while I was there, the company decided the first play would be Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. I knew we had to concentrate—at least at first—on known plays, but I didn’t think we’d select such a chestnut. Yet it turned out to be the perfect choice; we could market not only the play but the theater and our presence. Montclair was now “our town.”
Ask Me Again Tomorrow Page 13