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Nov. 9--Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis loves playing "Rose," a Jewish widow who relives her life while sitting shiva for her second husband. She drew raves in London when she made her debut in Martin Sherman's one-woman show eight years ago, and she won a Drama Desk Award for the role in New York two years later.
On Sunday, Dukakis will bring back "Rose" when she presents a staged reading at Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center.
So why is she doing it again so many years later?
In a telephone interview, Dukakis says, "I love this role and, thankfully, there are still people who want to see it. I am only doing a short tour and going to nice places."
The tour goes to Boston; Tucson, Ariz.; Irvine, Calif., and Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia?
"I have a good friend who is a director in Halifax," she says. "He wants to do 'Rose,' as a benefit for Jewish and Palestinian refugees."
"Rose," like Sherman's earlier hit "Bent," which deals with the Holocaust and the death camps from the viewpoint of a group of homosexuals, has a unique focus. At first, it appears that Sherman is writing an immigrant-themed play because it details Rose's life in a Ukrainian shtetl, how she survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and how she witnessed the deaths of her mother, brother, sister-in-law, daughter and her first husband, a Gypsy artist whom the Nazis marched into the woods one day and murdered. But it is her link to the more recent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts that drives the plot.
"Rose is the kind of woman who causes conflicts, especially with her son," explains Dukakis. "Her first husband died, and now her second husband has died, but she keeps going on and reinventing herself."
Playing ethnic characters like Rose, the mother in "Moonstruck" and the older neighbor in "Steel Magnolias" has been a major part of her long career. "I play a lot of Italians and a lot of Jews," laughs Dukakis, whose ancestry is Greek. "My looks get me a lot of good roles, but it also keeps me from getting a lot of the other kinds of roles. There are so many roles I would like to play but they give them to British actresses like Maggie Smith, who played a New York real estate agent in 'Second Wives' Club.' I would have been better in the role and more authentic."
Dukakis lives in New York City with her husband, actor Louis Zorich. They have three children and three grandchildren. During the years she and her husband were raising their family, they lived in Montclair, N.J., where she helped found the Whole Theatre. They spent summers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, where she flexed her acting muscles in the classics.
In addition to her busy acting career, she teaches master classes in acting, and has taught at the graduate school at New York University for 15 years.
When I ask what are her favorite roles, she answers, ' "Tales of the City,' the six-hour miniseries based on the novel by Armistead Maupin. Now that was different."
"Rose," 7 p.m. Sunday, Lehigh University, Zoellner Arts Center, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem. Tickets: $32, $26. 610-758-2787, http://www.zoellnerartscenter.org .
'ROBOTS' AT KUTZOWN
When Kutztown University's Roxane Rix decided to direct Karl Capek's 1921 science fiction classic "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots," her first problem was finding a good translation of the Czech play.
"There are only a few translations of 'R.U.R.,' and most of them are not that good," explains Rix, a science fiction fan who likes the central idea of "R.U.R.," of "technology gone awry."
Luckily, she found a new translation by English academic David Wylie, who Rix says did not charge royalties. Wylie, she says, helped her change British words and idioms and engaged with her in discussions about what the play meant.
Rix is also intrigued with the fact that this play takes place in 2001, but was written well before computers and television was invented.
' "R.U.R.' takes place in an alternate 21st century where humanoid robots have existed on the planet for nearly 50 years," Rix says. "But these robots are what we've come to call androids. In fact, Capek originated the word 'robot' from the Czech word 'robota,' which refers to forced laborers or 'slaves.' This play is about technology versus nature. Robots versus humanity and humans playing God."
Adds Rix, "As I started rereading it, I realized that this play is even more timely now."
"R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots," 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday, Nov. 16-18 and 2 p.m. Nov. 19, Kutztown University, McFarland Student Union, Kutztown. Tickets: $10 (purchase by phone for a $1 surcharge at 610-683-4092). Info: 610-683-4018.
Myra Yellin Outwater is a freelance writer.
Go Guide Editor Jodi Duckett
jodi.duckett@mcall.com
610-820-6704
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.
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