Carla Gugino began acting in film and television at age 13, and only began a stage career in earnest with 2004’s Broadway revival of After the Fall. She has since appeared on the Great White Way in Desire Under the Elms (a transfer from Chicago’s Goodman Theatre) and Off Broadway in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Suddenly Last Summer. Currently she plays Elsa, the idealistic teacher in the Roundabout production of Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca.
It’s well known that Helen, the aging artist in The Road to Mecca, is based on Helen Martins, the real artist who built the Owl House in Nieu Bethesda, South Africa. Is Elsa also based on a real person?
Yes, and Athol actually met her. I believe in real life she was a social worker from Capetown; she was very much about the revolution and equality between the races, very progressive. Nieu Bethesda was a town that had changed very little in 100 years, so she had quite a confrontation with the place. As did Helen.
Did Fugard give you any insights into the play?
He has said in the press, and he talked about it with us, that he wrote the play when he had just stopped drinking. If Elsa represents the side of him who stands up for what is right, Helen articulates the fear he had when he quit: What if I can’t create anymore? I think that is resonant for any artist. They’re always afraid that they’ll be found out for the fraud they are, or that their art can’t have the effect on the world that they want it to.
What surprised you most about the world of the play?
Well, one interesting thing is that television did not hit South Africa until 1975. Isn’t that shocking? It was all radio. So I found it important for myself to have a playlist of songs Elsa would have been listening to—Beatles, Dylan, Nina Simone.
What’s your first theatrical memory?
I don’t remember it, but after I did After the Fall, my mom told me, “When you were two years old, I could have predicted you were going to do this.” She said we were in Geneva, Switzerland, and we walked into a theatre where a troupe was rehearsing. I sat riveted in silence, and when they stopped rehearsing, I started screaming, “More! More! More!”
You were scheduled to star in an adaptation of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice at Connecticut’s Long Wharf Theatre this spring. Is that still on?
It’s on hold for now. We’ve workshopped it on and off for the last five years, but we want to do it really right, so we’re going to take the time. The shows that really count, that really matter—you just don’t want to do them unless they’re absolutely ready. If it were easy, something would be wrong.
What is always in your dressing room?
A humidifier.
If you weren’t an actor, what would you do?
I love food and I love travel, so maybe I would have been a food critic. I might still do that.
Do you have to carve out time to do theatre?
It is a significant commitment of time, so it has to be something I’m incredibly passionate about. And though I know there’s a lot of talk about how agents say, “We don’t want someone to do theatre because we don’t make any money,” I have really amazing representatives who know how important it is to me as an artist. They know that at least every couple of years, I have to get back on the boards. At some point, I would love to just dive in and do a couple of plays in a row.
Do you think in terms of the great roles you still want to play?
I’d love to do Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in about 10 or 15 years. There are so many others. Even though in televisionvnow there are really wonderful roles for women and not just girls, what’s really liberating about the theatre is that I’m just sort of getting to the age for some of the best roles. It’s so exciting: I’m doing this play with Rosemary Harris, who’s 83, and Jim Dale, who’s 73, and I feel like the baby.
Speaking of great roles, you’re an actress I could picture playing either Stella or Blanche equally well. Which would you prefer?
It’s funny you should ask that—we were just talking about Streetcar in the theatre yesterday. Rosemary was recalling a production she saw a long time ago with Tallulah Bankhead, and I was thinking exactly that question to myself. I’ve always gravitated toward Blanche, even when I was really young. Maybe it’s because it’s such a tricky part.
The story goes that you once lived in a tent with your mom. Do I have that right?
It was a tepee. Just before I turned five, I had a really bad kidney operation. She erected a real tepee and took me to live by a river with some gold miners for about six months. It was certainly very informative.
