On Human Terms

Blair Brown directs Leslie Ayvazian’s newest play, a revised family history, at Passage Theatre.

By: Jillian Kalonick

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Leslie Ayvazian, left, plays Julia and Judith Roberts is Rosemary in Rosemary and I, at Passage Theatre’s Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton Feb. 3-27.


   If you’re not happy with the way your childhood went, why not make your parents redo it?
   In Leslie Ayvazian’s newest play, Rosemary and I, Julia, a writer, is struggling to piece together her family’s history. In her imagination, she brings together her father, her famous singer mother Rosemary, as well as Rosemary’s accompanist Elizabeth, to recreate scenes from their lives.
   "She happens to be a woman who is stuck in her life because of ideas she has about her own past — ideas about her parents, who they were to her, ways in which they have failed her," says Blair Brown, who is directing the play for Passage Theatre Company at the Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton Feb. 3-27.
   "All parents have to fail you in some way because they’re not mind readers," says Ms. Brown. "She may have felt not cared for, in the way in which adults are preoccupied with their own lives… That seems to be some way in which we have to grow up. By the end of the play she’s come to understand something about her past that transforms her as her writer, in a way."
   Young Julia’s mother, Rosemary, was often absent, giving concerts all over the world — a detail inspired by Ms. Ayvazian’s grandmother, who sang opera and folk songs for international audiences between the two world wars. In the play, an unexplored passion between Rosemary and Elizabeth leads to a love triangle, and Julia, played by Ms. Ayvazian, is unsure how to come to terms with her parents’ marriage and their desires.
   "A friend of mine who read it said these characters are so much more grounded and sophisticated in love and sexuality in a way, even though they’re living in a time that’s much more reserved," says Ms. Brown. "No one’s out, but there’s more of an elegance and weird sensitivity to how complicated the human heart and desire and sexuality is. There are all kinds of ideas about who you are and what an object of your desire would be, how romantic you are.
   "(The audience is) left with lots of things to think about," she continues, "which seems to be terribly real, and something we miss out in American drama, where things have to be really clear. What’s not clear is all the complicated feelings."
   Rosemary and I premiered at MetroStage in Alexandria, Va., where Ms. Ayvazian also played Julia. She tapped Ms. Brown to direct after the actress had done a reading of Ms. Ayvazian’s play, Lovely Day.
   "I’ve never directed plays — God knows I’ve been a million of them, so it’s about bloody time," says Ms. Brown, who is best known on television for playing the lead role in The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.
   "(‘Molly Dodd’) was a filmed show, it was like little plays," she says. "Many playwrights wrote for us — Jeffrey Lane, Albert Innaurato — which is unusual. They were like half-hour plays, and I directed a lot of those, and it was all theater actors. In a weird way I directed theater for film."
   In her work in Rosemary and I she faces a particular challenge in directing the playwright.
   "It’s always complicated to work with the author in room — many people are advocates for dead playwrights," says Ms. Brown. "None of us would be there if not for something Leslie did in a room by herself — the room is first off hers, the look, sound and feel. The moment you give it to actors, designers, directors and composers, that changes. It’s always a curious process — authors have to let go, the play’s changed — but Leslie’s creative and flexible and talented.
   "When you’re acting in a play you can’t see it, and directors will say ‘do this’ and you as an actor will go, ‘that’s stupid,’" she continues. "But when you’re outside it does make sense… it has another layer of complication, that’s the fun of it."
   Rosemary and I also has a meta quality — Julia is writing the story of her parents in front of the audience, and directing it as well. The dialogue is fast-paced and funny, as Julia interrogates Rosemary, Elizabeth and her father, and tries to put together different sides of the story.
   "There are a lot of arresting halts, and some changes as we switch from reality to the next," says Ms. Brown. "It will feel quite jarring rhythmically."
   At Passage, Ms. Ayvazian has also done a workshop of Lovely Day, which tells the story of a couple divided on whether or not to send their son off to war. Ms. Ayvazian performed her one-woman show, High Dive, a participatory play about a woman facing mid-life, at the theater in 2003 for the Solo Flights Festival. She has taught playwriting at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College and Drew University, and has appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She is also the author of the award-winning play Nine Armenians.
   Ms. Brown’s last Central Jersey performance was the role of Prospera in The Tempest at McCarter Theatre in 2002 — it’s an area she enjoys because it allows for a stay at her country home in Stockton. She recently appeared in Lars Von Trier’s film Dogville, and is working with a Chinese director, Chen Shi-Zheng, to develop a theatrical piece based on the life and stories of Hans Christian Andersen for the Lincoln Center Theater Festival and the Danish Hans Christian Andersen Festival.
   "Then I’m going to be shooting a movie with him about Chinese physicists, students that came to America in the ’80s," she says. "It’s based on a true story, how they were successful and not successful in assimilating."
   The audience of Rosemary and I "will feel very different things," says Ms. Brown, "that (Rosemary) missed the love of her life, or she found a different kind and deeper love.
   "There’s a whole generalization that says this is ‘a woman’s play’ or ‘a gay play,’ when the best plays are about people as human beings," she says. "What she’s coming to terms with has everything to do with being a human being."
Rosemary and I plays at Passage Theatre Company, Mill Hill Playhouse, Front and Montgomery streets, Trenton, Feb. 3-27. Performances: Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 5 p.m. Tickets cost $22-$28. For information, call (609) 392-0766. On the Web: www.passagetheatre.org