“After I saw Lovesong in Dublin, I ordered the script to read … and I simply couldn’t get over it.” Karen Allen is reflecting on how the sensitive exploration of marriage that evolves across decades written by Abi Morgan made it to The Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, MA, with a run that has been extended to Saturday, August 29. 

“I sent the script to Kate (Maguire, CEO and artistic director of Berkshire Theatre Group) and told her I really wanted to do this play. Not as a director, but to act in it.” 

For her part, Kate Maguire could not have been more grateful for the suggestion. “Karen is such an extraordinary artist, and it is always a joy to welcome her back to Berkshire Theatre Group. There is something especially wonderful about seeing her return to the stage in a play as intimate and deeply human as Lovesong, and we are thrilled to have her with us.”

Marion Ravenwood, meet Maggie

Karen Allen has had a high-profile career as both a film actress (start with the Raiders of the Lost Ark franchise, Starman, and Year by the Sea and go from there) and as a stage actor and director with glowing credits from Broadway to Shakespeare & Company to Williamstown Theater Festival to both acting and directing at Berkshire Theatre Group. “I hadn’t acted here in a play since doing Two for the Seesaw in 1981, but I have directed and really feel at home with this company.” 

Her chosen role as Maggie in Morgan’s play – a deeply personal, sensitive exploration of a poem by T. S. Eliot – offers Allen the opportunity to display her incredible ability to perform what she refers to as a balancing act. Acting for the stage, she points out, is an intense process that involves discovering the play, becoming the character, being engaged in an intense collaboration with the director and cast, and then allowing the audience to both clarify and elevate the performance. 

Film acting is quite different, requiring a set of skills that are, at best, episodic, and at worst elusive. “You’ve got one shot at the performance,” Karen muses. “You may not really know the director or your fellow cast members. You may be far from home, pacing around a hotel room trying to memorize lines with no real sense of how the scene in front of you fits into the complete story. The script indicates the scene is in the kitchen. Next morning, you arrive on set to find out you’re in the garden … in the rain.”

Allen’s latest cinematic endeavor is Other Mommy, a horror film shot in Ireland, set to premier in the United States in early October. Certainly, quite a departure from Lovesong.

Control issues

Looking back across a rich tapestry of film and stage roles, Allen savors the diversity and the inherent discipline in becoming the character described and required. The total control required to direct a major film and the enormous number of personnel involved – cast, crew, production team, post-production team, executive producers who bankroll the production, studio marketing staff that position and promote the film – end up creating countless opportunities for things to quickly spiral out of control.

Presenting live theater is quite different. From first reading through line rehearsals, through blocking and tentatively moving to preview performances before officially opening the play, is a tightly interwoven tapestry that requires transparency and trust. “Seasoned stage directors really don’t feel in control. An ensemble cast relies heavily on each other and together move the idea of a play to being the event that organically comes together.”

Born in Illinois, Allen’s family moved often because of her father’s job as an FBI agent. Coming to rest outside of Washington, DC, she graduated from a Maryland high school, then set off for New York to pursue art and fabric design at Fashion Institute of Technology. Her infatuation with the complexity and beauty of fabric design would stay with her throughout her career and led her, in 2004, to open Karen Allen Fiber Arts on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, MA. A creative life on stage and in front of the camera coupled with creative expression manifested in elegantly woven scarves, shawls, throws, and sweaters created by Karen Allen and a very select group of fiber artists from around the world.

Allen credits her dedicated staff to keeping the boutique fresh and viable through economic ups and downs. Some of the staff have been in place for the 22 years the shop has been open, giving her the confidence to continue to engage in the peripatetic life of a widely recognized star. “I try to be available when needed, but learning to trust and delegate has been the key to making the store sustainable. I look for the same qualities in the team that I look for in a cast – wakefulness, attention, and presence.” 

This fall, Karen’s latest feature film will be released, hard on the culmination of her current role in Lovesong. Although wildly different – both in genre and production – Karen’s joyful attitude shines through. “It’s hard to say ‘no’ when you find something interesting.”

“Patterns on a screen …”

Lovesong was written by Abi Morgan based, in part, by her response to Eliot’s landmark poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which often finds its way into required reading in high school English. For some, memorizing passages from the epic was standard fare. For others, the occasional quoted phrase reminds us that, after all, we age and spend precious time looking back over the life we’ve lived. Should Karen Allen take time, during the extended run of Lovesong at The Unicorn Theatre, to look back over a very full, very nuanced career, perhaps the motivation of the play and the poem will evoke not regret, but a deep, beautiful smile and the commitment to look forward to the next “something interesting.”

And would it have been worth it, after
all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and
the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after
the skirts that trail along the
floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves
in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a
shawl,
And turning toward the window, should
say:

        “That is not it at all,

        That is not what I meant, at all.”

 

(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock –T.S. Eliot) •