Breakthrough Performer: Laura Breckenridge

Posted on July 30, 2010 at 8:00 am

LB Color Headshot 2.jpg I make no pretense of objectivity. But even if she was not my friend I would appreciate Laura Breckenridge as one of the most talented young actresses working today. She has appeared on television (“Gossip Girl,” “Related”), in movies (“Loving Annabelle,” “Southern Belles”), and on- and off-Broadway (“The Crucible” and “The Cherry Orchard”). Because I know her, I can appreciate her professionalism, judgment, and dedication. And because I have seen her on stage, on television, and in films playing a wide variety of characters, I can appreciate her talent and her ability to captivate an audience.
I was thrilled to hear that Laura will appear on “Drop Dead Diva,” this weekend, co-starring with Cybill Shepherd in a plot she describes as “‘Devil Wears Prada’ with a twist.” First, I can’t wait to see it. Second, it gave me an excuse to catch up with her and congratulate her on her graduation this spring from Princeton. We chatted a bit about the movies we’ve enjoyed lately and then I asked her about her latest role.
Tell me about “Drop Dead Diva!” People love that show.
It’s a really good show! It’s very well done and very smart. They handle the fantastical element very well and make it very real, and at the same time it’s a lot of fun to watch. I watched a bunch of episodes to understand the tone of the show when I was preparing, and loved them. I now watch the show whenever I can. The cast is very talented and I can see why it is a big hit.
I’m in an episode called “Queen of Mean,” airing August 1. It stars Cybill Shepherd. She plays Ellie Tannen, head of a fashion line, and I’m her former assistant who has written a tell-all book, and she’s suing me now. Then you see there’s a few other things that happen and I may not be as innocent as I seem. The character is a lot of fun, and one of the things I am most thrilled about is that I got to sit on a witness stand. I don’t know if I’d ever want to do that in real life, but I’d never done it in a show and there’s something about sitting in that box! They have built most of their sets on a soundstage and they replicated a courthouse that they used in the first season, down to the last detail, so it felt very much like a courtroom.
What did it feel like to be cross-examined?
It was fun but not so fun at the same time. She is good! What I think Brooke does so well is that she will be the smart lawyer Jane and then have a flash of Deb, the model. She balances it so well and I think she lights up the screen. She’s just like that in the room. So she looks at me and I think, “Oh, no, she’s got me!” It was easy to play rattled in the scene. She is a great scene partner because she has a theater background so she is always very present, very there. She’s so talented.
Another thing that was fun was the scene where we all enter. Because Cybill Shepherd’s character is such a famous person we are surrounded by paparazzi, all these photographers. There were a lot of people involved, and a lot of components to the scene, so everyone had to coordinate and work together. It was the first scene I shot, and it gave me a chance to meet everyone and get into the flow. There was so much happening it was exciting, and I felt so lucky to be there. It reminded me how much I love being on set, where all the various parts of a show come together.
How long did it take to shoot the episode?
It took eight days. After I got the job I found out that shooting began on the day before my last exam. They were really accommodating and worked out the schedule so I could go to Atlanta, where they film, right after my last exam. It was nice to finish my exam and go right to work. We were in Peachtree City, Georgia, which is about 40 minutes outside of Atlanta. It is a planned community with 90 miles of golf cart trails. There are cars on the main road but everything in the city is attached by golf cart paths. So there was something relaxing about traveling around the town in the golf carts.
Did you have to go to Atlanta to audition?
I did it in New York. Most agencies have tape rooms, a teeny room with a camera, where you can do an audition on tape. The benefit is that you can do it over if you want to, but the drawback is that the casting director is not there to give you feedback. I did an audition for an earlier episode, and then they asked me to come back and do another one for this one.
Tell me about working with Cybill Shepherd.
Cybill is so knowledgeable. It’s not just that she’s been doing it for a long time. She is very observant. She knows eye-lines as well as any director of photography. She understands camera angles, knows where she needs to be, she just knows it all, so just watching her was amazing. And she is very sweet and very lovely to work with. When she was doing her scene on the witness stand it was amazing to watch; she was just so good.
I know the schedule for shooting television is very fast. How do you coordinate with the other actors?
With TV, there’s no overall rehearsal. You have a blocking rehearsal and then back in hair and make-up or on the set after the wide shot is when you have a chance to talk. There’s definitely a collaborative aspect, but it’s more on the moment.
You had quite a contrast this summer because you did a big budget scripted television series and you also did a microscopic budget 24 Hour Plays in New York. What was that like?
A friend told me it was the most amazing, thrilling, frightening experience of her life — and it’s true. You meet at 9 pm and everyone brings a costume and a prop and contribute it to a pile. There are six writers and they pick the actors, costumes, and props they want. They write until 6 or 7 am. The directors show up and pick their plays. And then the actors show up and you have 12 hours to rehearse and memorize. You’re going on instinct so sometimes things happen on stage and you just go with it. It’s a wonderful experience, very collaborative, all of us just holding hands and diving in and hoping for the best.
I did it last year, and was so happy to be invited back, because I loved the experience. This year I did a play called “Hero Dad,” about three different dads. I played three different versions of the same type of girl, to come into these dads’ lives and remind them of their responsibility, going from kind of funny to very serious. It was an intense and challenging play to learn in twelve hours, but that type of experience is always the most thrilling and enjoyable. 24 Hour Plays really re-awakens your instincts and helps remind you to rely on your fellow actors, use their energy and act off of it.
It sounds like theater is your favorite.
I really do love all three. I like the challenge of different ways of working. I value rehearsal time and the energy of live theater, where it’s different every night. Sometimes the audience does not know it, but they are a part of the performance. They bring the final piece to it, and every audience is different. I will always love theater, but it is hard to pick a favorite. With film and TV you are able to capture things that happen in one specific moment, and because they are filmed, they are captured forever. The challenge in film and TV is to find the precise moments right there and then, with only the energy of your fellow actors to help you. Once the scene is done, it’s done; it won’t change as it can in theater. What I love about TV is it’s constantly evolving and you’re evolving with it. TV characters feel like they’re in our lives, not just because they are in our living rooms every week but because we get to see them grow and develop and you get to see how the same character takes on new challenges and new perspectives. I feel fortunate to have had experiences in theater, film and TV, and I hope that I will have a career that balances all three.

Drop Dead Diva

Dialect Coach Stephen Gabis of ‘The 39 Steps’

Posted on March 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

The 39 Steps is a riotously hilarious theater experience based on the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie, itself based on a popular 1915 thriller by John Buchan. The play has 150 zany characters — all played by four actors. The show features an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance as the hero and heroine go on a chase that takes them through Scotland and into a London music hall. The touring stage version is opening in Washington DC this week. Four actors performing 150 parts means not just a lot of split-second costume changes but a lot of lightning-fast changes of character, voice, and accent, what dialect coach Stephen Gabis calls “a living, breathing actor’s nightmare.”
I spoke to Mr. Gabis about working on the show and what makes accents so important in creating a character. Part of the fun of talking to him was the way he almost sub-consciously slipped in and out of a dozen different accents to illustrate his comments.
This has to be one of the most accent-intensive challenges of any theatrical production.
And there’s an understudy who has to cover not just the main character but all of the other roles as well! From my vantage point, it is like boot camp for the first week, about the dialect. It really has to become muscle memory. Everyone has a different skill set; everyone’s brain is complicatedly and differently wired for this sort of thing. Some people have a kind of mimicry chip and can pick it up on their own. Some are good at some accents and not good at others. For this particular piece, a consistent problem is for the Scots characters. You have the Highlands accent and the Glaswegian girl and the guys on the platform in Edinburgh and the bobbies that are chasing them, keeping them out of Ireland! Americans have some misconception that mixes Irish and Scots accents.
Can you give me an example of the differences?
You’re going to say any of your sounds like “love” or “come” or “mother” would be “loove” if you’re Irish but the Scots would say it like an American. I got “te” go instead of I got “to” go. You don’t have to roll your r’s, you just have to be able to tap them. That over-emphasized rolling would be exaggerated, what I call “music hall Scots.” That’s what performers like Harry Lauder used to do, for emphasis and to be entertaining. The R takes that tap when you’re in the position to make a D. American speech is very lateral. Words kind of lean on each other. More legato. There’s a bit of a bounce to this stuff. This play exaggerates some of the speech in the text. And Scots will repeat what the other person says for emphasis.
So it isn’t only pronunciation, then, it’s cultural.
Yes! For instance, knowing the relationships between the different cultures that live together and the effect they have on each other. And whether the person is educated or not is important, too, not just where they live. The Glasgow girl in this show sounds like one of my classmates when I was in drama school, Sharman Macdonald, that soft voice — she is the mother of Kiera Knightly.
Were you always interested in accents?
I grew up around a lot of different accents and I’m a mimic. I studied acting but I am an autodidact. I resisted learning all of the phonetic alphabet stuff in drama school but had to discipline myself when I began to coach and teach.
Are accents as important as they once were in identifying people and their backgrounds?
Things are mushing together — media has made accents get a bit homogenized and put into a blender. I have to be really attuned to when it is taking place. This play is set in the 30’s. But I can’t overdue the authenticity, either. It has to be understandable for the audience. You don’t want a museum piece, too mannered, like Colin Clive in “Frankenstein.” The accent can’t be a distraction.

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Behind the Scenes

Tribute: Larry Gelbart

Posted on September 12, 2009 at 6:50 pm

Larry Gelbart, one of the most acclaimed and prodigiously productive writers of almost seven decades died this week at age 81. If you’ve laughed since the 1940’s, you almost certainly know his work. He got started as a teenager writing for Danny Thomas’ radio show and went on to work with Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks on the legendary writing staff of the Sid Caesar show. He went on to co-create the television version of “M*A*S*H,” to co-write the script for “Tootsie,” and to write the Broadway hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (made into a movie with Zero Mostel) and “City of Angels” (now being adapted into a film).

And as this lovely tribute by Bob Elisberg notes, he was also a man of great principle and kindness.

There may have been more renowned writers in a single medium, but his versatility was breathtaking, and so he may have been the most successful and best writer ever in America who wrote in all three major media — the theater, movies and television.

Be sure to read Elisberg’s piece, especially the quote at the end from Gelbart about being a writer.

Here is Gelbart, talking about how television has changed society and how he’d like to be remembered.

Here is my favorite scene from “Tootsie” (second on the American Film Institute’s list of the hundred funniest American films of all time).

And here is the trailer for the hilarious “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

NPR’s Scott Simon also has a fine essay about Gelbart, describing him as “a great wit, who wrote with great heart.” It’s good to know that we still have another movie from him to look forward to.

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Tribute Writers

Interview with Toto’s Trainer

Posted on December 3, 2008 at 10:00 am

Bill Berloni is the man behind some of Broadway’s biggest stars — the non-human ones. From Sandy in “Annie” to “Bruiser Woods” in “Legally Blonde,” he has trained the animals in some of the biggest theatrical productions. I spoke to him in Washington D.C. where his two “Toto” dogs are on tour with “The Wizard of Oz.”

How many Totos are there?

There is one dog named Princess, eight years old, and another as her understudy. The one we use is the more energetic of the two. “Wizard” is one of those shows that happens all the time so we always have a pair of Toto dogs ready. This is a major national tour, three years long. Princess will probably do two.

How long has Princess been performing?

If you asked me how long I was married I’d be off but I can remember the answer to that one — seven years three months, performing as Toto for five. We started training her as an understudy until around age five and then she was mature enough.

Is there a particular scene that was especially challenging for Princess?

To me the most important iconic moment of the play is when Dorothy says, “There is such a place, Toto?” and then goes into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” If Toto’s scratching or does something to distract the audience, it’s a problem. We train them to focus on Dorothy and not move. You have to make sure the dog has the right temperament for performing. You can take a calm dog and teach them to walk across a stage but you can’t take an excitable dog and get her to stay still. They have to be able to deal with stress and be calm which for a terrier breed is tough. Staying perfectly still for “Over the Rainbow” is the hardest, then going through smoke and haze to get to the curtain. Her favorite trick is to find Dr. Marvel — she gets to eat the hot dog at the end of his stick!

In a show like this one with so many special effects, how do you protect the dog and prevent her from getting distracted?

I can manipulate the special effects so the speakers are away from the stage. The audience hears thunder but she is behind them, where it is not loud. We cover her eyes during the pyrotechnic effects and explosions. We go to great lengths to protect the dog rather than getting her used to it. For her a flying monkey is no different from a flying pigeon. The fog is co2, dry ice. It’s just a cooling mist. So those things do not bother the dogs. That’s my job — to say, “You can do that to humans but not my dog.” Toto is not always in the shot in a movie but in the play he is supposed to be with Dorothy all the time. But you think he’s on stage a lot more than he is.

How did you get started?

It’s a “right place at the right time” story. I wanted to be an actor and was building sets at the Goodspeed Opera House. They needed a dog for a new show and everyone else threatened to quit if they had to train the dog. But they offered me a part and an equity card if I would find and train a dog. My gullibility and the chance to get on stage are the reason I accepted. I found a dog at a shelter and the show was “Annie,” with Sandy the first real theatrical performance part for a dog in a major show, where the action depended on the dog and he was more than a prop. Mike Nichols’ office called and said they were doing it for Broadway. He is the best — loyal, intelligent, courageous, admits when he makes a mistake and expects everyone to be the same. The show opened at the Kennedy Center and I became a famous animal trainer.

Did you have pets growing up and did you train them?

Our pets did things because they loved us, not because we trained them. I learned I could achieve repetitive behavior without negative reinforcement.

Do you have to train the actors as well as the animals?

I’m in the wings so I have to make sure the actors know how to do whatever the animal needs. Going back to “Annie,” I said to Andrea McArdle, “You have to pretend like he’s your dog.” We have to train the actors to be as adept trainers as I am. It is much more challenging with adults. Some don’t like dogs or are allergic and that becomes my problem, showing them how to work with the animals so they fulfill those commands with respect and love. Cassie Okenka (Dorothy) is the real deal, not jaded, hard-working loves dogs, and she can sing.

We have a handler at every performance. We take the concept from the director and then can put a handler in. We’re always educating the directors and the smart ones listen. But some will give the actors six weeks to get it right and give the dog seven days. They won’t think about what the special effect will be and how the dog will respond to it.

What kinds of animal performances in movies do you like?

I am not fond of movies that make dogs talk with CGI and anthropomorphize them too much. I enjoy films where they get to act like dogs. “As Good as It Gets” was a good one.

And now the big question — what kind of dog should the Obamas get?

I am a huge shelter animal advocate and a humane society volunteer. Their decision to get a shelter dog would be the biggest thing in animal shelter I could remember. Every animal shelter is holding their breath. But they need a perfect dog, a theater dog. They need to be there and bond with the dog. But this dog will need to be a performer. I can find Broadway stars in a shelter. Through no fault of its own it has ended up homeless, nothing wrong with it. I don’t take abused animals. But I take abandoned animals.

This is my secret. You go into a shelter and walk down the row of cages. One is screaming at you, “Let me out! Let me out!” One shivering in the back. Don’t take either one of those. Take the one in the middle, the one who is hanging and dealing. It is such a stressful place for an animal, any dog who can deal with it can deal with a lot of stress. Throw a leash on it and take it home. Leave the others to people with training experience.

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Interview