A Conversation With... Barbara Robertson By Jeanne Spiro they’ve been on the force.
JS: Did you always know that you wanted to act?
Jeanne Spiro: Hi Barbara. Just to let people know who you are, you’re an actress; you’ve appeared on stage, film and TV. You’re probably best known these days for your role in Wicked but you’ve had roles in lots of other productions like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mame, Angels in America, and Hamlet, Grand Hotel. And you’ve recently won an award.
Barbara Robertson: Yes I recently won a Jefferson award for my role in the Detective’s Wife at the Writers’ Theater.
JS: I read that you went to a police station to prep for that role.
BR: Yes, we talked to some Cold Case detectives and we got to see where they work. It was fascinating. And then everywhere I went, I’d see a Chicago policeman and I’d feel like I had some special bond with him.
JS: It’s interesting to learn about what other people do.
BR: It is, it’s very interesting, but as an actor it’s more than just learning. I was pretending that I was married to a Chicago policeman and it was so actively present in my imagination for eight shows a week that when I’d see a policeman, there was a part of me then went, ooh, do I know you? Or I’d wonder about their pension and how much longer they have, or how long
BR: No. The first show I did was in high school. And when I went to college, I started doing plays, but I didn’t think I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to teach and work with kids. I had worked with kids in a camp and I found that they just couldn’t imagine very much. When we made up stories, all they would do is talk about TV shows they had seen. Basically, I wanted to work on creative development in children; just encouraging their own creativity.
JS: So what happened?
BR: I started acting in shows and I really, really loved doing it. JS: What part of it did you like?
BR: This is going to sound a little corny, but it’s this amazing connection to history. It’s a connection to humanity and the expression of that connection through poetry or beautiful language. Language rhythm, language sounds, poetry, telling stories. I love telling stories, and I love the power of telling stories. Again, it goes back to creative development. I like to see other people imagine things. I don’t necessarily like to tell them what to imagine, I like to watch as some of them … some of the plays I have done have been extraordinarily provocative in that people ask, what does that mean? And what did this mean? And I love saying back to them, well what did it mean to you?
JS: Many times I’ve heard people say they have no creativity. I don’t think that’s possible.
BR: I agree, I don’t think it’s possible. They just need some inspiration.
JS: Was there someone in your early life who inspired you?
BR: I think the very first time I went Ohhh was in high school. We were studying Julius Caesar, the first Shakespeare I’d ever read or studied, and before reading little things to us, my English teacher would talk us through the characters needs and their motivations. She would talk about the humanity of these characters, and I liked that. I remember studying history, and loving to write stories, I used to love to humanize it. I remember the Children’s Crusade and just reading a little blurb about it for school and I thought, to do this kind of thing to children, what would it have been like to be a child on that kind of pilgrimage, who would have made them go, and why did they make them to go? Those kinds of stories always fascinated me.
JS: I never really liked history in school, but I love it now. All we learned were treaties, and wars.
BR: And it became about what date did this happen; it came up so much about the timeline as opposed to human stories.
JS: What I like is what clothes were they wearing, what kind of food did they eat, how did they live, what did they think?
BR: Little details like, Henry the VIII washing the peasants’ feet every year as part of a holiday celebration. My daughter had a few books where they took famous people in history and talked about their childhoods. When I play a character, I have to imaginatively work back to think, why did I make these
Te Monthly Aspectarian -
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