Passion Play

In the Guthrie’s 2005 production of The Constant Wife, Ivey Award–winning actor Stacia Rice nailed her first major role on the main stage playing Marie-Louise, a ditsy flapper who cuckolds her best friend’s husband. She says her character “was dumb like a fox,” a description that could just as easily apply to some of the Tennessee Williams characters she’s become known for in small theater productions: the iniquitous Maggie in Fifty Foot Penguin Theater’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the infamous Blanche DuBois in an Actors’ Equity Showcase production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Her ability to portray emotionally fragile ingénues and sexually manipulative, sometimes feral and sociopathic women, with compassion and wit has identified her as an actor whose talent far outweighs her physical charms. John Miller-Stephany, associate artistic director at the Guthrie and director of The Constant Wife, says, “To deny the fact that she’s attractive would be insane—it doesn’t hurt, mind you—but she’s also intelligent, talented, versatile, and hard-working, and it’s all of those things added together that make her special. She’s the complete package.”

Watching Rice inhabit a character is like witnessing Cinderella stepping into her glass slipper—there never was a better fit—and she has a growing following of fans that seem to agree.

Of course, no actor (perhaps with the exception of Dakota Fanning) comes out fully formed. Rice, thirty-six, has been acting on and off for more than twenty years, but it’s only within the past two years that it’s become her full-time job. Before going pro, she worked for ten years in advertising.

Recently she’s undertaken a task more imposing than any of the characters she’s played. Her newest project is Torch Theater, a theater company devoted to making “good work that’s superaccessible.” The name plays on the multiple meanings of the word torch: to give guidance, to illuminate. The Statue of Liberty lifts her torch as an emblem of enlightenment. Torch singers bare their hearts and souls to audiences. Torches are also used as props in juggling: The trails of fire awe us even as they put us in potential danger.

All of these definitions apply to the new jobs Rice has assumed as artistic director of her company. “Now I’m acting, managing, and producing,” she says. “It’s a new layer of insanity when everything is happening at once.”

According to Rice, Torch came to fruition when Hosmer Brown, the owner of the Minneapolis Theatre Garage, hired her to manage the space. “I made a deal with the devil,” she jokes. “I get a certain amount of space for free, but I also clean the toilets.” Shortly after she sealed the deal with Brown, Dominic Papatola, theater critic at the Pioneer Press, phoned her for an interview. “He was writing a piece about space shortages for small theater companies, and I told him I was starting one,” says Rice. “I called him back eight hours later and told him it was going to be called Torch Theater.”

In December 2005, the nascent company produced its first show, The Miracle Worker. Rice starred as Annie Sullivan, the spirited Irish teacher to the young, bratty Helen Keller. Rice, inspired by her severely special-needs twelve-year-old nephew, Taylor Garin, worked hard to ensure that Miracle was accessible to everyone—and she meant everyone.

 In the Garage’s lobby, blind and deaf patrons received tactile tours, in which they could touch costumes, look at historical photos, and read about Helen Keller’s life (there were Braille descriptions under the printed ones). Free valet parking was available to impaired patrons. Every performance was ASL–interpreted and included audio descriptions for the blind and hard of hearing. The feat was accomplished on a minimal budget from Rice’s own savings and by people who offered their time at a reduced rate because they believed in her mission.

In the program notes for the show, Rice wrote that Torch’s goal “is to make theater more and more accessible to people with physical and financial challenges . . . and to those with simpler challenges, like a general fear of the uppity world” some see as theater. If Miracle is indicative of the rest of Torch’s inaugural season, Rice has succeeded. The show was a critical success, and she’ll likely recoup her investment.

Marion, a nondenominational minister, and Leonard, a man Rice describes as a “supercool, meditating, health-nut cowboy”—separated when she was a year old. Raised by her mother and her six siblings, Rice is the baby of the family, eight years younger than her next oldest sibling. The family moved from house to house, mostly staying in Edina and subletting from people who were out of the country.

From a young age, Rice wanted to stand out. When she was five, she wanted to change her name from Stacey (her given name) to Stacia. “When I got to kindergarten there was another girl with my name and I got angry,” she says. “So I went home and begged my mom to let me change my name. I wanted it to be ‘Anastasia,’ but she told me I wouldn’t be able to spell it. So it was shortened to ‘Stacia.’”

The story is telling not because she wanted to change her name, but because of why she wanted to change it. Some kids buckle under the pressure of school cliques and try desperately to conform to their friends’ standards. Rice wasn’t interested in that. In high school, if the other girls were styling their straight, blond hair in ponytails before the football game, she was the curly-haired brunette standing in the corner, studying their behavior and scribbling observations in her mental notebook for later use.

When Rice was twelve, the Children’s Theatre Company was mounting a play called The Little Matchgirl, and she decided she was going to be in it. It was her first audition, and she was cast in a small role in her first professional production. Of the show’s director, former CTC artistic director John Clark Donahue, Rice says, “[He] changed my life.” A few years ago, she was sitting next to his table at a restaurant and told him as much, but he didn’t remember who she was. “I didn’t expect him to,” she says, laughing. “I was so young.” The experience with CTC was a defining moment in her life, when she realized that acting was her destiny.

But when Rice entered Edina High School, she stopped doing theater completely: She didn’t want to burden her mother with trips to and from auditions and rehearsals, and she felt like an outsider among her peers. “Edina was everything you hear about it—a very white, entitled community,” Rice says without resentment. “I wanted to be around people who were different [from each other] and what I perceived as ‘worldly.’” Her curiosity about others makes her a better actor, as well as a more compassionate human being. “You have to practice empathy,” she says, “or you’ll end up being the most hateful human imaginable.”

After graduation, she shunned college and worked at an ad agency. At night, she took improvisation classes from Stevie Ray’s and later moved on to straight theater, building an impressive resumé of juicy parts at small Twin Cities theater companies, including Outward Spiral, Gremlin Theatre, Pigs Eye Theatre, Park Square Theatre, and Fifty Foot Penguin Theater.

Her double life didn’t end until 2003, when Miller-Stephany cast her as the understudy to all three women’s roles in Othello for the Guthrie’s first-ever national tour. He had watched Rice develop as a performer over the years and was impressed with her work. Taking the role meant Rice had to quit her day job. During the entire eight-month commitment, she never performed. “I was just so excited to be a part of the tour,” says Rice. “I didn’t mind not going on.”

 Some people say things like that, but don’t really mean it. Rice does. She is far beyond the competition and cattiness that can plague the profession.

 Niceties aside, Rice has that new theater company to worry about. Torch’s next show, Educating Rita, is a comedy starring Rice and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Rice hopes to cast actresses other than herself when Torch has a bigger operating budget. “It’s not a vanity project,” she says. Directed by Sarah Gioia, the play opens next month—a mere five days after the Guthrie’s Hamlet closes.

As with Othello, Rice is once again an understudy, this time to Leah Curney’s Ophelia. Hamlet is the last show to play in the historic Vineland space before the new Guthrie opens in June, so being involved in the production is a big deal—what Rice calls “part of history in the making.” She may once again never get onstage, but she says it’s an honor to be included in the Guthrie’s legacy. Then she leans in closer, opens her big brown eyes as wide as a kewpie doll’s, and flashes an impish yet humble smile. “What would be really great,” she whispers, “would be to perform in the first show in the new space.”

 By the time you read this, casting decisions may have already been made, and you may or may not see Rice in the inaugural production, The Great Gatsby,. But one thing is certain. She is a testament to the adages written about so fervently in fairy tales: persevere, listen to your heart, and play nice. It may take time, but good things will eventually happen. Hers is not quite a Cinderella story, but it’s close enough.  

Reach Jaime Kleiman at jaimekleiman@earthlink.net.