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.