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Special Episode: Cate Damon on the love story in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’
00:27:54
On today’s episode, Matt Tamanini is in conversation with Cate Damon, who is currently playing Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter, Florida. In their conversation,
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- [00:01]
A
Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24. 7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.
- [00:37]
B
Welcome to a special interview episode of Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tamminini. On today's episode, I'm in conversation with Kate Damon, who is currently playing Martha in the Malt Jupiter Theaters production of who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Kate is a veteran performer who has done shows all over the country and her performance as Martha is so incredibly engrossing, as is the rest of the cast made up of Steven Trevolian, who plays George Michael Shenfelt as Nick, and Gracie Winchester as Honey. The show is just running through May 4th, so if you were in the Florida area, I highly recommend you get over to the multitude of theater and check out who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf through the end of this weekend. Coming into last Saturday, when I saw the show, I had read the script before and I believe I had seen the film or at least parts of the film many, many years, decades ago. But I had never actually seen the Edward Albee classic on stage. So this was an absolute treat. Everything about this production was arresting and engaging and I had a wonderful conversation with Kate about Martha, about how much she drinks, about whether or not Virginia Woolf is about love and so much more. Of course, in the show notes, I will have information on where you can purchase tickets to see who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the Island Theater at the Malta Jupiter Theater through May 4th. All right, with all that out of the way, here is my conversation with Kate Damon. So Kate, how many drinks does Martha actually consume during the course of the show?
- [02:10]
C
An endless number. We, we actually talked about this a little bit and we never counted out the exact number, but what Martha does and it's revealed right off the bat. Martha chews ice. So there's a lot of times where Martha will go up to the bar and throw ice cubes into her drink, but I would say a good probably five or six drinks over the course of the night.
- [02:46]
B
That's it. It seems like so much more.
- [02:49]
C
No, I don't think so. Because in reality, in reality, because we talked about this really A person would be. Even though she brags about her ability to bring anybody under the table, even Martha would be under the table if she was drinking full shots of gin, like a full glass gin. So if you notice a lot of times when it's also interesting because over the course of the night, she stops having George make her drinks. At the beginning, it was, make me a drink, make me a drink, make me a drink. And she kind of takes over her own drink pouring, and she pours very little into the mix. But there's a lot.
- [03:38]
B
Yeah. Well. And presumably there were some drinks that were had at her father's party before they got home, too.
- [03:44]
C
Yeah. You know that Martha starts out the play not feeling any pain. I think Martha doesn't feel a lot of pain in general.
- [03:53]
B
Well, the chewing of ice is interesting. It makes me think this is a complete non sequitur. But in my mind, when you hear. I've always heard people talk about when James Bond asks for it shaken, not stirred. That's because if you shake it, the ice breaks up and it dissipates. It makes the breaking up of the ice water down the drink more. So. I don't know if that's true. I'm not much of a drinker, but that does. That's interesting. But you talk about the fact that Martha probably does a lot of things to dull her pain. She is obviously one of the most complex characters in the American theatrical canon. She is equal parts vicious but charismatic. She's strong, vulnerable, intelligent, a little bit, or maybe more than a little bit unstable for you, when a character has all of those layers and even more, what is your process to start building what is there in Edward Albee's text and all of those different factors into a fully fleshed out human? Because I would imagine that it's not. You can't just focus on one thing and say, this is who she is. It has to be a culmination of everything all at once.
- [05:06]
C
Right. Well, that is the brilliance of this play is Alby writes in such a way, including within the text. He has stage directions within the text that says exactly how this line is to be spoken. Now, a lot of actors are trained to take a black Magic Marker the minute they get a script. If it has any kind of stage direction in it, you. You black that out because you. You want to be creating from your own palette. But with this script, there is such a musicality to it, and the characters are so vividly written by Albie himself that you cannot disregard the way he tells you to say these words. And once you use that as a guidepost. Oh, my gosh. He writes such complex characters, and it's all within the words. She is. She is a terribly lonely woman, a terribly intelligent woman in a world where her only available role at that time was to be the wife of a successful man. And so there, to me, the minute you read this play, to me, Martha is lovable and. And heartbreaking at the same time. She's. She's so funny, she's so smart, she's so strong. She is so giving of love and affection if. If she just could get past all the anger, the rage, the pain, the alcoholism. But it's all within the text. That is what is so amazing about who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's all there. It's all in the words.
- [07:40]
B
And you talk about that musicality and the rhythm that goes with a lot of this dialogue. So much of that is between her and George. When you have these two, you know, George is equally as complicated and nuanced as Martha is. So when you have these two characters that do have to bounce off of each other and play off of each other so much, there has to be, I imagine, from an actor's standpoint, a camaraderie and a simpatico between them. How do you build that with someone like Steven? I don't know if you knew him before or worked with him before, but whether you have or not, how do you dive into that and make sure that you are on the same page in what I imagine wasn't exactly an extremely long rehearsal process?
- [08:24]
C
Well, it's interesting that you ask about the rehearsal process, because for this contract with this theater, it was stipulated by the Albia State that there could be no less than four weeks of rehearsal.
- [08:41]
B
Oh, wow.
- [08:43]
C
I've never worked here before, but I think it's normally three weeks of rehearsal, maybe. And with this one, we had that. That mandatory extra week. Now, I did do another production of who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And there was not that stipulation in the contract. So I would imagine it's. It depends on the size of the theater, but this one, specific to this contract with the Albi Estate, four weeks of rehearsal, which is luxurious day and age. So we were really able. We spent a week just. We were so lucky to have a week of just table work, basically, of sitting around a table and talking and getting to know one another, because I. I knew none of the other people in the cast or the director, and it afforded us the opportunity to just really sit and talk and, and pull the script apart. And, you know, over the course of four weeks, you, you, you get to trust each other, which you absolutely have to do in this show. You got to know that the, the note that needs to be played will be played at the time it's supposed to be played within the script. And so Steve's great. I mean, I'm just, I, I completely trust, trust that we're going to end up where we need to end up together. And this, this same with Gracie and Michael, who are also who round out the cast as Nick and Honey. It's an ensemble piece. It's there. It's. George may talk more than everybody else, and Martha may talk a lot too, but it is such an ensemble piece and we all have to trust one another. And Jay Barry, the director, really worked with us on that trust, I think.
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, so much of the George and Martha relationship is about, especially in the latter part of the play, is about games and playing party games. I wonder, just from you as a person, what's your favorite party game? Are you more of a charades person? Pictionary. Cards against humanity. What do you enjoy?
- [11:08]
C
What games do I enjoy? Well, I, I would say probably more Pictionary. Wait, there's a, there's a game? Oh, I can't remember the name of it. It's really fun. I am much more word oriented than I am other kind of games. Twister. I guess it would not be my idea of fun. Monopoly. Anybody hauls out a Monopoly board and I run in the opposite direction.
- [11:41]
B
But a game of Monopoly is longer than a production of Virginia Woolf, so it takes forever.
- [11:47]
C
Yes. And Virginia Woolf is really long. But yeah, Monopoly. Whenever my kids were little and they'd pull out the Monopoly board, mama would run away, but make yourself scarce. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [12:00]
B
Okay, well, that's good. All right. So not hump the hostess or whatever it is in this one.
- [12:07]
C
Can you imagine showing up at a party and all of a sudden you're there with George and Martha and their games?
- [12:15]
B
Yeah. Oh, my God. I can't imagine. Can't imagine. Well, when I saw the show on Saturday, and what I think always is the hallmark of great theater, I mean, and really great art in general, is that regardless of when something is written or created, from the Greeks to Shakespeare to Williams, O'Neill, Hansberry, into today, is that whenever it's performed, it still feels relevant to the audience taking it in. For you, having lived it now for five weeks, four weeks of rehearsal, your first week of Performance. What is it about Virginia Woolf that you think speaks most to modern audiences? Because if you would have told me that was written two years ago, I would have believed it. It deals with so many things that are in society and things that we discuss today.
- [13:07]
C
Right. Oh, and that is what makes it a masterpiece. It is timeless because it is, I think, about people stuck in societal roles that they don't necessarily want to be in. But there. There you go. You're. You're playing the role that society has decided you're supposed to play, and it's raging against that. It's certainly a play about marriage and about a long marriage, and underneath all of it is love. That the outside world may not ever understand this couple, but they understand each other. And certainly in a long, long relationship, petty arguments build and. And stories that you tell one another build. And there comes a point sometimes in relationships where you're either going to have to make a giant change in order for it to survive, or you have to go your separate ways. So I. I think that really speaks to people. As a woman, I identify so much with Martha and just expectations as a woman that even today are still there, no matter. Second wave of feminism was happening right after this show was written. And there's still. It still resonates. It still resonates of who we're expected to be, and maybe we don't want to be that. And there is an underlying rage to that. I hope that answered your question. I think it speaks of love and relationships.
- [15:36]
B
It's so interesting you said it speaks of love, because I don't think on the surface that a lot of people would say, oh, yeah, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Is about a couple who loves each other. But to me, what struck me is that both George and Martha talk about falling in love. And then throughout the course, like we said, it's a long show. They talk a lot. Never once, I don't think, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they ever say they fell out of love. And so you know that the love is still there. And yet it is just buried through all of the animosity and decades of resentment. And to me, that was the thing that was heartbreaking is because the foundation of an actual healthy relationship is there. It is just way down deep underneath a whole lot of other stuff.
- [16:18]
C
Yeah, no, I. I agree 100%, and I do. I know people always laugh when I say I find Virginia Woolf to be a love story. And I. We worked very hard to find those Moments of two people who have been together forever. And they are not nice people. They're not nice people to themselves, to other people, to their. They're. They're not. They will. Like chewing ice, they will chew you up and spit you out if you're not able to play their games. But that is a connection that the two of them have. And for Martha, she enjoys and admires how she says the line. He, He. He learns the. The games as quickly as I can change the rules. And I think the two of them, that's where they have some great love. And I think they are two very lonely, broken people. And when they met, I think they truly did fall madly in love. It's just expectations were not met, you know.
- [17:38]
B
Yeah, we don't want to get into any spoilers or anything in the show, I don't think, even though I think most people listening to us probably know this text inside and out. But there are a lot of illusions and delusions between the characters in this show. And for me, as I was watching it, I was really struck by some of the stories that specifically George, but Martha as well, the stories that they tell. I was never sure what was real and what wasn't, and obviously a lot of that is baked in. But it really kind of struck me that while you want to, you know, just. I think in art and in theater specifically, you want to believe the things that the characters are telling you because that's what you're there for. But I had to kind of keep reminding myself that, like, I don't know that any of this is true. Like, how do you walk that line of being able to. Because the stories they tell, whether they're true or not, you are communicating something about the characters to the audience, whether the stories they are telling are lies or not. How do you walk the line of being like, I want to make sure the audience understands why the story is being told, but might have to question whether or not it is something, a real experience that the character had in their life.
- [18:49]
C
I. Obviously, for Martha, she has one very strong illusion that is absolute reality to her, which is what devastates her at the end, which is the. The ultimate winning move for George and for me, for my interpretation of Martha. She believes that illusion 100%, and it is there. That illusion is their love personified, even though. Even though that illusion is not real. It's an illusion. And so she pours her heart into that and loves nothing more than. Than bringing that illusion out and talking about it mostly with George. And they've over the years, he has contributed to her illusion in such a beautiful way for her. So for that, I have to believe in it 100%, that specific illusion. And it's so funny because, yeah, the play is 60 years old. Probably people know what illusion I'm talking about. George tells some stories that I, as Martha, still don't know. Truth or illusion? Truth or illusion, George? We say that constantly. Truth and illusion.
- [20:32]
B
So you. You think that even Martha isn't sure of some of the things, like specifically the things that happened when he was in school before he came using. Martha doesn't even know if they're real or not.
- [20:43]
C
I think I've made up my. I made up my mind that Martha does. Does know details.
- [20:52]
B
Okay.
- [20:55]
C
And any given day, she'll say, yes, it's true. Now it's not true. Yeah, it's. No, it's.
- [21:04]
B
Yeah. Because we see George repackage some stories in different ways over the course of the show. So that's interesting to me. Me. All right. We've talked so much about how these characters are broken and lonely. Now that you have gotten through the first week of performances, you've gotten through all of the rehearsals in tech, you are in Florida, how do you relax and pull yourself out of what I imagine is the three hours of emotional turmoil that you go through as Martha on any performance day.
- [21:34]
C
Well, after the show, I sit and I have six gins. No, with ice.
- [21:41]
B
And you chew on the ice.
- [21:42]
C
I don't drink. I drink fake beer is what I call them. I am loving the beaches. I live in Albany most of the time between Albany and New York. So I arrived here at the very end of March and it was gross snowing, cold, yucky weather and snow. So I have been thoroughly enjoying going to the beach and swimming in your lovely clear oceans. And so definitely been doing that. I'm. I'm an outdoor walker type person. So I've gone to, like, the. To John. John McArth MacArthur State park and to Dickinson State park. And I get out and I try to explore. So that relaxes me. And. Yeah. Yeah. I meditate immediately after the show.
- [22:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. How long does it take you to get out of Martha's headspace?
- [22:50]
C
It doesn't take long. Honestly. I popped that wig off and I put Martha on the wig head for the night and know that I'm going to come back and grab her again tomorrow. But again, for me as an actor, I really try to find what I love in a character. So nothing. This may be a big confession, but I definitely. I Understand a lot of having gone through a marriage that ultimately ended in divorce. I, I understand this and I'll confess this. The first time I played Martha was with my now ex husband who he and I are very good friends and we were going through a divorce when we played George and Martha. The first time I show. So yeah, talk about unpacking a lot of stuff. It was very therapeut. So I, you know, I carry, I carry Martha with me. I'm, I'm not, I'm not quite as volatile as Martha in any way, shape or form. But yeah, I don't feel.
- [24:14]
B
Yeah. Well, I hope things work out better. Better for Gracie and Michael than it did with your, you and your ex husband.
- [24:20]
C
No, I feel quite confident that it will be, yeah.
- [24:23]
B
Since the actors playing Nick and Honey are, are married in real life as well. So that would be, that would be a meta for that. But. All right, I will wrap it up with this and let you get out to a state park or two for an afternoon walk. But for people who maybe know of who's afraid of Virginia Wolf, know, hear us talking about how heavy and, and difficult it might be, why should they give up a nice April, May afternoon evening in sunny Florida to come sit in a theater and see a three hour plus show that is about people who are ultimately kind of nasty to each other. What, what will they get out of it that'll make it a rewarding experience, do you think?
- [25:08]
C
Well, first of all, I think a lot of people think they know the show. And I think if you come, you'll find out that you don't know this show. It is tremendously funny in parts. There are, there are some real laughs and let's be honest, it's sometimes fun to see people behaving badly, which we do. But again, it, it takes you on a journey. The language is so rich and you strap into a roller coaster. I think on this show where first you're saying Go Martha, then go George, Go Martha, go George. And ultimately I think you will end up being stunned at the, the reflection of your own life that is within this show. And I, I hope people leave probably exhausted, but also leave with a sense of hope and love that, that we can connect. Underneath all the crap, there is love.
- [26:31]
B
I love that. Well, thank you so much for talking about this. I love the show, but was blown away with this production when I saw it on Saturday night. And I love the set too. We didn't even talk about the set. The set is gorgeous.
- [26:43]
C
Awesome.
- [26:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. As somebody you might be able to see with way too many bookshelves. That was like goals of mine to have that many books in one place. But thank you again for the time. Enjoy the rest of the run. Have a have a great time over at the Malt's Jupiter. And I really appreciate you taking some half an hour or so out of your morning.
- [27:03]
C
You bet. Thanks Matt. So.
- [27:13]
A
Foreign. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24? 7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.