THE CLEAN HOUSE

SISTERS ON STAGE

The Clean House is a quirky and fun comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl.  ATC Literary Manager Jennifer Bazzell recently posed questions to actors Felicity La Fortune and Kate Goehring, who play sisters Lane and Virginia about developing their characters within the rehearsal process with director Jon Jory.  The Clean House is a co-production with Actors Theatre of Louisville, where the actors were in rehearsal when they answered our questions.

Q: Kate, in the play, Lane and Virginia are sisters who have very different views on life. 

Kate: They’re such great spiritual sandpaper for each other!  I have two big brothers, but no sisters, so I think I may have dodged the sibling competition bullet (and also, thankfully, having to be a Brownie, for which I remain truly grateful).  It’s a terrific part of the adventure to see these two women have to deal with the fact that they’re sisters.  They’re proof that the people we’ve known longest are sometimes the ones we know least.  Felicity and I giggle a lot about the newest ways we’ve found for our characters to mess up their relationship, which is fun!  Really; it is!  But don’t try this at home….

Q: Felicity, the character you play, Lane, is an intensely driven doctor.  What do you find most compelling about the character?

Felicity: Any character who goes through a change of heart, or mind, is great fun to play. The more difficult the metamorphosis, the more fun the actor and the audience has. So the actor's job is to make it as tough for the character as possible, by resisting the change with both feet. As for the doctor role, I am fully licensed to play medical specialists in many fields on stage, having played them a great deal on TV.

Q: Kate, what about your character, Virginia, do you find the most interesting?

Kate: Whatever scares her most she’ll challenge most – okay, oddly at times, but with bravery. She’s an archeologist digging deep for clues as to how she’s gotten small, sort of looking for life under what she thinks she ruined by backing away from intellectual ferocity, professional ambition and wild passion (ooh! come see the show!). And I’m intrigued that she does not back off.  She’ll love anything that will let her take care of it.  Forks, spoons, knives, clean undies -- they blossom from attention.  They’ll never turn down her care, so those relationships work!  So much of the play points out the difference between perfection and perfectionism.  Sometimes what’s perfect can be very messy. 

Q: What is the most challenging aspect of playing this role?

Kate: Virginia will care for and about people in the face of their resistance way more than we’re “supposed” to once we’re out of kindergarten (or high school, depending).  Grownups have “healthy boundaries” and limits, right?  Actually, I have to come clean (no pun); fewer limits are more fun.  Okay, she’s fun.

Q: Felicity, Sarah Ruhl is an exciting new playwright who has garnered much attention in the past couple of years.  Were you familiar with this play or her work in general before being cast?

Felicity: Yes and no. I was working upstairs at Lincoln Center in Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy in the big theatre, at the time Clean House was being done in the smaller theatre downstairs, but because of our grueling schedule for the three plays, I had no opportunity to see it. I did have two friends in The Clean House cast: John Dossett, who played Charles, and Peter Samuels, his stand-by, who actually both told me I should play Lane sometime. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't heard of Ruhl before that, but in fact, I live in a cave, and if you lined up the exciting new playwrights I haven't heard of it would stretch to the river and back.

Q: The play has an offbeat sense of humor – did you find getting the timing of the humor easy or difficult?

Felicity: In a word: yes.

Q: Had either of you worked with the director, Jon Jory previously?  If so, in what?

Felicity: No, never. I had auditioned for him once before, but he inexplicably cast someone else; a fact I mentioned to him several times during our rehearsals.

Kate: Most recently I did Heartbreak House with Jon at Intiman Theatre, and he cast me as Hesione Hushabye, who wouldn’t even begin to understand someone like Virginia – in particular her taste in socks. It’s great to work with the same director on such different projects, and especially with Jon.  He champions all the characters (which is very good for them).  Everybody should work with Jon.  Everybody should go out to lunch with Jon.  He fosters laughter and risk-taking in rehearsal, so people tend to stop in to watch the suspense of it all.  

Q: Kate, you have previously worked at ATC in How I Learned to Drive and Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Are you excited to return to ATC?

Kate: Yay!

Q: Anything in particular that you like about working in the desert?

Kate: I grew up on an island, so the desert amazes me.  And it’s so beautiful!  Vortexes, Gate’s Pass, Sedona; my family loves to come here to see the shows and gasp at the beauty of this “dry” place.  Of course, there’s nothing dry about ATC audiences.  They’re up for anything; they always have something to teach; and it’s a joy to learn from them.

Q: Felicity, in the play Lane hates to clean and refuses to clean her own house.  Do you like to clean? 

Felicity: Actually Lane never says she hates to clean. Ana says "I hate to clean" and Matilda says "I've never liked to clean." Lane says (in the speech that was the inspiration for the play, the author tells us) "I didn't go to medical school to clean my own house." So, it seems to be a reflection of her view of her place in the world, and her ideas of appropriate work for highly educated people. For myself, alas, despite my illustrious profession, hired help has never been an option. I clean for myself. I'd rather not. I pretend it builds character or some other virtue.

Q: Kate, your character, Virginia, has little in her life to keep her busy aside from cleaning, which she loves to do.  How do you feel about cleaning?

Kate: I’m a disadvantaged cleaner; I do it only for the catharsis of having gotten through it, sort of the way brushing your teeth is uninspiring, but you endure it for the minty clean afterglow.  Virginia’s a master.  She’s the goddess of small things, so cleaning her house is a metaphysical pursuit: devotional dust, sacramental suds.  That could be seen as obsessive, but perfectionism has gotten a bad rap of late.  Personally, I think cleaning her house is Virginia’s way of loving the world back into innocence.  The dividing line between those two things isn’t entirely clear in The Clean House which makes it delicious.

Q: Felicity, what’s your favorite and least favorite household chore?

Favorite: window cleaning. It involves adventure and danger, since I have to get up on a ladder. Plus you can see a dazzling difference when it's done.

Least favorite: All the rest, but I am by now sufficiently virtuous to get it done.

Q: Kate, what lessons about life have you taken away from working on The Clean House? 

Kate: Nothing is too mundane or small not to warrant your tenderness and care.  Embrace it, and it will give you something vast – maybe even permission to live a big, loud life, messy life.  Maybe you’ll even remember who you are.