Interview: MARA DAVI

Mara Davi makes almost every other red-haired, blue-eyed performer look pale in comparison. It's not just her coloring that is vibrant, but her personality and spontaneity.

Originally from the west - she grew up in Colorado before her family moved to Folsom, California - Davi appeared in numerous musical theatre productions. While a sophomore at CSU Fullerton, she got the lead in 42 Street and toured with it in the U.S. and Japan.

It was both serendipity and hard work that led Davi to the East Coast. She made her Broadway debut as Maggie Winslow in the revival of A Chorus Line, and then succeeded Sutton Foster in the lead role of Janet Van de Graaff in The Drowsy Chaperone. Her regional credits include The Toxic Avenger at the Alley Theatre and the World Premiere of Beaches at the Signature Theatre. She received rave reviews for her role as Joan in Dames at Sea last year ("whose voice thrills," said WNYC). Davi appeared multiple times on the TV series, Smash, and Blue Bloods and in the films Kensho at the Bedfellow, New Year's Eve, and Every Little Step.

Davi is the co-creator, along with pianist and composer Adam Waite, of Mara and the Bitter Suite. Their debut album, "Unspoken" features Davi's lyrics and Waite's music. Wordkrapht enthused about the "talent and sensitivity in their songs."

Starting May 4, theatregoers will have the opportunity to see Davi in the new musical, My Paris, at the Long Wharf Theatre. The musical, with a book by Oscar, Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Charles Aznavour, is about the life and times about the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Davi has been involved with this musical almost since the beginning.

"One of the joys as an actor is being part of the conversations.... I've always been quite a fan of the Belle Epoque period of history, so I did know a little...certainly not as much as I've learned since last year at [the] Goodspeed [Opera House]." Davi was also a fan of this time period in art history and she speaks a fair amount of French - not fluently, but enough to talk to Parisian locals without their answering in English. In the show she plays Suzanne Valadon, the first woman painter who was accepted into the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the mother of the painter Maurice Utrillo.

After the second reading, Davi traveled to Paris and did what every tourist in Paris does - she looked at fine art. "We were walking through the Montmartre museum, and I happened upon her apartment. It was an unexpected treat to see where she painted and lived with her son, Utrillo." She took pictures. "Two months later I got the call that the show was happening at Goodspeed." The experience meant a lot to Davi because she understood the uphill battle Valadon faced as a woman artist. "Women were not allowed to show their work in Paris," she notes, and there were few women artists. In addition to Suzanne, there were Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond. They came a long way because more than a century earlier, Rosa Bonheur had to wear men's clothes in order to discourage attention while painting her huge masterpiece, The Horse Fair.

"Suzanne never had formal training," says Davi. "She gleaned everything from when she modeled" for artists such as Renoir and Degas, who was said to have mentored her through the late years of his life....

Toulouse-Lautrec was her friend, lover and teacher. She learned so much from him."

Is Suzanne going to be a favorite role of hers? "I love all my children. I feel very fortunate to have a lot of variety in my career, which is certainly the way I like it, and also a lot of surprise in my career in roles I didn't see as part of my future. This is one of the surprises that came [to me]. Another is the role of Sara in The Toxic Adventure. "I thought they would cast a pop star."

But many pop stars are just about dazzle with little substance. Davi has a purity in her acting and her singing, but underneath that is a lot of hard work to make her acting, dancing and singing flawless. "You can pretty much do research on any character on the streets of New York," she says. Or just finding surprises while traveling in between shows.

Visit www.maradavi.com and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7Cg4UEmbE to learn more about this talented performer, and then pick up the phone to order tickets. My Paris runs at the Long Wharf Theatre at 222 Sargent Drive in New Haven from May 4 through May 29. For more information, call (203) 787-4282 or visit www.longwharf.org.