Being On Stage is the Life of Riley

Erin Riley is the kind of actress you don't soon forget once you've had the privilege of watching her perform.  And it isn't because of anything physical.  No, it is because of the depth and humanity she brings to every role she plays.  Recently, she ended a month long run of Neil LaBute's searing Fat Pig at Spotlighters.  Of that performance, I wrote, "She may very well be giving the most genuine, heartfelt performance of the year in Baltimore."  Indeed, she did, and many of you agreed.

In the past year and a half of reviewing and writing for BroadwayWorld.com, I have never gotten more emails about any one performance than I did for Miss Riley's.  It seems she, and the play, struck quite a nerve with readers of this site.  I got letters thanking her for opening up a discussion about "plus-sized" women; other letters were like written confessions, guilt-ridden for having the very pre-conceived notions portrayed in the show.  One of the most moving was from a woman recovering from an eating disorder who was moved by her portrayal.  But the vast majority of you asked for an interview with this talented young actress.  One of you, a "Fan from Towson", even sent me questions to ask, most of which appear below.  So, thank you all for your interest and input.  Enjoy!

James Howard (JH): Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, Erin.  Have you been doing theatre for a long time?

Erin Riley (ER): (Laughing) It's safe to say I've always been what one would consider theatrical!  My mom read to me constantly as a small child and I could read and write before I went to school; so the English language has always been near and dear to my heart.  But along with that, I was lucky to have a family that had, and still has, a tendency to cultivate imagination.  If I wanted to dress up like a pilgrim on Thanksgiving, everyone thought that was just fine.  If I felt like playing Jo March and writing wild theatricals for my cousins and me to perform for the family, it was encouraged.  So there was always that element of performance present. 

But in answer to the literal question, yes I have been doing this for a long time.  My stage debut was at the ripe old age of six as the First Innkeeper in the St. Clement Mary Hofbauer School Nativity Pageant.  I made it very clear there was no room at the Inn for the birth of Jesus.  Ahhhhh… six year old vehemence.  But I'd like to think I've grown a bit since then!    
 
JH: What are some of your favorite roles that you've played?  Do you have any dream roles you'd like to tackle? 

ER: Well, my first love is actually Shakespeare, and I've been lucky enough to get cast in several roles that allowed me to grow and develop in that genre of theatre as well as in Restoration era pieces.  Some that immediately come to mind are The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and Lady MacDuff in Macbeth with the Mobtown Players and Aphra Behn in a workshop piece called Aphra Where Have You Behn by a brilliant playwright named Heather Violanti.  I have such a passion for making the classics accessible and enjoyable to today's audience and Dr. Gene Farrington at The College of Notre Dame and Ryan Whinnem at Mobtown really made me feel at home in the process of chewing up and spitting out elevated language.  

But I really started out in musical theatre!  I had the opportunity to play some really interesting characters in that respect.   Snoopy in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, Sr. Mary Regina in Nunsense I and II and Mrs. Peachum in Threepenny Opera while I was in college.  That was just insane!  Opera in a housecoat and sponge rollers.  It was definitely an experience.

As far as roles I'd like to tackle, well, that's a really difficult question.  There are so many roles I'd like to play, Hermione in The Winter's Tale, Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter, Antigone in Antigone, and Matron Mama Morton in Chicago.  But strangely enough, most of those roles either require me to lose or gain.  50 pounds or 20 years.  (Laughing)     
 
JH: How do you develop a character like Helen, keeping your self-confidence intact when you know the ending is less than what it "should" be?

ER: This is a really good, and really difficult question.  Helen was, when I first read Fat Pig, a dream role for me.  If you look at some of the characters I just mentioned above, my forte has always been the funny, bawdy, plus sized friend, the maid, the cartoon dog… roles where you can suspend your disbelief and step away from an actual size because the character is already larger than life.  Helen, to me, was a real, living, breathing, crying, laughing human being.  And that was different than the cookie cutter parts I had been squeezed into in the past. 

But the process of development was a lot more challenging than I believed it would be.  When we really got into the meat and potatoes of the characters, I realized just how unlike this woman I really am and was lucky to have such a supportive group of actors in the cast.  Helen is self-deprecating and always "on," ready with the next charming and witty retort.  Erin is a lot more confident and much more laid back.  Helen is willing to change for Tom.  Erin, not so much.  I have a personal credo that says "What you see is what you get."  The only person I'm willing to change for is myself.  And that was really hard for me to deal with in the creation of Helen.

I use everything… every experience I've ever had, every feeling I've ever felt when building a character.  I found it interesting, though, going so far against myself in order to accurately bring this woman to life.  Don't get me wrong.  I kind of have a crush on Helen.  She's funny, she's bright and she is, in her own way, the ingénue I never had a chance to play before.  But developing her was almost like therapy – a course of study in who I am, who I want to be and who I'm definitely not.  

JH: What was the hardest part of playing Helen in Fat Pig? 

ER: Wow.  Everything?  One of the true beauties of Neil LaBute is that he writes in a way that's completely conducive to making everyone in a room feel guilty, elated and empathetic at the same time.  Actors, audience, crew, I mean, everyone.  He tells a true story.  What happened to Helen has happened to me before.  I've been hidden, I've been lied to and yes, even my stoic band-aid covered heart has been broken (although I would never admit it!  Wait… I just did!)  But the play and its characters are really truth tellers.  That's a hard thing for people to watch.  We rely so much on covering up what we really feel in this open-ended PC world, and that makes it almost alien to see something, or act something, that has happened to us in a suspended reality. 

The hardest part though… was the ending of the play.  Sure.  That sounds cliché, but in reality, I would have NEVER let that happen to me.  I would have gotten the hell out of Dodge before the first bullet, or in this case, lie, flew.  During the process, that made me feel like Helen was almost playing dumb…however, what I discovered, was that it wasn't naivety or stupidity or even dramatic allusion, but hope.  We all hope to be loved and cherished.  It's part of human nature.  We want to hold on to what makes us feel good or wanted.  So now, I think Helen is a hopeless romantic and an adamant optimist.  I want to be more like that, even though it was difficult.

And the audience reaction.  My God.  To experience the people afterwards who would come up to me and say things like… "Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry."  Or "What a jerk.  He doesn't know what he's missing."  And my favorite: "Why didn't he stay with you!  You were going to lose the weight!" (Laughing)  It was almost surreal and absolutely heartbreaking.  I wanted to say it's alright!  Really!  It's not me.  But I usually wound up giving a lot of hugs and nodding.  It was rough, but it made it all worth while to know that people were touched on that level.    

JH: It is obvious Fat Pig deals with the social concepts of beauty and appearance.  You do a partially nude scene as well as one in a bathing suit.  How difficult was that for you?  Were you self conscious at all?

ER: It was actually my decision to do the nudity.  The bathing suit was written into the script, but the slipping off of the pajama top wasn't.  And yes, there was a bit of self consciousness, but not as much as one would imagine.  This past November, I had the lucky break of stepping into Catonsville Theatre Company's production of Real Women Have Curves in the role of Ana Garcia.  Funny thing is…I didn't actually realize I would be stripping down to my bra and knickers until after I accepted the part.  The first reaction was "Oh no.  This is NOT one for Grandma Riley to see" but the second wave came more in the form of "Oh well.  Let them look.  They need to."  Now it seems like every time I do a show, more clothes come off! 

Honestly, I love my body.  There's a lot of it, I know.  But it's mine.  I do a lot of laughing, especially, no offense intended here, James, when the reviews come out and the audience becomes vocal.  It's so interesting the way people perceive my body as opposed to how I see it myself.  One reviewer alluded to the fact that I was four times Courtney Ryan's (Jeannie) size.  Which would put me at about… oh, 420 pounds?  Yeah.  I'm big, but not THAT big.  (Smiles)  When I did Real Women, I got heckled the first night.  Literally.  Natalia Leimkuhler, who played my mother said, "Ana, you would be so pretty if you just lost twenty pounds."  And someone in the audience audibly muttered "20?  More like a hundred and twenty!"  I'll never forget that, and not because I'm mortally wounded and need therapy over it, but because I kept going. 

There were mixed reactions when my clothes came off in Fat Pig, but the overwhelming feedback I got, especially from women, even ones half my size, was how brave it was.  And all I could think is… This is just me.  Everyone has trouble spots.  Everyone has issues.  I wish my stomach was smaller and my double chin would disappear, but I don't kid myself.  I'm 100% real and happy.  And that's the most important thing.         

JH: What is your take on plus-sized women in the theatre world, especially since there aren't that many juicy roles for people, especially females, of larger sizes? 

ER: Actually, I think this is a common misconception.  With the right director, the right concept and the right streak of sheer dumb luck, there are plenty of juicy roles for larger women.  The shelf life on me is WAY larger than it would be if I could only play Kim in Birdie and Ophelia in Hamlet.  There are only so many times than an actor can stand on stage in a pretty dress, mooning and doe eyed and be satisfied with the type of work they're doing.  This isn't to say that those roles aren't important, but I've always had a tendency to look outside of the box.  When I'm directing as opposed to performing, 9 times out of 10, my cast will be non-conventional.  Many colors, many shapes and sizes.  I like the diversity of it.  And I'm not the only person who thinks that way.  Look at Neil LaBute.  John Waters.  Look at Shakespeare himself, with characters like Falstaff.  From the beginning of time, there has always been room for everyone in theatre.  Art imitating life.  Not everyone is a size 8, and if they were, well, life wouldn't be half as full or rich or challenging as it is with difference.

There's a certain type celebration I get out of making someone think "Wow.  That's not the norm.  It's much bigger!"  But I truly believe that finding a person who is comfortable enough to really work with what they have, regardless of size, color, etc., is an extraordinary occasion.  I have a healthy dose of self-confidence and self-awareness; it makes me marketable, whether it's Helen in Fat Pig or a classical heroine.  
 
JH: Explain what theatre training you've had.  Do you have professional aspirations? 

ER: I really like to think of myself as a self-made woman as far as my theatrical training is concerned, but I absolutely credit most of what I have under my belt to three occasions.  The first came when I was 20, a student at The College of Notre Dame of Maryland and a Theatre Minor in a program headed by Gene Farrington.  He made me believe that I could actually do a lot more with my ability than the experience I was getting at the time and I made the decision to transfer to a theatre conservatory program.  But before I could do that, he gave me the best offer imaginable.  Writing my own destiny, so to speak.  Gene came to me in the winter of my sophomore year and said, "What do you think about writing a self-designed Theatre Studies major?  See… there's this university in England…" That's where it all really began. 

I got on a plane and spent a year studying with The Nuffield Studio at Lancaster University in Northern England.  While there, I was able to develop a strong background in the classics as well as modern, socialist and avant garde theatre.  The British education system is extremely different than what we have here in the States and I found myself learning through my own means.  I was voraciously reading every text they recommended and putting the principles into practice on a daily basis.  It got the ball rolling and is something I wouldn't trade for the world.

The second occasion came on the day I met Louis Fantasia, and yes, that's his real name.  My senior year of college, I enrolled in a Shakespeare course at Loyola and wound up throwing myself head first into one of the best runs of classical education I could have ever imagined.   Mr. Fantasia was the first American to ever direct at the new Shakespeare's Globe in London and had vast experience as a director and performer around the world.  He wound up casting me as Mistress Overdone in his production of Measure for Measure and it was one of the most singularly terrifying, but at the same time, gratifying, experiences I've had as an actor.  We used Lessac, we used Meisner, yoga, ballroom dancing, you name it.  And we blotted out every punctuation mark and added word in the folio.  He was amazing.

The last came when I auditioned with The Mobtown Players for their 2004 production of Romeo and Juliet.  That was when I met Ryan Whinnem, the master and commander of a style I like to call Everyman Shakespeare.  There was table talk, there was arguing, and there was pure, resounding joy throughout the entire cast.  We tackled the text sort of like a piñata.  Beat it up, knock it down.. and then enjoy the candy.  I had never done anything like it before, but I totally consider it training in the respect that it taught me everything about being in the moment and then laughing about the moment in hindsight, something I think every actor should know.

Do I have professional aspirations?  Of course I do.  I would love to be doing this as my job.  I think you could ask any actor whether they had professional aspirations or not and the answer would be the same.  A resounding yes.  Maybe some day I'll have the coveted AEA under my name on my resume.  We'll see.  Until then, I'll keep on doing what I do. 

JH: I see you were also the costume designer for Fat Pig.  Do you take part in other aspects of theatre (other than acting) often?

ER: Absolutely.  Jill of all Trades.  One thing I've found to be a universal truth about theatre, and particularly theatre in this area, is that it's a collective effort.  The more you know about a wider scope of practices like costuming and make up, the more valuable you become.  From 2001 – 2007, I was lucky to be the Artistic Director of a high school theatre program at Seton Keough in Catonsville.  It was awesome on two counts.  One, I got to give back all of the things I learned to kids who were literally starving for creative outlet, and two… it taught me a lot about how to run a fully mounted theatre season from the budget to the PR to the rehearsal process.  It was hard, but something I'm incredibly proud of every day. 

I've also had the chance to work with a lot of great people throughout the region in a design capacity that really allows the creative juices to flow.  I costumed Macbeth with Mobtown and I was the hair, make-up and blood effects designer for Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's rep productions of King Lear and Taming of the Shrew.  Also, I'm currently the costume designer for Boston Marriage with Mobtown, which I was doing simultaneously with Fat Pig.  Any work is a good experience, on stage or not! 

JH: Who is your greatest influence up to this point?

ER: Uh oh.  This was the wrong question to ask!  I have a plethora of actors and directors who influence my work all the time!  It would take me days to list them all, but I'll spare you and give you the abridged answer.  The truth is, I pull from everything I see, listen to and read.  And that's a lot of stuff!  Sensory overload on occasion, really.  But on the local and personal levels, I would say there are many people who have been giant influences on the way I view theatre through performance, direction and design:  Ryan Whinnem, Mark Scharf, Ian Gallanar, Valerie Fenton, Wayne Willinger, Lesley Malin, Patrick Kilpatrick, Noel Schively, Courtney Ryan, Kimberly Lynne, Fuzz Roark and Alex Willis just to name a few. 

But I believe the most influential person to take effect on my career up to this point has been Louis Fantasia.  The thing I remember most about him, other than sporadically yelling "Plant your feet" when people would convey less than appropriate body language, was his faith in me and unwillingness to let me believe I was the wrong "type" to be a performer.  Although he was intimidating and tough, he saw through the extra pounds and hard Baltimore "o" and challenged me to walk my own walk.  That has never left me. 

 
JH: You and Courtney Ryan, according to your biography, did Romeo and Juliet together.  How did that experience compare with working on Fat Pig together? 

ER: Talk about a complete 180!  I had very strong reservations about playing the Nurse to her Juliet back in '04.  After all, I AM only four years older and that role is usually reserved for an older, motherly actor.  But we had an immediate connection then and still do today.  After the scene where the Nurse went to find Romeo for Juliet in the play, Courtney would come barreling down the walkway in Patterson Park and jump into my arms.  Call it character work, call it "method" (sorry Court!) but it was the beginning of a friendship that has spanned over three years.  When we auditioned for Fat Pig it was on two separate days and had no idea that the other had gone out for the roles we eventually played.  But when we found out, we both got voicemails on our cell phones at the same exact time, followed by calling each other and screaming.  Very silly, I know. 

Courtney is an amazingly talented young woman.  I think we'll definitely see her on screen and in People in the next five years.  I love working with her, and although this play taught us a lot more about one another than we expected, it was an astoundingly good experience.  Sure, there was no running and jumping into my arms at ANY point during this production, but what you didn't see was her nightly ritual of freak dancing around Todd, Brett and myself to the tune of "Dontcha" by the Pussy Cat Dolls.  That's just Courtney.  And I feel lucky to have shared the stage with her again, even if it was for 30 seconds in bathing suits.         
 
JH:  Where will we see you in the future?  

ER: I pretty much can't contain my excitement about my next project, although it has nothing to do with being on stage at all.  This winter, I'll be tackling the U.S. premiere of the musical Six Dead Queens…and an Inflatable Henry in the role of director.  Alex Willis approached me about directing at Mobtown and I completely jumped at the chance to be able to present this piece.  I saw it in England back in 1999 when the Foursight Theatre out of Wolverhampton performed at The Nuffield Studio.  It's a witty, bawdy pillow fight between the six wives of Henry the VIII trapped together for eternity, vaulting over one another for the top spot with words, music, swords, knitting needles and a very large blow up doll.  Also, with the success of The Tudors on Showtime and the impending release of The Other Boleyn Girl in the fall, I think we'll be riding a big wave of interest.  I can't wait to shift gears and hop back into the director's seat.  Very exciting.

And you'll see me on stage again.  That's for certain.  Acting is always in the back of my mind.  At work, at home, when I sleep, when I work out (yes!  I work out!), it's always there.  Even if it is a maid or a cartoon dog, as long as there's an audience, I'm one happy girl.     

Thanks, Erin!

 

PHOTOS: TOP to BOTTOM:  Erin Riley; R. Brett Rohrer and Erin Riley in Fat Pig; Erin Riley and Erica Johnson in Real Women Have Curves; Erin Riley as Alpha Behn.  Photos courtesy of Miss Riley.

 

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