Kate Trotter's Three Feisty Roles
The Strong Women of The Elephant Man, Top Girls, Summer and Smoke.
Kate Trotter discusses her stage roles as Mrs. Kendal, Marlene, and Alma Winemiller - three central memorable roles from three playwrights who wrote women well.
In Part Three of this interview series, Kate Trotter compares and contrasts Mrs. Kendal in Bernard Pomerance's Elephant Man to two other strong central roles – Marlene in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, and Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. Trotter also offers insight into the estangment of Top Girls siblings Marlene and Joyce and why she relates to both.
You were Marlene in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, another strong role.
"Caryl Churchill is a brilliant playwright. You wonder where do these ideas come from? How fantastic is it that somebody takes what is called strength in a woman and says what does this cost? We do not tend to question what it will cost a man to be strong. It’s an expectation. He’s allowed to do it. He’s applauded for being that, but a woman goes out and pays a price for strength and that is one of the things I think Churchill was saying. At what cost does Marlene go out and grab for the big job, the position, the power? The price she pays is huge. She gives up her child.
I have a 24-year-old daughter, the most magnificent young woman in the world, and I did not have to give that up, but I am telling you, it was not an easy journey to be an actress, a single mom, wage earner, caregiver, meal maker, grocery shopper, house cleaner, car driver and the party maker – all of those things in one. It’s hard and there are days when you think it’s impossible, and I think that’s one of the things that Churchill was saying. Women sometimes have to give up one to get the other."
Joyce in Top Girls had a journey as well. It was different from Marlene’s ...
"Joyce gave up a lot too. The difference is that Joyce ended up with bitterness as her evening drink, and Marlene ended up with sorrow. I don’t think Marlene was bitter, but I think she knew the price she had paid. I think Joyce was bitter – hard-core bitter."
And then there’s Angie. What is going to happen to her? Marlene seems to want nothing to do with her.
"I don’t think she doesn’t want, she can’t have anything to do with her. I think that Marlene thinks and perhaps knows that the gift she must give this girl is not to ever tell her who her mother is because then the kid is nowhere. Angie's not the small-town kind of underdeveloped, uneducated, kid that is child to Joyce.
That is Angie’s identity when we find her in the play, so at what point is it a gift to say "I am stable now, I‘ve got the home and I’ve got the job, come and live with me. I’m your real mum." Would that be a kindness? I don’t think so. On the other hand, it means that Marlene will go through the rest of her life childless. To put your arms around a child at night and say I am your mother, you can count on me, I love you, let’s get through this together. For my money there’s no job, no occupation that comes close to that that I have experienced."
You have also played Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. This character is the one most like the playwright himself.
"I feel so fortunate to be in plays where the playwright loves humanity, loves vulnerability, loves fragility, loves human nature, and, in particular, loves the character that you’re playing. Williams loved Alma, knew her, knew her frailties, but loved her.
I feel the same thing about Mrs. Kendal. I also felt the same thing about even wonderful (Three Musketeers) Milady de Winter. To play a character where the playwright and the director love you is an extraordinary gift and then you can afford to actually be truthful about the things that are absent.F or Alma, so much was absent in her, in terms of her sense of confidence and courage and desire and truthfulness about herself. She had had an image plastered on top of her that was rock hard.Mrs Kendal was able to stand up and say 'No, no that is an illusion. That is not myself, that actress image. This is myself, the person who is standing here.' But Alma did not learn that until the last second of the play and then I think her life begins with that new knowledge. Who knows if she will make it? But Mrs. Kendal knows that. "
