Ask Wednesday: Sharon MacMillan on both coasts

From here to there and back

By Morris Dean

Sharon MacMillan has, according to her current bio on the Internet Movie Database, "been writing and directing [stage plays] since her move to the East Coast in 2002." We're excited about the opportunity to hear from her.
    The interviewer and Sharon met on more than one occasion, they think, at dinner in the Tulare, California home of her high school sweetheart James's father Morris, who had been not only the interviewer's "namesake," but also his high school Latin teacher. She is a generation younger than the interviewer—roughly the same age as his children.
    The interviewer already knew that Sharon had grown up on a farm in the nearby town of Tipton. He did not know then that she and his teacher's son would later move to Los Angeles, begin theatrical careers, and be married for a dozen years.
    We are grateful to Contributing Editor James Knudsen for recommending his former wife as a prospective writer for Moristotle & Co....[Our questions are in italics.]

Sharon, which parts of your theatrical and television careers in Los Angeles provide the best memories?
    Those that stand out are the ones that had me saying "I have never met harder working people than actors." Early on, I worked on a film that had to be shot around peoples' day job schedules, including mine. This meant most of us went to work 8-9 hours in our various jobs then came to the studio at 7:00 p.m. to make a movie. I happened to have auditioned for a play a month earlier, and I found out I got that part about two weeks in. It was a great role for me and I couldn't turn it down. So I worked a full day, shot from 7 to about midnight, went home and slept about 5 hours, then started it all over again. The last week of shooting the film I also began rehearsals for the play, so some of my film scenes would get rescheduled to 7-8, meaning everyone else shifted theirs—then I'd drive over to the theater. I wasn't the only actor with more than one job going on, either. I don't think we ever cancelled a shoot, which means everyone was all in. It was a good experience and taught me I could work harder than I ever thought I could—and that I wanted to.

Did you perhaps learn as much or more from setbacks? What major lesson did you learn?
    At least as much. Sometimes film would disappear, or an actor you were working with would be recast and you'd have to redo every scene you'd done with that actor, some of which you thought were the most brilliant performances you'd ever done. You learn it's not about you, and you become one with a group of storytellers bringing someone's vision to life. Sometimes the night before a play opened I would get the comment that I was still delivering a flat performance. Sometimes a play did open and I'd get the same comment after an actual show. What I learned was that I could get better. I learned I wanted to keep going no matter how hard it was to hear those comments. You need to hear what it is that isn't working if you are going to fix it, and you need to be able to get past a setback. Overall in life I think it's helped me.

To what extent were your successes and failures similar to those of other young people trying to find work in Los Angeles in those years?
    I think a lot of actors go through that starting out. I remember some of my peers dropping off, saying they had to stop now, get real. Start their families. The hardest part in the beginning is probably just learning to accept that your life is going to be different from a lot of your friends. You go through some very lonely moments and questioning. I think sometimes it's getting through that—moving into it rather than turning away—that gives you the perspective—and the confidence—that you need to trust your own instincts, even if it feels lonely at times. Getting better at anything takes time and persistence, but mainly it takes life experience and a coming together of beliefs about who you are as a person. You don't necessarily have that when you start out. It feels like "Well, I'm a waitress all day then I go to the theater where I'm a brilliant actor." The same person lives that whole day and changes clothes and shoes, walks the dog, eats leftovers, then takes off her makeup and goes to bed. The same person might be playing Hedda Gabler six shows in a row then have to rush off to her standup comedy class. Experimentation was a big part of it for me the first few years: finding out what I was best at versus what I wanted to do, then where I fit and who I was within the confines of how I might be conventionally cast at any given time. Then, maybe I became "best at" other types of roles for awhile.
    Years later it not only became easier to choose the right roles to submit for, it also became easier to get them. What I really got better at was choosing parts that fit me. Of course, life goes on. Things happen; time passes. Who you are evolves and perhaps continues the creative experiment. Life is a continually moving target, but that makes it so much fun.

Is "work" the word you would use to describe what you were trying to find? What would you call it?
    I wasn't really looking for anything, but I felt very comfortable trying on roles and finding little parts of character I didn't know I had. I had a strong sense of truth when I wrote or performed, and it was fun.

We haven't cleared this with James, but could we ask you about your marriage?
    Of course.

IMDB says that you and James "have successfully maintained a supportive professional relationship." Please tell us how you've supported one another.
    We'll run monologues and ideas past each other, and the occasional "You Know Me Better than Anyone Else" questions will come up. I'll ask him if something I'm writing is funny; he'll ask me if I see him in a particular role.
    When a marriage ends, of course it's sad. When people are together a long time, they don't suddenly fade out of sight. May as well get along. If you end up realizing you are still supportive towards each other, maybe you can remain friends. We were there, now we're here. How fantastic to have that kind of continuity in one's life after divorce. Who gets that?

You moved to the East Coast the year after your divorce. What brought about the move?
    A few things, but for the most part it was a good time to do it. My life said "go."

At the time the IMDb bio was written, you lived in Hoboken, New Jersey. Do you still live there?
    No, I live in Los Angeles again. My marriage to the east coast lasted ten years. That was an amicable split also, but not without a little groundwork. And of course, now everything is flip-flopped with my friends. For ten years I had learned to shut my phone off when I went to bed, and now I have to remember to call the opposite set of people before it gets too late at night.

Having grown up on a farm in the central San Joaquin Valley of California, you likely found your new environs quite different. How so?
    I figured if I could move to L.A. from the valley at 21, I could certainly move to Hoboken from L.A. at 38. And then, wow. I took a ferry to lower Manhattan that first week and just walked around, looking at these old, old buildings. How I escaped getting hit by a cab those first weeks is beyond me.
    I was temping at a finance firm that first year, riding on the outside deck of the ferry to work, and James had sent me a mix tape I played on my walkman for a year while commuting to and from my job.It didn't make me nostalgic and sad—it grounded me and reminded me that he was behind me even now, as my friend. I was in a new place with new people, making new friends who had all also come from "other somewheres."
    My first January there I was waiting for the Hoboken ferry home out on the lower manhattan dock and there was a building across the water that had the temperature clearly displayed. It was 17 degrees. I was afraid we (the hundred other passengers waiting in line and I) were all going to die of hypothermia and that I was the only one who realized it. I remember feeling I should tell them it was too cold for us to be outside like this.
    The San Joaquin Valley is incredible. It's my wide open space. Vast sky, expansive farmland, oil wells, dairies. This is where I grew up and made up little stories and characters to keep me company. Los Angeles is also where I "grew up" later, where I became an adult. L.A. is still home too, and while New York can get really cold, you get to wear black all the time. Hoboken was a great place to live and to come home to. I was surprised how much fun it was not having to drive! Then again, it was quite fun to return to California and have to purchase a car.

We'd heard the term "drama queen" before, but when we read your bio and saw you described as an "eternal drama queen," we weren't quite sure what to make of that. It sounds intriguing. What does the phrase signify?
    Oh, who writes those things? I'm not sure I would use those words to describe myself now. I used to pout and cry a lot. But now that's just a long, dark and sad memory.

Does "eternal" mean that you still act (or did act when the sentence was written)?
    I did. I do. I'm afraid "eternal" may have been used out of context in that bio.

We guess that "eternal drama queen" could simply refer to your riveting presence. Our interviewer can't forget the impression you made on him...thirty years ago. Actually, though, he says you were fairly quiet. Do you remember doing anything dramatic at those dinners?
    Really? I was quiet? And how could that have been thirty years ago?! Other than dropping a wine glass during my first wine tasting, I don't remember anything too dramatic at any of those dinners.

Your bio says that you had "most recently been spotted ducking into the backstage areas of various off-broadway venues," but who knows when that was written? Is it still true? And why were you ducking into those places?
    Oh! There's the drama. I was trying to hide a lot. As if! Honestly, moving so far away allowed me a little room to experiment, even if it was a temporary sense of anonymity. I hadn't had that as an adult, really, and I didn't want my work to be seen there for awhile while I played around with different things. I was so tentative about directing, but I got really lucky with the actors I cast. They were fantastic. As it turned out, it was fine to fail. It also turned out there were really no paparazzi watching me.
    That bio was indeed written a few years ago.

If you're still ducking in, what's different now?
    Not many ducks these days. I'm much more deliberate about my work.

Your bio says that two of your stageplays debuted at Theater Studio. Tell us about your writing.
    Those were both relationship pieces based on conversations I had participated in that at some level seemed dramatically ridiculous and funny to me. Especially my part in them. I could step outside and hear myself creating chaos out of thin air. One day in 2003 I was walking down the street in Hoboken and I heard half a conversation a young woman walking behind me was having on her cell phone about her friend's fight with her boyfriend. Aside from the point that I was eavesdropping into someone else's world, I was thinking my God! We all do this. We make our own emotional pain so big, so sad, so scary, then we blame everybody else. I heard myself in that girl on the phone's friend and it woke me up a little. I nearly turned around and said "She's breaking up with him over that?"
    And maybe boredom produces drama. I still find myself writing when I just need to get something out to read it rather than hear it in my head. It's comical how seriously we really do take ourselves at times.

And your directing...did you perhaps direct those two stageplays?
    I directed one I wrote, and that's usually something one is discouraged from doing. It can be challenging to let the script go into someone else's hands and risk it becoming something else, but that can also be very rewarding. This was a short comedic and I know I directed it in a safe little box in order for it so serve its formulaic purpose. It was fine, funny, and the actors had a good time.
    One play I wrote was entirely cast, rehearsed, and directed by someone else. That was awesome. I didn't do anything but show up for the performance, and it was amazing to see the show come off the way it did. I remember sitting in the audience thinking "No one knows that's mine!" I was probably the only person in the theater grinning ear-to-ear through the whole thing. I laughed really loud, too, (which causes other people to laugh if you've never tried this).

What else have you directed? Any one directing experience stand out? How?
    The first play I directed was about two grown brothers at odds with each other over a white-collar crime. I was actually alarmed when they started yelling at each other. I was surprised it felt so real and they were so angry. I'd read the thing a hundred times and pictured that scene, but had not prepared myself for how real it became in the hands of these two actors. That made me want to write more. It's an incredible experience to watch written words become a real story. I don't feel I directed. It was more like I just managed the text so the actors could have their way with it.

Which do you identify with more, writing or directing?
    It depends on the day. Sometimes I can be moved to write; other days I'm written to move.

The bio also identified two artistic directors whom you credited for their support and encouragement. Please tell us how these people "made a difference" to you. In what ways have you emulated them?
    They trusted me and encouraged me to take risks, to try things I thought I had no business doing.

So, you've returned to Southern California! What did it take?
     Yes, I have returned. It took a lot of planning, a one-way ticket, and three Fedex boxes. I just wasn't getting out here to visit my family enough, and I'd been on the east coast ten years. It was, once again, "time."
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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