Actress Dukakis takes the stage in Whitefish
Monday event a prelude to next year's 'Tempest'
The Daily Inter Lake
Actress Olympia Dukakis plans to test out a new interpretation of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" in Whitefish next summer.
And next week, she's making an investigative trip to Whitefish as part of her first visit to Montana.
"It's an opportunity to come out and meet everybody and see the theater," Dukakis said in a phone interview.
While she's here, Dukakis and her husband, actor Louis Zorich, will be the focus of "An Evening With" interview with actor David Ackroyd at the O'Shaughnessy Center at 7:30 p.m. Monday.
"An Evening With," an Alpine Theatre Project production, will be similar to Bravo television's "Inside The Actor's Studio" series in which performers discuss their training and careers.
"I'll sit and chat with them a while and then open up for questions from the audience," Ackroyd said. "Olympia's a very articulate, smart woman, very funny; so is Lou."
Dukakis and Zorich have been honorary board members of the Alpine Theatre Project for a few years. Ackroyd, one of the founders of Alpine, met the couple more than 40 years ago at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.
Ackroyd said they had run into each other at times over the years, but reconnected again a few years ago at a conference in New York City, where Dukakis was a panelist. They talked over coffee about the ins and outs of starting a theater company, as Dukakis was a founding member of the successful Whole Theatre in Montclair, N.J.
"I had in the back of my mind to ask her to be on our honorary board, but before I could even ask, she volunteered," Ackroyd said.
Although most famous for winning a Oscar for her role in the 1988 film "Moonstruck," the New York-based Dukakis, 76, has spent a lifetime in theater and has appeared in at least 125 plays.
She made her screen debut in 1964 in "Lillith." Also on film, she later appeared in "John and Mary," "Steel Magnolias," "Mr. Holland's Opus," "Look Who's Talking," "The Cemetery Club," "Picture Perfect" with Jennifer Anniston, and in "Dad" opposite Jack Lemmon.
Her latest film, "Away from Her," just opened to rave reviews.
Zorich is best known in the acting world as a stage performer, but most recognizable for his recurring role as Burt Buchman, the character of Paul Reiser's father, in the television program "Mad About You."
He was also a regular on "Brooklyn Bridge" and often plays a judge on "Law & Order."
"Now when I see him I feel like I should call him 'Your Honor,'" Ackroyd said.
As Dukakis and her troupe experimented with "The Tempest" in workshops, she took Ackroyd's suggestion to try out their interpretation - called "The Other Side Of The Island" - in Whitefish.
In Dukakis' interpretation of "The Tempest," several normally male roles will be played by women. Dukakis will play the role of Prospero, magician and exiled former ruler of the Italian city of Milan, who is shipwrecked on an island with daughter Miranda.
"This is a disenfranchised human being," Dukakis said.
The show is scheduled to be the final production of the Alpine Theatre Project's 2008 summer season.
Next year the company will be based out of the renovated Whitefish Central School auditorium, so Ackroyd said a visit to that space will be a focus of the agenda for Dukakis and Zorich.
Looking toward "The Other Side of the Island," Ackroyd is thrilled to have an esteemed actress such as Dukakis lending her talents to the Alpine Theatre Project.
"One of the reasons this is so great, it's not only that she gets a chance to have a full production of her adaptation of "The Tempest," but it moves the Alpine Theatre Project to a whole new level, and puts our recognizability factor way, way up in the mainstream theater community," he said.
Tickets for "An Evening With" on Monday are $26 for adults and $16 for children younger that 12. Call 862-SHOW to purchase tickets.