A life on stage can either bankrupt or save you. Lily Rabe and Chris Messina are well aware of both the sacrifices and unflinching belief the theater can demand from an actor. Although they’ve become beloved fixtures of film and television, the old friends met in their 20s at a workshop with Frank Pugliese and Jill Clayburgh, before putting their skills to the test in early forays off-Broadway.
After a nearly decade-long hiatus, Rabe returned to the arena with a fervor last year. She starred in a production of Ghosts at Lincoln Center, then Shakespeare in the Park’s The Winter’s Tale this summer. She had a mere day off before heading 40 blocks south to start rehearsals on the first Broadway revival of Other Desert Cities. “There’s something wrong with you,” says Messina, with reverential wonder.
Opening Sept. 29, Other Desert Cities will see Rabe act alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, and Joe Keery as the daughter of a prominent family who returns home with a soon-to-be-published memoir detailing a litany of long-held secrets. Strife ensues.
Ahead of its debut, Rabe and Messina discuss the play’s parallels to the former’s own writer-filled family, the pleasures of table readings, and the small thrills of losing your balance.
Chris Messina: How has your relationship to theater changed? I was thinking about the magic of seeing Peter Pan fly in the theater as a kid and being like, Oh my God. How do they fly?
Lily Rabe: I never could have imagined being away from it for as long as I was. Life happens and suddenly a decade has gone by. I was missing such a huge part of not only my artistic identity, but really my identity as a human being. Other than being with my children, that is my greatest joy: to go see anything. Whether I love it or I hate it or I’m confused by it or I’m fascinated by it, I’ll see anything. I’ll go to someone’s backyard and watch them do a reading of any play. The only thing better is getting to do a play and being in the rehearsal process.
Other Desert Cities is a play that I saw twice. I remember thinking, Maybe when I’m a little bit older, gosh, I’d love to play that part. Something I’ve been thinking about so much now is, my father’s a writer, my partner is a writer, my stepdaughter is a great writer. I’m surrounded.
Messina: You’re in a constant state of exposure.
Rabe: Whether it’s a memoir or not, very often writers write what they know. And I am “what they know” to three writers. [There’s] the vulnerability and exposure of that, but also they have a responsibility to their own writing to do that. I had this with my stepdaughter, where she had written this very beautiful play. It wasn’t autobiographical, but we were there in certain ways. She was concerned and she said, “I just don’t want to hurt you.” I looked at her and I said, “You have to.”
Messina: What was your first experience [with theater], as you remember it?
Rabe: All my earliest memories of plays are plays that I was certainly too young to be watching. I have a very early memory of sitting in LA, in the aisle, during a tech rehearsal of Hurlyburly that my dad [playwright David Rabe] was directing.
Chris Messina: That explains a lot.
Lily Rabe: It explains why I swear like a fucking sailor. What was significant to me was seeing my dad, who is a quiet guy, [have] this inner light lit, and feeling that next to me, and feeling that engagement, and seeing these actors work through something and struggle and ask questions, and fall on their faces, metaphorically, and try something again and swing for the fences.
Messina: [Other Desert Cities playwright Jon Robin Baitz] is so fucking talented. The language is so sharp, so wicked. It’s so funny, and then it just grabs you by the neck. Joe Mantello is such an amazing actor. I imagine that he’s a wonderful director because actors often make great directors.
Rabe: I can’t wait to be directed by him. I do think he knows, because he’s been an actor for as long as he has been, how much everything matters. He knows how much the T-shirt that you’re wearing matters. Every single detail is something he has his hands on, like all great directors.
Messina: That sounds like heaven. Sam Rockwell wanted me to ask you this. He said, “Can you ask her how much time a day she spends on the lines?”
Rabe: I don’t feel like I have any hard and fast rules. When I was doing theater so much before the 10-year gap, I didn’t have young kids, so there was more time in the day. Now, what I like to do is be incredibly familiar. I never want to have anything that feels like it’s locked in. I don’t do anything where I listen to it in my ear because I don’t want to have some line reading cadence become locked into my subconscious.
Messina: Given the opportunity, I could sit around a table for a long time. Could you? When I hear about the André Gregory 14-year rehearsal process, I really can’t imagine a better time. I’d rather do that than do it.
Rabe: I understand.
Messina: What’s the longest run of a play you’ve ever done?
Rabe: Maybe Seminar. I just remember Alan Rickman holding a cake that had “100” on it. So I know we did over 100 performances of Seminar.
Messina: I find it fascinating how a play morphs over that time. Each audience is this completely new container. The play will sometimes feel like it’s gotten far away, and then something will happen and it gets closer to you than it was before.
Rabe: It has never felt linear. It feels like the ocean or something. It feels like waves.
Messina: I read this quote from our friend Al Pacino from his book: “Life’s on the wire, man. That’s my acting, my life. When I work, I’m on the wire. When I’m going for it. When I’m taking chances. I want to take chances. I want to fly and fail. I want to bang into something when I do it, because it’s how I know I’m alive. It’s what’s kept me alive.” It made me think of you. When I watch your work, it’s on the wire. It’s very much a singular talent, what you have and what you do. I’m glad that you’re back doing this much theater, and I’m sure people that read this will feel the same way—that that is a necessity that we need when we go to the theater. We need to feel that high wire act, and you have that.
Rabe: I needed that quote today. Thank you. I don’t like kid gloves. I just want your truth.
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