Playing Helene Alving in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts at Off-Broadway's Pearl Theatre Company, Joanne Camp makes an extraordinary impression on her first entrance. Mrs. Alving doesn't just walk into the garden room of her home to welcome her old friend, onetime romantic interest, and current financial adviser, Pastor Manders; she strides in, thrusting out her hand in almost manly greeting. It's a commanding entrance for a character who is very much in control — and an entrance that, for those familiar with Camp's career, has added subtext. For this is Camp's 50th role at the Pearl, where she's not only a member of the resident acting company but also the theatre's associate director and a member of its board of trustees.
Those 50 roles represent a diverse array of classics — one season Shakespeare and Molière, another Chekhov and George Kelly. No matter the period or the piece, though, Camp's process doesn't differ much. "I think what I do with every play is to get familiar with it, trying to figure out the rhythms and the style in which the playwright is telling the story," she says. After that, she tries to determine how to use "my modern self and my experience as a classic theatre actress to bring [the playwright's intent] to a modern audience so that they can hear and accept what the author wanted to be heard in his or her time." The key to this preparation is "trusting that the character will come out of the groundwork that you're laying," she says. "You don't go in already having invested in who you think the character is."
Camp says her approach is not limited to the classics and her work at the Pearl. She's done the same thing in roles on and off Broadway in plays such as The Heidi Chronicles (for which she earned Tony and Drama Desk nominations) and The Last Night of Ballyhoo. More recently, she acted at New Jersey's George Street Playhouse in Arthur Laurents' 2 Lives.
Though it maintains a resident acting company — a rarity in today's nonprofit sphere — the Pearl occasionally employs actors from outside the fold, as it's doing for Ghosts. "I think that maybe with the company actors we're freer, in most cases, to bat each other around," Camp says. "We're rougher with each other, like you are with family." Yet even with Ghosts, which employs just one other company member, "we were all right in there from the beginning," she says. "I haven't had to curb that roughness very much."
Casting from a resident company has dangers, however. "You can all get too comfortable," Camp says. When show after show uses the same actors, "there's the appearance of challenge, but not a real one. We can't always see how much we're being ourselves all the time and how much is changing." That's also why, she says, "having a new director come in can be really challenging and exciting." The difficulty is "finding directors who have experience with classics working with professional actors."
As for working on Ghosts, "It's been really thrilling," Camp enthuses. "It's a five-member cast, and three of them are not Pearl regulars, and even TJ [Edwards] and I have only worked together once before.... He's only been in the company a couple of years." Director Regge Life "really trusted the work and allowed us to become increasingly acquainted with the script and each other."
Camp admits that any rehearsal process can be complicated by her work as the Pearl's associate director. "It's not always easy to have someone working alongside you at a different level of command, as it were," she says. "It's been a lot for me to realize how careful I have to be with that." At the same time, "the generosity of the other members of the resident acting company" helps make her dual role easier, she says, and she's quick to joke that sometimes it's just "me learning when to shut up and when to let other people take over." But "sometimes you feel responsible," Camp adds. "You have all these people working at your theatre, and you have to learn they don't need you to take care of them." Unlike, perhaps, Mrs. Alving.
Ghosts runs through March 30 at the Pearl Theatre Company, 80 St. Marks Place, NYC. Tickets: (212) 598-9802 or www.pearltheatre.org.