Quick Q&A: Donna Lynne Champlin

This Monday, May 11th, Donna Lynne Champlin will once again be Finishing The Hat, this time to benefit The Transport Group.

The concept of Finishing The Hat allows each performance to be unique, since audience members pick cards from a hat that determine what you will do next. Is the audience always free to pick any card from the hat?

I’m fine with completely winging it but I do want to ensure that people are ultimately entertained. If I do manipulate the hat at all, I color code the cards. I’m reticent to do cabaret because I find a lot of it to be, I don’t know… there’s an entertainment element that seems to be lacking sometimes. I color code just to ensure that the audience leaves with some sort of a well balanced feeling, I would hate for an audience to pick five downer stories in a row or, if they pull five laugh riot gut-busting stories in a row, that’s also exhausting. You have to allow people to cleanse their palette.

Is there any card you secretly hope the audience will pull from the hat?

I have sure-fires. The story about playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz is one of them, that’s 100 per-cent fail safe, a good ten to twelve minutes of laughing our asses off. Most of the stories are more personal; it’s never like Donna’s greatest hits. It’s much more of a window into my life as an actor. I’m Irish, so I’m something of a magnet for crazy, I just tend to attract crazy situations and crazy people and with time they become quite hilarious to me. So really it’s more of a personal reveal.

What inspires you when writing stories and picking songs for the act?

I had a great conversation with Marsha Norman; I did a seminar with her, we hit it off, and I asked her for advice as a writer. She said you must find the thing that you are most afraid to reveal about yourself and then you start there. I’ve always kept that in mind because it’s always the stories that I have the most anxiety about – some are personal, some are about my family – that I get the most response from. People will write to me at my website or at whatever theatre and say they’re so glad I told the story because they felt that way or had a similar experience. In a way it’s like group.

Has your openness ever gotten you in trouble?

I had one story that I really thought was going to. I was very upset by the critical reaction to a show I did at Transport Group. I felt it was unfair, I felt it was dismissive. Normally with critics I think let bygones be bygones, everybody has a job to do and it’s not my place to tell them how to do theirs even though they think it’s their place to tell me how to do mine. I wrote a song purely to entertain us at The Transport Group because we felt like we’d been in front of a firing squad after those reviews. The song was called “Suck My Balls, Mr. Critic”. My point was that if they’re allowed to say whatever they want about me or the show or the theatre I’m working at – fine. But I get to poke back. Some people say your work is your response but no, not if that review kept people from seeing the work. I thought I was going to get nailed. I had critics there the night I did it but I wasn’t aware of that, and I was horrified to find that out later. Again, it’s the thing you’re most afraid to say that gets the most response. They all loved it.

What makes a good critic?

I studied theatrical critique in college. What I learned was that a good critiique is in three parts, The first explains the story. The next part is how did those people who chose to tell this story choose to tell it. For instance, this theatre company chose to tell Sweeeny Todd with actor-musicians and one set with a coffin and lots of crazy shit. Next is the only place where opinion comes in: how successful were these people in the way that they chose to tell the story? It’s so not personal, a good critic. I miss that academic distance. One of my favorite critics is Linda Winer at Newsday. I don’t always agree with her, but she always maintains that dignity. I really appreciate that.

I enjoyed seeing you in Dark At The Top Of The Stairs a couple of seasons ago. Do you hope to do more straight plays soon?.

It’s funny. People do think that most of my work is musical theatre but almost half of it has been straight plays if you consider Hollywood Arms as a play and James Joyce’s The Dead and By Jeeves to be straight plays with music. I guess I like the hybrids.

Love, Jerry, at last year’s NYMF, could also be considered a hybrid. Have there been any developments about a full production here in New York?

It was very special for me and for the company. But it’s such a tough sell if you don’t see it. A musical about child abuse. It’s like saying about Sweeney Todd: “I have this musical about cannibalism, what do you think?”

Since you always include new material every time you perform Finishing The Hat, might you give us a hint what you’ve added this time?

I think I’ve settled on a story about a job that I am going to start soon. It’s a job I am thrilled to do but I’m a little apprehensive about. I’m finding the process about where I am about the job to be kind of funny and I’m thinking that it’s something that people can relate to.

What inspired you to do this particular gig as a benefit for The Transport Group?

I just really believe that if a theatre group can be pure of heart and pure of intention it is The Transport Group. Everything that they do is solely for artistic merit and growth and the furthering of theatre as a whole. It’s never “oh this show will put us on the map!” They take risks and as a result they need to be supported. So much of theatre now is about the bottom line: how can we manipulate this piece or this audience or these critics for our own personal success. The Transport Group is one of the few places left that doesn’t put that into the equation. I’ve worked with them many many times. I’m happy to support them as an actress when there are parts that are appropriate for me to play, and I’m happy to support them by doing this benefit.