Suzanne Flood is nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Drama for her performance in the play «Liberation» , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Playwriting last month.
What does it mean to me to be nominated for a Tony Award for the first time? To answer that, I really need to go back to my parents. Let me explain.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
-
Christopher Abbott on what inspired him to direct the film adaptation of Death of a Salesman.
-
Tony Awards Roundtable: Six Extraordinary Broadway Stars on Overcoming Their Fears, Initiating Difficult Conversations, and Creating Magic Eight Times a Week.
-
The Broadway tax break is back, at least for now.
They move to New York, young, with their own dreams and ambitions; she's from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he's from Texas. She stands in line all day at the actors' union, trying to get into auditions. He tries his hand at producing and directing. Success isn't always plentiful. They both start teaching at The Actors Studio; they meet; they have a child. Just one child, a girl. Like a sponge, she begins to absorb what's important to them, and there's no turning back.
For Christmas when she was nine, her mother bought her a seat in the back row of the balcony in the musical "Les Miserables", because she wore out the tape with the original recording of the Barbie play. When she was 12 and already living in Santa Fe, she joined the local theater and outshone all the other weasels in «The Wind in the Willows» , delivering all her lines half a second after everyone else. She says her character is "slow.".
Her parents are divorced. She moves in with her father and stepmother for high school. California. Los Angeles. As if she didn't already have enough stimulation. In high school, things get more serious. In her senior year, she's voted "Most Dramatic" in the class, and she takes it as a compliment. At a talent show, she performs Nina's breakdown scene from Act IV. «Seagulls» — alone, in the dress she wore to prom, with a shawl. Her father begins to worry. «Acting is just controlled humiliation,» he said, sitting at the dinner table, holding the script open between them. It’s what he teaches all his students, and he believes in it. But this is something else. When she finishes, the room immediately fills with casual, polite applause, which somehow turns out to be even more more awkward than stunned silence. Even teenagers, overcome by hormonal fluctuations, can't bring themselves to laugh or mock. They just want all this "past" to be in the past as quickly as possible. He wonders: What can I say to her that will be both loving and sincere? The problem is, she doesn't even understand what it means be humiliated, can't even consider It's like an emotion she might be feeling at the moment. It's not bad, per se... in fact, it might be good... it's just it is impossible to observe her . For example, he likes the feeling of the warm sun on his shoulders, but he doesn't want to look directly at an eclipse. He likes ice cream, but he wouldn't want to be shot with a cannon.
A few years later, the situation repeats itself: one evening, standing in the kitchen after dinner, she tells him that she wants to go to graduate school.« Why " he asks. And then a sharp sound is heard.» How can you ask me about this? »" she retorts. But what's he supposed to say? He's been teaching acting for almost 30 years and has seen many talented, worthy people toil endlessly without recognition. And this girl—his only daughter—is still young and inexperienced. She looks at him with indignation and tears in her eyes, somehow lacking self-awareness, yet at the same time, she's absurdly confident. Could she hurt herself? What if this decision ruins her life?
Well then. Time flies. Her life isn't ruined; it's just beginning. And everything's going swimmingly again. He's still afraid, but also happy. For example, he's proud to see her as Ophelia, but he starts to worry again when she laughingly tells him how she scared some of the audience when, during the intermission, they saw her emerge from the theater in costume through the glass walls of the foyer to In fact pick flowers on the hillside across the road. People refuse her many, many times; she experiences one humiliation and disappointment after another, and mostly uses them to create a flawless image for herself. But then, one evening, she calls him from a small town where she is performing in a summer theater. She stands on the shore of the lake as the sun sets, and now she is also afraid. «What if I Not "Am I great?" she asks. "What if I'm just... good?" "Well," he says, "good is all there is.".
And then, many years later, a play appears. A new play. Untested. Symbolically, it’s called «Liberation» . And the woman—since she's now a mother and he's a grandfather—tries to follow his advice to the end: every unresolved question, every banal whisper, every ghostly form through which humiliation might threaten an actor, she brings onto the stage as if there's nothing to fear. (To be honest, by this point she's already given birth, so being bad in the play doesn't seem so scary anymore.).
Thank God for the play good , The director is good, the other actors are good, the production designers are good, and then along come some very brave producers who assemble an army of determined and generous people, and here he is again in New York, where it all began, going to see his daughter on Broadway. He is already in his eighties, it is winter, it is cold. He watches her walk out on stage to begin the play. She is alone. She looks scared and delighted. She walks right to the edge of the stage and smiles at the audience. «Hello!» she says. «Hello.».
In the final scene, he cries, and not from relief, not because he sees in it some kind of reward for his faith, devotion, and acquired wisdom, for decades spent contemplating the acting profession. More than that. Mostly, he cries because he's completely immersed in the story. Afterward, they eat soup. As he climbs into a taxi at the end of the evening, the wind whistles down 6th Avenue, and she cries, "Thank you for everything you taught me." He replies, "It was the best thing I ever did.".
The Best of The Hollywood Reporter
-
The 100 Most Stylish Movie Characters of All Time, Ranked
-
Double Vision? 25 Pairs of Celebrities Who Look Almost Identical.
-
From 'The Lady in the Lake' to 'This Is Where It Ends': 29 new and upcoming books to be adapted for the screen in 2024.
Subscribe to the THR newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.