Olympia Dukakis, coaching actors at Ten Chimneys

The public knows Olympia Dukakis for her roles in such films as Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias. Theater people know her as a leading exponent of the plays of Anton Chekhov. When Sean Malone, president of the Ten Chimneys foundation, asked around for someone to teach Chekhov this summer in Genesee Depot, Wis., actors and directors told him there was only one person to do it: Dukakis.

She’s been in Genesee Depot this week, working with actors in the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship program. At an interview Wednesday, Dukakis was erudite, funny and genuine, the sort of person you could talk with for hours.

Ten Chimneys, the magnificent home built by acting legends Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lundt, represents genteel, countrified opulence. It could almost be a Chekhov set; it’s easy to imagine characters from The Cherry Orchard strolling the grounds. Dukakis finds the colorful Swedish décor of the Cottage at Ten Chimneys and the elaborate decorations and furnishings stunning. But she prefers the simpler, less distracting rooms, such as the library.

She noted that several of the 11 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program actors are mature artists. Dukakis said that she heard a lot of talk about changes in careers, changes in the body and things lost, gained, or regained as an actor ages. That fits; themes of age and loss and the gap between the between the old and the young permeate Chekhov’s plays.

“The young people in Chekov,” Dukakis said, “are asking: ‘What’s going to happen to my life?’ and looking forward to the future. The older people are looking back, often with sorrow and regrets.

“Life has its way with you. You think everything is going fine, that things are going to change, and then – bang! – it hits you!” She quotes from Chekov’s Gooseberries: “There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man someone standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him – disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.”

During the 1960s and 70s, as people took to the streets to protest the Vietnam war and burned bras to support of women’s liberation, Dukakis hoped the changes would stick.

“I knew so little then,” says Dukakis. “I guess it was a function of youth. I do nothing but read history now.”

Currently, she’s reading about the Peloponnesian wars in ancient Greece. She’s struck by the way issues of that war — taxes, politics, use of land and resources — remain issues in our own time.

Chekhov seems true and wise to her about such things. Dukakis likes how Chekov shows “the hardest thing to understand: Life is going to varied, joyful, painful – all those things.” He deals with those realities in his plays, but Dukakis feels he does so with neither bitterness nor despair.

“Chekov does things moment by moment,” she said. “You have to give yourself time to get the heart of the play. People are always at various stages, and it’s interesting to see what plays out, what people can do. Chekov is always asking: ‘Do you want this or that?’”

This week, she’s posing such questions to the acting fellows: What do they want out of the week together, what do they want to extract from the plays, what do they want from her?

“These are not people who are always on the screen, they are people who play in the regional theaters,” Dukakis said. “And when you work that way, you are always worried about money. It’s always about the money, and trying to get enough work. Your focus can get very narrow, and you start doing the same things over and over. A week like this at Ten Chimneys is a chance to step away from that and re-energize. You watch the others work and sometimes struggle, and you learn yourself.

“Why you become an actor and why you stay an actor are two different things. In order to stay an actor, you have to find something in the process that serves one’s life.”

Olympia Dukakis will preside over two public events this weekend:

Conversations at Ten Chimneys: 8 p.m. Friday, July 29, tickets: $25/$50/$100; call (262) 968-4110 for reservations. Olympia Dukakis will share stories about her extraordinary life and career, and will answer questions from the audience.

Concluding Presentation of the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program: 8 p.m. Saturday, July 30, tickets $25/$50/$100, call (262) 968-4110.  Ten of the 2011 Lunt-Fontanne Fellows and master teacher Olympia Dukakis share excerpts from the Chekhov plays they worked on together.