Three actresses, three chairs and a platform By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer 4/11/2005 Few plays in community theater arrive with the kind of fanfare that Heller Theater's remarkably simple and sublime production of "Eleemosynary" had when it came to SummerStage 2004 at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

Karen Evans is Artie (left), Rita Boyle is Dorothea and Annie Ellicott is Echo in the Heller Theater production of "Eleemosynary." MICHAEL WYKE / Tulsa World

Director Julie Tattershall had entered her creation at the Oklahoma Community Theater Association's annual competition and swept the major awards. Best play, audience favorite, and the entire three-woman cast -- Rita Boyle, Karen Evans and Annie Ellicott -- was recognized as best performer.

The judges don't issue a best director award -- but in Tattershall's case they made an exception.

The show opened at SummerStage and was one of Tulsa's best dramas in several years. It was moving, electric in its execution, a riveting example of what live theater, even at its most basic elements, can be.

Outside funding allowed the company to take the show on tour to several Oklahoma cities, and now it's back in Tulsa, for a four-show run at Heller Theater before it competes at a regional festival against community theaters from neighboring states.

Playwright Lee Blessing's work explores the complex relationship between three brilliant women: Dorothea (Boyle), a mystically inclined sort who in her 70s delights in eccentricity; Artie (Evans), Dorothea's 40ish daughter and complete opposite, scientific and rational; and Echo (Ellicott), the exceptional, sensitive 20ish daughter that Artie abandoned years ago to be raised by Dorothea.

The drama-comedy explores the delicate balance of love and resentment among the women. "Eleemosynary," defined as charity, doesn't come easily for any of them. There are the universal themes of life, motherhood, mystery and the human spirit.

The tale plays out on a bare-bones set, making the work highly theatrical and placing all of the focus on the actors. There are no light cues, allowing the performers going in and out of the light to create the mood.

There are only three actors, three chairs and a platform. From that, they create a history of generational life, love and forgiveness. They do it with words, bringing the playwright's creation to vivid life.

And now, a few words from the performers themselves in recent interviews.

In the beginning
ANNIE: I knew Karen before the play. She taught me for a semester in Shakespeare class at Tulsa Central (three years ago), and I called her to get her to do the play, because when I went to the auditions, none of the other mothers looked anything like me. . . . I begged her and begged her to come out, and at the last minute she did.

KAREN: I went to listen to (Annie, a young jazz performer) sing, and she told me about this audition. I knew the show, so she called me again, told me you've got to come up, and I said I probably will. She called me again that evening, and the audition was that evening.

(So, was she going?) I don't know, I can't remember, (laughing). I had taught that day and I was tired, I was already settled in. But it's hard to refuse Annie anything. So I went, and I'm glad that I did.

RITA: None of us had ever worked together before. . . . I think we were a little tentative to start with, maybe, and I think that does well for these characters, because so much of their relationship is tentative.

On Blessing's play
RITA: I think an awful lot has to do with the playwright and how well he practices his craft. If he creates characters that fit, so to speak, you almost can't fail to recreate what he's put in there, as I see it. . . . The clues are there in the lines. This set of characters in particular is all just layers, and what's in between the words is almost what they're saying at times. The feelings are kind of in between, almost in what's not said rather than what is said.

ANNIE: It's really unique in being the smallest cast I've been in. It's such an ensemble piece, even being just three people.

KAREN: It's been very fun to play that whole mother-daughter thing against Rita, because I have a great relationship with my mother. I've never been one of those girls who had a confrontational, conflict-type of relationship with their mother, so I've had to really work on it. Everyone else is like, 'You don't? My god, this is my mother and myself,' and I'm like, 'I just don't get it, but OK.'

On stage chemistry
KAREN: It was exciting to work with Annie. She was a special student. I don't often get the opportunity to know a student and work with them as a colleague and a young adult and a friend and fellow artist. That's special. Rita's such a good sport, absolutely charming, energetic . . . I just think that we believe in each other, we trust each other and we respect each other. That goes a long ways. At all times we're all three on the stage, and we're each other's safety net. No one has ever had the feeling that someone is a weak link and we have to support that person. We're all pretty impressed with each other's talent. We just go out and look at each other in the eye, and we know that we're going to catch each other. I don't think any of us have ever articulated that to each other, we've never had to. I'm just saying it out loud now.

RITA: All of us are very good at making eye contact with the other characters, and I think that may be part of it, as far as how the audience perceives us. I think that's a good deal of it. It's just very easy when you can slide inside a character and just be that person in relation to the other characters. I work very much from the inside.

ANNIE: You wouldn't have guessed that the combination would have worked out so well, but sometimes it just happens, the fact that there's not one weak link in the whole production. . . . Rita is just so magical herself. She's just wonderful. It's easy to feel a connection with someone who you really believe while you rehearse, when you believe everything coming out of their mouth. She starts to really feel like your grandmother....When I was in rehearsal, just reading our lines, and I would start watching her and listening, and I would forget to come in and lose my place. That happened a couple of times. She's just got that indescribable something that makes you want to look at her. I don't mean to be tooting our horns a bit, but I think that we all have that, and when an entire cast has that, then there's something that seems unique about it.

Self-analysis
RITA: Maybe it's because I'm a peculiar person, but it's like this: I told my boys, I'm going to do role in which I'm playing an eccentric grandmother, and the reply was, 'Oh boy, mom, what a stretch!' (laughing) I'm basically a really very shy human being who comes across as being somewhat flamboyant at times. I live quietly, like what I like and don't like what I don't like, and so on. I think there was that in my character, and I'm always amazed at characters that can find something that frees them. This is a woman who found what freed her, when she should just have stayed a little stifled, poked-in-a-hole human being who was directed this way and that way and so on, with the bad connection with the father, and finding the control factors in the man she married. I'm not a person who's ever been very controlled. I've been kind of the opposite, and I'm always in awe of why people stay in situations like that. So it's a lot of fun to play a character like this, it really is.

The director
ANNIE: It's the first time I've worked with Julie Tattershall, and that's been great working with someone who encourages you and has strong ideas. . . . I think she had a really strong vision of what she was wanting from the beginning, and she gave me enough room to use my interpretation for most everything . . . she made me look good.

KAREN: I really respect and admire my director, Julie. She knows what she's doing, and that is a huge, huge sigh of relief for an actor, especially an actor who's directed many times. You really value a director who's prepared, who knows their stuff, who's an actor's director. She wouldn't ask us to do anything she wouldn't do herself. . . . It all does come down from our leadership, and that starts with Julie.