`Collected Stories' pits mentor, protege in a battle over write and wrong

The accomplished writer serves as tutor and mentor to the young woman, a struggling writer. They become closer and share stories, which ultimately leads to the protege creating a work based on a part of her mentor's life.

Cyndi Vetter read the script and she knew she wanted to direct it. She liked the two-person play so much, in fact, that she decided if the director's chair were already full, she just might want to act for the first time in more than 10 years.

Kristin Harding learned the playwright was Donald Margulies -- Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of "Dinner With Friends" -- and without having read the script, she immediately knew she had to audition for the role of the ingenue.

Julie Tattershall, Heller Theater's artistic director and the person filling the director's chair this time around, observed this pair audition and decided she couldn't break up the seeming connection between this woman who hadn't acted in a decade and the 19-year-old she didn't know.

"At Heller, we always have open auditions, and if somebody comes in and blows me away, I cast them. That's what happened with (Kristin)," Tattershall said of Harding, a University of Tulsa student. "I didn't know anything about her, and she just came in and walked away with it. We had 18 women show up for the two roles, and with her ... well, you know when you're at an audition and the level just goes up."

The audition was a bit awkward for Harding, as Tattershall told the women they could pick out a partner to read with. She read with one woman, then another. Then she saw Vetter.

"I watched her read with someone else, and they didn't click. They just didn't click," said Harding, who began modeling at age 2 and has acted off and on since then. "But I saw something while Cyndi was reading. I don't know how to describe it, other than to say that I had a feeling that I could have chemistry with this woman.

"We got up there, we read, and I walked out of there feeling great."

A call came a couple of days later offering the part to Harding. Another call went to Vetter, who built her reputation for many years as the director of plays and program director at the Center for the Physically Limited. After a break from stage work for about six years, Vetter returned to the local scene with Heller and to much success directing the group's acclaimed productions of the comedy "A Coupla' White Chicks Sitting Around Talking" in 2000 and Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women" last year.

Vetter last performed onstage in the title role of a 1991 Center Stage Players production of "Mother Hicks." But for "Collected Stories," she decided that "It's good for a director to act and get the poop scared out of you."

"I think it's important for a director to understand acting, but I guess I just don't do it until a role comes along and grabs me that I can't turn down. That's what happened here," said Vetter, whose work as a house manager for the Tulsa Performing Arts Center keeps her busy nights and weekends. It's a schedule that allows her to work on one production a year.

"(Ruth Steiner, the older woman in the pairing) intrigues me because she's a writer, and I'm not. Writing is a real weakness of mine. She's very different from me in many ways, and yet very similar in other ways. She has `a mouth on her,' is how she says it, you know, she says what she thinks, and I'm kind of like that. It's a character that moved me, and she's in my dreams now."

For Tattershall, it's a fun bit of payback as she directs Vetter, who directed her two years ago as one of the stars in "A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking," which also has a two-woman cast.

"It's fun to direct a director. Or it's annoying to direct a director," Tattershall said, contradicting herself while chuckling. "I know I'm annoying to direct, because when I'm acting, I get concerned about things that are none of my business. That's what happens when you cast a director. It's like, `Well, what about the lights, the props, the set ...' you know. And you get told, `Stop it, you're acting this time.' "

"We have our moments," Vetter said, laughing. "But I've been so busy that I don't have time to worry about things most of the time. She snaps me over the head when I do, and that's OK, because I did the same thing to her."

Theater