by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 27
The phone rings and someone picks it up. But I don’t hear a voice at first - I hear the gentle sound of wind chimes. “Have you got wind chimes?” I ask Renee.
“Yes, I do!” she chirps melodically.
“Are you sitting outside?” I ask as I try to picture where she is.
“They’re just outside my bedroom window,” she says with a smile in her voice.
And with those soft, gentle, tinkling notes as background music, we began our interview. Renee had done a play at our Xena convention a few weeks ago and I wanted to talk about her experiences working on it and the surprise - at least to her - ending of the show when Lucy popped up in the audience. The play was a series of monologues portraying a variety of different women.
“You mentioned to me you had a ‘thumbnail motivation’ for each of the characters,” I began. I could hear the scurrying sound of pages being flipped.
“I’ve got my notebook,” Renee explained, “which contains everything from my acting classes to my producing notes. I took it with me when I went to a couple seminars at the American Film Market.”
“What goes on at the AFM?” I queried.
“Some people are looking for pre-sales for films they want to make,” Renee said. “Other people are trying to sell films they’ve already made. I haven’t been through the buyer’s area where they buy the films. I’ve only been to a couple of the lectures. To tell you the truth, I haven’t learned anything yet, but it’s always good to hear the process of selling a film because you realize you do need all the players, you know? If you try to cut corners, you might end up getting a lesser deal than you could have,” she chuckled.
“Aha!” she explained. “Thumbnails, here they are. The first character in ‘15 Minutes,’ was the Actress and the motivation was to ‘open my heart and end the separation with the audience.’”
“At the end of the play, you thanked Julie, your acting coach, for opening your heart,” I said. “I should preface this by saying, the reason I bring this up is that, as an audience member, you’ve always seemed a very emotionally open actor. What did Julie give you? What did you feel inside?”
Renee thought for a moment. “Working on Xena, I had this fear that people wanted something from me that I wouldn’t be able to give them. A fear of intimacy with the fans. And it was just completely in my head, you know,” she laughed. “What I learned from Julie is how to interact with people again. I think a lot of it is also because I took so much time off with Miles, I was trying to embrace everyone at the convention. Doing the play there was completely different from doing Macbeth with the Shakespeare by the Sea group.”
“What was the difference between doing Shakespeare by the Sea and that audience and doing this play with the Xena crowd?” I asked.
“During Macbeth, there were definitely moments when I felt everybody was with me,” Renee explained. “There’s a feeling where you just know the audience is in it with you. But I definitely went out of that a lot during the Shakespeare because I was so involved with trying to stay connected with Patrick, who played Macbeth. That was the way he and I were working. We were feeding off each other, trying to make it a little different every night. So I was really concentrating on being connected with him and then also trying to be connected with the material because I wasn’t completely free in the dialogue yet. Because of all that, I wasn’t being completely open with the audience.”
“You connected better with the audience during the convention play. But that was a one-woman show. I wonder what’s going to happen the next time you do something where there’s another character?” I queried.
“That’s a good question,” Renee said sounding as if the wheels were already beginning to turn. “That’s a very good question. Cause it was different for me to make the audience my other ‘person.’”
“We were ‘Patrick’?” I guessed.
“Exactly!” she chimed in. “I really enjoyed doing the play at the convention so much more than any theatre I’ve done.”
“Because of the specific audience?” I asked.
“Their hearts were open to me because there is a relationship between myself and all the people who were there,” she said.
“How did you come up with the idea for the prologue where you played yourself as a grandmother?” I queried.
“In my acting class we have variety nights where the students have to write a song/monologue/short piece,” Renee began. “One of the students was producing a work-in-progress where three of the actresses in our class were playing their grandmothers and then themselves in modern-day and showing the relationships between the two characters. I was so inspired by the transition this one girl did as she created and brought to life her real grandmother on stage and shared her with us. That opened my eyes. I never thought I could do something like that. I don’t know why!” Renee laughed. “But it opened my eyes to the possibilities. And Julie was giving some comments to someone in our class about having fans. That night, I couldn’t sleep at all and the two came together. Suddenly I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I should do my prologue as Gabrielle!’
“I realized I wanted to embrace everyone who’s loved the show so much because I appreciated their support over the years. And I really felt they could understand my love for the show. A lot of people in my life now have no idea some of the things I went through on Xena because, well, they didn’t watch it,” she said, laughing. “The life experience of working on Xena was so tremendous and I just feel like everyone who really, really loved the show loved it because it changed their life in some way. That’s why I wanted to address that with everyone there in my prologue. It just made sense to let them know about one of my fondest moments which was the greenstone. I wanted to include them as part of the family. I’ve never really done that before.
“I’ve never been that accessible because I think there’s always been that fear that somebody wants something from me and I won’t be able to satisfy them. I may disappoint them. It’s like, I better just stay away because I know I’m gonna disappoint ‘em, you know? That’s been my whole thing. But now I do want to be accessible and let people know how much I appreciate their being there and their love for the shoe because I loved it.” Renee paused and then added, “But keep it all light-hearted.” And burst out laughing.
“It must have been satisfying hearing all those laughs during the prologue,” I prompted.
“It was so easy to write,” Renee said enthusiastically. “It was the last thing I did. Literally - I wrote it the Tuesday or Wednesday before the performance. I had been thinking about it in my head and I knew I wanted to dress as Gabrielle. I knew the jokes I thought were funny. Like the fact that I could still get into the outfit. Cuz I love little grandmas that are still feisty,” Renee chuckled. “They’re just so full of life. I really wanted to capture that essence. And I knew I wanted to let everyone know about the greenstone experience. I just kind of came together. But I remember having no clue how it was gonna go! I definitely felt most at home in that monologue.”
“Was that an ad-lib when you said, ‘Now you’re gonna get to see how the top comes off?’” I teased.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “A lot of those were ad-libs.”
“That’s interesting what you were saying before about a fear of intimacy,” I said thinking back and wanting to go into this a bit more.
“What I love about being an actor is that I can show all of myself,” Renee began. “But then, the other side of that is that because you are so vulnerable, people think they know you. They’re seeing depths of your psyche in your work. But when you see them in your day-to-day life, the interactions can be so overwhelming, you know what I mean? It always takes me back a bit because I’m not ready for it. So that’s why I felt like I needed to distance myself. I knew I couldn’t be a penpal or a best friend or a lover. I couldn’t be all these things. I just knew it. So it was better for me to distance myself rather than disappoint them. But then I realized, hell! Who am I say they would even want that!” she laughed.
“I never thought of it that way,” I said. “‘Boy, that’s arrogant of me!’ But, in point of fact, some people did want all those things from you.”
“But, truly,” she said, “how can I live my life thinking I know what other people want? That’s what I’m learning.”
“Or that you can’t give it,” I added.
“Yeah! Maybe what they got from the show is enough. It was really all in my head and I’ve come to terms with that. I don’t want to live like that. So it was really good for me to be accessible to everyone during the play.”
“You started to thank Julie at the end and you broke down completely. Is the change she made in your life what hit you so hard?” I asked softly.
“Yeah,” Renee said and then was very quiet. “It still affects me,” she added in a voice choked with emotion. She’s just amazing,” she said after a moment and chuckled to herself.
“I had a tap dancing teacher that did the same for me,” I told her. “After taking classes with her for a while, my eyes went directly…”
“...into other people’s,” Renee finished my thought. “Yeah, I definitely understand that. Julie teaches you how to live life in a very open-hearted way which means, for me, living in the moment and trying not to live in the future or the past which is what my typical behavior would be. And if you really are open-hearted, oh my God, people are so amazing!” she said in an awed tone. “I think it’s been hard for me because I’ve been so insular in my lifestyle over the last couple years. It was a huge change for me to open up and stop hiding.”
“Was it Julie’s idea to do a prologue?” I asked.
“Yes,” Renee said. “She wanted me to find the theme of all the pieces I chose and then have something in the beginning to introduce them all. But she left the content up to me.”
“How did you pick the five monologues out of the ones that were part of the original play?” I queried.
“I chose those because there was supposed to be an organic match with me,” Renee explained. “Julie’s big on that. Why beat your head against the wall if it’s just not working for you?”
“You said ‘15 Minutes’ wound up being the one you were least connected to,” I reminded Renee. “Which sounds odd because it’s about an actress and so you are. Can you elaborate?”
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t connected to the whole piece, it was the very beginning leading to the time when I say, ‘Will you lift the house-lights up,’” Renee began. “For me, it was my self-expectation that I have to stick to the lines the author has written. There was something about going from my own words, in the prologue, to someone else’s. I just had this hiccup,” she laughed. “And I didn’t really know the lines that well. It was one of the last ones I’d learned. I was fighting myself and needing to forgive myself for not knowing everything perfectly. ‘That’s okay, get on with it!’” she chastised herself with a chuckle. “But once I got to the part where the lights are up and I could connect with everyone in the audience, then it was fine. What’s interesting is that I tried to pretend I was talking to my friend in the beginning of that monologue. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel connected to the audience. But I didn’t feel connected really until I could actually look out there.”
“Who was the next character?” I asked.
“‘Rodeo,’ and the motivation was to ‘wake ‘em up.’ I loved her, she’s great!” Renee said enthusiastically. “She was the first one I learned. She was so feisty and very unapologetic. Which I really liked.”
“Is she like you or more how you’d like to be?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I would completely want to be like her,” Renee said thoughtfully, “but I definitely liked her being unapologetic. But I don’t think I could be true to myself and be as black and white as she is. I think I’m far too conscientious of other people’s feelings. I definitely admired her honesty. But the thing is, it’s not like I’m not honest in my life, but I choose to find words that are kinder, you know? It’s a better way for me to live. But I liked her, she was really fun to do,” Renee laughed.
“The Texas girl came out?” I teased.
“Yeah,” Renee said with a touch of Big Texas attitude in her voice. “One of the things I didn’t like about her was that she was very judgmental and very quick to label people. She had no real compassion for people who sold out. But that’s who she is. Everyone has their own issues, you know. What I’m trying to learn is to not be a person who judges. Who am I to know what another person is thinking or feeling. It was so much fun to play someone like that, but I wouldn’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be like that,” she stated unequivocally.
“The third monologue was called…?” I began.
“‘Clear Glass Marbles,’” Renee supplied. “My thumbnail was to ‘paint the picture.’ And the reason for that is because I tended, in the rehearsals, to forget about painting the portrait of the woman.”
“The woman we couldn’t see, the one who was dying?” I asked for clarification.
“Yes, the women you couldn’t see,” she confirmed. “I worked on that quite a bit. I know a lot of the moments when I wouldn’t be speaking in my rehearsals were about my admiration for my mother, the character’s mother who was dying. But as I started to get more into it, especially in the performance, it became about remorse, no, not remorse, loss and sorrow. That’s really what those moments were about. I understood that enough that I didn’t have to use that as my motivation going into it. For me, it was just about painting the picture of the beauty of the woman and let the rest happen, to the audience.”
“That’s intriguing - making the audience see someone who isn’t there,” I said thinking that over.
“You know what’s funny? I had all these motivations, but, of course, during the performance, I didn’t think about any of them,” Renee laughed.
“Is that what a nutshell is for? A thought to have in your head before you start each piece?” I queried.
“I think that’s probably a really good way to work, but I didn’t consciously throw it away. I think I moved on. I must have had enough confidence in me not to worry about it,” she said.
“And the next character?” I prompted.
“‘The Handler’ and the thumbnail was ‘share my testimony,’” Renee went through our routine. “That’s how it started. What I was lacking in my rehearsals with that one was my passion for the snakes. The last thing I worked on before the show was how is it really personal to me? I had to find something to replace the occupation of snake handling, so I would feel really passionately about it. And I chose acting! It just happened to work using acting. Isn’t it weird? Go figure,” Renee burst out laughing.
“Snakes and acting,” I chuckled along with her. I wondered if there was any connection between those two for Renee or was it just a way to connect with passion? I’ll have to mark that question down for next time.
Renee was oblivious to my thoughts and had continued on. “Once you connect with a feeling, you don’t have to think about what you used to get there. Then you’re just into the scene.”
A tidbit from my discussions with Renee when she was beginning to rehearse the play. She was considering borrowing a real snake from a friend of hers. When that didn’t pan out, she sent me out hunting for a snakeskin. Try calling up prop houses and saying, “I’d like to rent a snake - non-living.” There was a great deal of laughing on the other end of my phone calls, but I couldn’t come up with a snakeskin that fit the parameters Renee needed. I decided to hash this out with Renee now.
“Did you think about what the difference would be between working with a real snake and a fake one, whether that would have had an effect on the performance?” I began.
Renee burst out laughing. “I don’t know. I just think it’s funny I wanted to use a real snake. And Julie kept saying to me, ‘Have you ever worked with a snake?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, I don’t think you want to take on anything else for this play.’” Another burst of laughter from Renee. “It’s so true. I spoke with my friend Chris and he explained how the python - which was the only snake I knew I could borrow - wraps itself around your body because they enjoy the heat and it’s really hard to get them off.” Lots more laughter, but I’m not sure if it was amazement at her naivete or had a touch of fear in it and the thought of what she might have gotten herself into. “I was so thankful I didn‘t try to use a real snake. It would have been awful!” she concluded with a definite sigh of relief.
“But that’s a good question,” she said after a moment. “I felt pretty amped up with that character. I just felt alive with her. I don’t know if adding a snake would have heightened me any more. Besides the acting, I really knew what I was dealing with when it came to that snake at the end. Like when she’s talking about the snake wanting to bite her. And then she goes to get the snake. I knew exactly what I was using to replace the live snake. I didn’t really need one to get into that moment when I pulled it out of the box.”
“You really sucked people into believing there was a real snake in that box,” I told her. “There was a collective intake of breath from the audience when you put your hand in the box and began to pull something out.”
“There was laughter, right?” Renee said, laughing devilishly.
“A laughter of relief that you didn’t pull out a snake!” I said. “The way you were approaching that box. Your body language around it. I knew there was no snake in there and I was getting nervous!”
“That’s what I thought,” she said and I still heard the mischief in her voice.
“That feeling happened for me in the dress rehearsal,” I told her. “From where I was sitting you had that rubber band around the scarf and it looked like a snake with its mouth open. You’ve never had any practice handling snakes. But you certainly made that scarf live.”
“I have a true fear of snakes,” Renee admitted. “I was playing with the idea of what would it be like to handle one. I know during the rehearsals, I really wanted to have the character be mentally prepared to deal with the snake. I thought it would be fun if she did something with her hands to relax them right before she handles the snakes. I got that from this lady who used to do massages on set on Xena. She was a second AD but, every now and then, she’d come around and give someone a shoulder massage. And when she finished, she would literally make like she was taking a towel, which wasn’t there, and just flinging it with her hands. It was really bizarre. I guess it was some sort of karmic energy that she needed to clear.”
“Clear the energy of one person before she started the next?” I guessed.
“Yeah. I think she didn’t want to hold whatever she was getting from the person she was massaging. So she had this body thing she would do to let it go,” Renee agreed. “For some reason, I thought of her when I was thinking of this character going to handle the snake. That she had to clear whatever she had in her hands. I thought that might be kind of fun. Maybe that made handling the snake more specific. It’s always good to be specific.”
“We’re up to ‘Marks,’” I said looking down at my list.
“‘Take off my mask,’” Renee said.
“Your mask or that of the character?” I asked.
“It’s a bit of both,” she said thoughtfully. “I definitely can relate to the character. Meaning the whole point for me, personally, to do the show, was to be accessible, be open-hearted. Be who I am. The fact that she lived a certain way for such a long time. I definitely felt her feeling of being disconnected from her life. It’s happened to me over this last year.”
“Disconnected with the new life you have compared to the old life on Xena?” I said gently.
“I was just very disconnected this last year and she was as well,” Renee explained. “For me, personally, it’s about slowing down enough to take the time to share those moments with people you normally don’t share them with because I’ve been so busy. Especially with a little boy. But God, those are the best moments of life!” she said warmly.
She continued. “It was so fascinating that it was something traumatic that made her wake up. I love the fact that she loves the humanity she sees in so many people that she maybe didn’t see before. I love that about her! That’s something I’ve always cherished in people. The quirkiness and uniqueness of individuals you meet. And I love the whole imagery of these life-engraved people. That’s what she called them - life-engraved. They’re like pieces of embroidery. Oh, that’s just so beautiful to me! Instead of looking at these people as having flaws. It’s like, they have these beautiful life experiences that are their journey,” Renee said bubbling over with a sense of wonder.
“I’m trying to remember - would she add a tattoo after meeting someone, after each experience?” I asked.
“It wasn’t said in the play,” Renee answered, “but I’m assuming someone would enter her life in some capacity and she added them to her canvas.”
“Speaking of a human canvas, you looked so neat! Adding color to the tattoos made all the difference,” I told her. “Your body was just glowing!”
“Oh, how fun!” Renee said gleefully. “I’m so glad we colored them in.”
“Did the tattoos wash off in the shower?” I asked.
“They did,” she responded.
“So you were standing in the shower - not to get too graphic,” I laughed, “and the colors were going down your body? Cause I pictured you under the shower, putting your head up and the colors would just run down your body.”
“All right! That’s a great image!” Renee laughed. “Unfortunately, they washed off almost immediately so there really wasn’t any flow of colors. But the blacks in the tattoo were a little more stubborn. Just kept scrubbing - scrub, scrub, scrub.”
“Were you nervous before going on?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Extremely nervous. And I had completely forgotten all the words. Completely forgotten all the words! I couldn’t believe it. So I started doing a headstand in the room backstage,” Renee laughed. “I just wanted to get the blood racing back to my head. I was tired of sitting in a chair waiting to go on.”
“Backstage, before you went out, while the music video was playing, you said to me in your Grandma Renee voice, ‘Take my hand and take me up the stairs,’” I said, doing my best imitation of Grandma Renee. “And then you stayed in character - hand shaking, holding the staff.”
“I thought I was going to be going on right away!” Renee burst out laughing. “I decided to start playing around with her. I wanted to warm up a bit and have fun. But, God, that music video was so long!” Another burst of laughter.
“Not really,” I informed her saucily.
“It felt like it lasted a lifetime!” Renee laughed good-naturedly. “I remember looking at this video of Gabrielle and thinking, “This is my life passing.” My back started to get sore, my feet started hurting.”
“Arthritis was creeping up your bones,” I chimed in.
“Yeah, yeah! That’s when I realized I could probably stand up straight and relax,” she said. “I started to do that and then I realized the music video was almost over so I got back into position.”
“How did you feel when you came off stage?” I asked.
“I felt completely alive!” she said with enthusiasm. “That sense of feeling energized. It’s obviously from the whole experience of being completely honest with everything you can be. And then seeing people’s reactions to that and how does that make you feel? You just feel so alive in the moment. That’s how I felt afterwards.”
“You knew you’d done good, girl,” I teased.
“I felt good. I didn’t want to judge it because I’m really critical of my work and I did know that it wasn’t perfect,” she said, laughing. “But I kind of suspected it wouldn’t be perfect.”
“It isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to touch your audience. And you did that in spades,” I assured Renee.
“I was really pleased with the responses I received about the play,” Renee said with a smile in her voice. “I was pleased that I opened my heart as much as I could. There were definitely moments where I kind of pulled out and I was a little disconnected from the material, but, again, it was during ‘Clear Glass Marbles’ when I just felt so sad. I completely forgot what I was supposed to say next. But, luckily, that had happened to me in rehearsal the day before.”
“Really?” I said, astounded.
“Oh yeah. After our sound check Friday morning, I went to see Julie again. Thank goodness we worked on ‘Marbles’ and ‘Handler’ because in ‘Marbles’ I was so sad, I reached those moments where I had no idea what I was supposed to say next,” she explained. “I went into a panic and Julie just said it was completely human for people to have a loss for words when talking about such an emotional moment in our lives. She said I should just allow that - to honor what you feel. She said if you honor it, you’re back. But if you try to deny the truth of the moment, then you start to get into your head and you get lost and try to figure out words and lines and you’re not talking about this woman anymore. Thank goodness that happened to me because otherwise that would have been a whole different monologue when it happened to me again during the performance!” Renee said, bursting into laughter.
And now we get to the surprise we had planned for Renee. Lucy had been scheduled to fly to New Zealand that weekend and couldn’t appear at the convention. But her plans changed and, one night when I was visiting with her a week before the convention, she said she wished she could see Renee in the play. I said, “Why not come? I can sneak you in.” Lucy got excited and her mind began to go in very strange places.
“I could be a crazy Renee fan - sitting in the front row - you could come by with a microphone - I’d jump up and try and take it from you - you could tackle me and take me down to the ground… uh, do you think that would be too much?” she asked, looking at me innocently.
“Just a tad,” I said gently. “How about I just sneak you in.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, but I had a feeling her fingers were crossed behind her back.
I picked Lucy up before the show and saw how right I’d been to be suspicious. Coming down her driveway was this tall, lanky man with a mop of dreads for hair falling into his face. It was Lucy! She got in my car and began working on her lines as a crazed Renee fan. I couldn’t wait to see her in action.
Show time and we played musical rooms trying to keep Renee from seeing Lucy. At one point, only a black curtain was separating them and Lucy was trying hard not to be giggling on her side. Getting her into her seat turned out to be the easy part. When Renee was announced and the crowd jumped to its feet applauding, Lucy just walked from behind the side curtain and sat down with her friends in the three seats we’d set aside for them. And there she stayed, mesmerized as we all were, by Renee’s performance.
When the play was over and Renee came back on stage for a fake Q&A session we’d told her we were going to have, the first person who jumped up to ask a question was that lanky man with the shaggy head of hair. “What’s it like to kiss Lucy Lawless,” Lucy said in a goofy voice - and the game was over!
“How did you feel when you looked into the audience and recognized that person with the crazy hair?” I asked.
“I think I screamed,” Renee said bursting into laughter. “Didn’t I?”
“You did,” I told her.
“I thought that was hilarious. I was so incredibly surprised. I couldn’t believe you guys pulled that over on me,” she continued. “I mean you got that taped greeting from her. And then Katherine (Fugate) called me and said, ‘What’s going on with the rumor that Lucy’s going to be there?’”
“Katherine didn’t know about it,” I explained. “She came to me the next day and I told her and she said, ‘Oh my God! I asked Renee if Lucy was coming!’ And Renee said, ‘No, she’s not,’” I said relating the story Katherine had told me.
“You recognized her right away?” I asked.
“Oh, as soon as she started talking,” Renee said smugly. “One word, that was it. Because it was a little odd. There was something different - this strange looking person standing up in the audience.”
“So much like the things she used to do during Xena?” I queried.
“Absolutely! You’re right, exactly!” she said laughing at those memories. “I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Lucy dress up in different wigs or bald caps. That was fun. Thank you for that. I’m so glad she was able to be there.”