Mind, Body Wrestle in CFA’s Wit

The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Wit is a devastating character study that ultimately transcends character to consider what it means to be alive, and, as illness chastens and diminishes us, what matters most. The College of Fine Arts is staging Margaret Edson’s 1999 play through February 28, with Judy Braha portraying English professor Vivian Bearing, an unforgettable role that has been played on stage by Kathleen Chalfant and Judith Light, and by Emma Thompson in an Emmy Award–winning HBO adaptation directed by Mike Nichols.

Presented by the Boston Center for American Performance (BCAP), the professional arm of the School of Theatre, and directed by Sidney Friedman, a CFA adjunct professor of theater, the production opens tonight at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Over the course of his career Friedman has directed more than 90 productions. Braha (CFA’08), a CFA assistant professor of theater, is joined in the cast by her colleagues Paula Langton (CFA’03), a CFA associate professor of theater, and Mark Cohen, a CFA assistant professor of theater.

The play focuses unflinchingly on Bearing, a world-renowned expert on the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. She is brilliant, incisive, and flinty. She is also in the death grip of Stage IV ovarian cancer, against which her crisp, rational intellect goes increasingly limp. As a patient undergoing experimental chemotherapy at a major teaching hospital, Bearing suffers a host of indignities, from being gawked at by a troop of medical residents to being subjected to a solitary, seemingly interminable wait on a cold gurney. She shares her wry observations with the audience (“I’ve been asked how I’m feeling while I’m throwing up into a washbasin…”) and recites Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” while waiting, legs akimbo and feet in metal stirrups, for a young resident, a former student of hers, to find “a girl” to guard her dignity during the examination. Bearing’s wry, blunt sense of humor and jagged-edged confidence may have served her well as a hedge against loneliness, but it is no match for the aggressive cancer.

“I am delighted with the opportunity to direct this fine play,” Friedman says. “While it may appear to be about a woman dying of cancer in the 1990s, it’s really about how we choose to live our lives—a timeless subject. It’s also a play about teaching and learning, a wonderfully appropriate terrain for a company of teachers and their students to explore together.”

BU Today spoke with Braha about the demands of this deeply textured and demanding role, and what Edson’s play teaches us about death, and life.

BU Today: This play marks a return to acting for you after a long absence, is that right?

Braha: This is the first time in 20 years that I’m acting. I’ve been directing all this time, though I was an actress earlier in my career. The last time I acted was in the early ’90s—it’s a challenge and a wonderful thing.

What drew you to this play?

What it says about being a person is one of the greatest things for me. It’s about the value of simplicity, kindness, and humanity in a world that values accomplishment and being the best, and all of that resonates with me. I love the parallel that it draws between academia and the medical profession. And Vivian is such a wonderful, brilliant, messy person. I’m drawn to the whole thing of having an illness like that—and it’s sadly so common right now—and how people lose their identities to the grind of trying to stay alive. Vivian gives up everything that she’s ever valued.

Have you fallen in love with Vivian?

I’ve fallen in love with her audacity and her brilliance, and I also feel really sorry for her. I have a bad habit—or maybe it’s a wonderful habit, who can say?—of taking on too much with characters. The way she isolates herself from other human beings is very heart-wrenching to me, and how lonely it is to be sick.

Without giving anything away, how do you feel about the ending?

I love the ending. It’s so beautiful, and I feel like the play wouldn’t be what it is without the ending and how it relates to everything she’s asserted her whole life about John Donne, the things she’s made her living on and come to believe in. There’s something else, really. She learns about that something else as she dies.

Is acting less taxing than directing? Do you find yourself fighting the impulse to direct on stage?

I was very aware in the beginning of the process that I had to turn off certain parts of my brain, because I’ve been directing for so long. But acting has always been such a part of me, and this is coming back to another home that I love so much. I’m teaching senior actors in their final semester and relating so much to all their discoveries. I do have a lot of opinions about everything, but I’m trying hard to pour my energy into concerns that have to do with my role, which is kind of a luxury for me. Just letting myself give in to the role is half the battle. I love directing, but to me this is a gift from the blue.

How did this gift come about?

Sid Friedman knew he wanted to direct this play, and he asked if I’d be interested, which was such an odd idea at the time. The opportunity to work as an actor with my colleagues and students—I would never forgive myself if I didn’t say yes.

The role of Vivian has been played by a number of famous actresses. How do you claim the role as your own?

I did see the original production with Kathleen Chalfant, but I haven’t seen other stage productions or the HBO film. It was a long time ago. I claimed the parts of Vivian that are like me, the parts of her that I imagine myself to be. And it’s fun to be the brilliant person that she is. I feel like I’m too much in touch with my heart and my own sensitivities, and she puts that in a box and locks it away. It’s refreshing for me to enter into that reality; ego is so dominant in her universe.

You have a very tender and heartbreaking scene with your colleague and friend Paula Langton. How does that feel?

Paula, Mark, and I have worked with each other in so many ways, and we love to go out on a limb together. Paula plays Vivian’s only visitor and her only friend, and they haven’t seen each other for many years. I can’t even describe how it feels to do that scene. It’s beyond collegiality; it’s like our hearts are beating together. It’s a lovely connection we have, wanting to risk together, and the stage is a safe place for us to risk together. We don’t get to do that every day.

What would you like your students to glean from Wit?

I think the BCAP shows are really valuable in terms of letting our students who really care about theater see some really amazing pieces done by their faculty and their peers. I hope on a very practical level they gain some sense of how I do it, what I value in terms of performance and rigor, and technical information. But this play is also a really great example of the transformational power of theater, of finding the universal. This specific woman and her mind tap into all our vulnerabilities. The notion of dropping your competitiveness and allowing yourself to be a human being, the importance of simplicity and kindness, all are very present in the play and I wish those realizations on my students.

The Boston Center for American Performance production of Wit runs in the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston, tonight through Saturday, February 28. Performances are Friday, February 20, and Saturday, February 21, at 8 p.m., Sunday, February 22, at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, February 24, 25, and 26, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, February 27, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, February 28, at 2 p.m. A postshow discussion will be held on Tuesday, February 24. Tickets are $20 for the general public, $15 for BU alumni, WGBH members, Huntington Theatre Company subscribers, students, senior citizens, and groups of 10 or more. Members of the BU community can get one free ticket with BU ID at the door, on the day of the performance, subject to availability. By public transportation, take an MBTA Green Line trolley to the Copley Square stop or the Orange Line to Back Bay. Purchase tickets here, call 617-933-8600, or visit the Calderwood Pavilion box office.