As I got older and I saw before me the possibility of becoming overlooked for roles, “Didn’t you use to be Lynn Redgrave?” I bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t a writer. “If I were Willy Russell, I’d write myself a Shirley Valentine.” I knew how useful it was for actresses of a certain age to have a one-person show in their back pocket. But I also knew the importance of owning the material. In other words, for longevity in the theatre, you’d better write it yourself. Without creative ownership, the actor is still at the mercy of the would-be employer. But how on earth was I to begin? I was 48 years old. And suddenly an invitation from The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC changed my life.

Would I come and give “An Evening with Lynn Redgrave” as part of a certain anniversary celebration? Read some of my favorite Shakespeare passages and monologues and tell some stories about my family’s multi-generational life in the theatre. I was going through that deadly quiet period where it appeared that I had fallen off the face of the planet. It was 1991 and the date of the performance was six months away. I said yes.

And then a light bulb moment. What if I wrote them a little play? Use this invitation and its deadline to spur me on. Since they asked for Shakespeare it had to have that… but what if I explored my unresolved relationship with my dead father Michael and in doing so used Shakespeare as a way of elevating the scenes, sometimes in a double context. And if the little play was not good enough come the night, I would just do what they had asked for in the first place. I would not tell them about it, just surprise them with it. I began really early in the morning in my home in Topanga, California; before my family was awake. Delving further and further into my magpie’s nest and my father began to live again for me.

I arrived at the Folger around lunchtime on the day of the show. I asked for a throne-like chair and a small rug and on the set of St. Joan, I performed my “little play.” No one had seen it before. It went really well and at the reception afterwards people asked, “Where are you going next with this?” Various audience members, men and women, said that they saw themselves and their fathers on stage; identifying themselves with the universal theme of my play: a search for a resolution to an unfinished relationship with a dead parent. At its next workshop outing, I gave the piece a title: Shakespeare for My Father. A year later I was on a six week, 27 city tour. One night stands all over the country. Trying new things, writing new scenes. And then Broadway. A four-week limited engagement turned into almost 11 months at the Helen Hayes. And all of a sudden I was able to acknowledge to myself that I was a writer. I was 50 years old. Like a painter, or composer or sculptor I had an end product that I had created. My world opened up.

My six year draught as a movie actor ended when a director, making a documentary about the space shuttle in Houston, came to the Alley Theatre one night to see the play (post Broadway I had extended runs at many regional theatres). He was Scott Hicks and he offered me the role of Gillian in his movie Shine opposite Geoffrey Rush.

I thought a lot about my father’s oft-repeated statement: “An actor makes his own luck!”
He meant that by putting out energy one could attract energy back. I’d always believed in this and now I saw it happening for me.

Of course I wanted to go on writing. Creating characters for the theatre, for myself and for other actors. My next play, The Mandrake Root, is a play for six actors. I explored in a partly fictional way my own mother’s decline into a sort of madness following the end of a long affair and tied it to the character’s obsession with John Donne’s poem “Go and Catch a Falling Star/get with child a mandrake root...” The play had two productions in regional theatres: first at the Long Wharf in New Haven and then at the San Jose Rep.

I love to write. I start early, before the light comes up. With a pot of tea and candles. I don’t wait for inspiration, I just start. Very often out of sequence. An idea comes as I type in the first words. The characters seem to speak for themselves and I am often surprised by what they have said. I enter their world and my magpie’s nest is always close at hand. My plays, and there are four now, begin with a world I know and are inspired by family myths and memories. Shakespeare for My Father and a new piece I am working on, Rachel and Juliet, are basically factual. The Mandrake Root and now Nightingale blend fact, aural history and fiction, but always in dramatic/comedic terms. Perhaps because I start with personal family issues, audiences seem to find themselves in my stories.

I cannot imagine how I previously lived my life without writing plays. And it’s only the theatre I write for. I don’t want to write a novel, or a memoir or a screenplay. Just words and emotions and stories that involve that living organism, “the live audience.” All of my plays have been produced and with each production I learn more and more about telling stories. With Nightingale I am now writing with two voices: Lynn, the writer who must find the missing connection between herself, and her less than lovable grandmother. Although she left us many years ago and at the time I wasn’t close to her, I reach out to her now because life’s journey in the last few years has been filled with speed bumps. I must hold hands with both the living and the dead in my family. Or I am lost, shipwrecked at this crossroads in my life. And the other voice is my Grandmother herself, Beatrice Kempson. And as the play progresses I look to find myself within her life. And I keep writing myself jobs. An actor makes his own luck! Thank you, Dad.