“It is a challenge and a joy every single night,” shares Anika Noni Rose about her role in the new David Lindsay-Abaire play The Balusters, which is making its world premiere on Broadway.
The Tony-winning actress leads the ensemble cast as Kyra Marshall, who joins the association in a landmarked neighborhood called Vernon Point and tries to improve the safety of its streets.
Rose recently sat down with Gold Derby to discuss her most poignant line in the play, the personal touches she brought to the set, the dynamic between hers and Richard Thomas’ characters, and more.
Gold Derby: You have worked with the words of many phenomenal playwrights during your career, including Tony Kushner, the late Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry, and now David Lindsay-Abaire. What about his writing do you find so unique, and what do you love most about saying his words every performance?
Anika Noni Rose: I’ve been blessed to say the words of many geniuses. There aren’t a whole lot of geniuses in the world, which is what makes it special, and I have had the blessing of brushing up against several in my work. This show is so very contemporary, it so clearly sits within the pulse of who we are now as people. To be writing the voices of several people who [David] is not, and to be doing it so well, doing it so seemingly organically, is truly a gift.
He’s a white man from Boston; he’s writing an Asian woman, a Black woman, a young white woman, two older white women, a Black gay man, a Latin man who is a conservative, and an elder WASP-y white man. These are so very different people that he’s inhabiting and yet, you read the script and everybody felt so on point. He has the ability to hear others in a really clear way. You have to listen to people’s spirits because, so often words come out of people’s mouths that don’t represent the spiritual element of who they are, and he managed to get both of those things right.
The Balusters is riotously funny, but as you alluded to, it also has complex and nuanced ideas about contemporary society. As you’re performing this play eight times a week, what most resonates with you?
One big thing is that no one is ever completely right. Even when you’re moving in your best intention, you’re not going to be right for someone, and we humans tend to forget that. So how do we move through the world in such a way that we’re trying our best and we make room for someone else’s good also? That’s tough.
A line that I speak that is really poignant, particularly in this moment, is, “Good work doesn’t excuse bad behavior.” We have to find a way to meet those things in the middle. In the space we’re living in at this moment, the bad behavior is so bad, we really have to re-evaluate. Horrific things have happened in history, but in the space of our history, in this moment, we’re pretty beyond the pale, and we really must put the work in to be the good thing that we want to be and hope that that will spread.
It’s not often that I ask performers about scenic design, but I think Derek McClane’s set for The Balusters is so extraordinary. I’d love to know how you experience it, because we spend the entire play in Kyra’s home. When you saw the set for the first time and started to inhabit the space, did it inform anything about Kyra or spark any new thoughts?
Derek talked about what he wanted to do early on, and his reference was Sheila Bridges, who is a beautiful Black designer, and some of her stuff is on the stage. The two chairs in the living room are upholstered with her patterns, which is phenomenal. I was impressed that he knew about her. The big piece of art is actually a piece that was made in the image of several other artists that I love. They asked what artists do I love, and then they created a piece that mixed what those people did, and it’s phenomenal. What I added to the set were just pictures of loved ones. My grandmother is on the set. I try to keep her close to me at all times. One of my nieces is on the set as twins. I wanted to make sure that I had ancestry represented and loved ones represented as well.
One of my favorite moments of yours is Kyra’s monologue discussing the china that her mother was adamant about her buying. I found that speech so revealing of Kyra’s background. How did it help fill in your own backstory for her and who she is in the present of the play?
When I think about china in Black homes, I grew up in a home where we had china and it was beautiful, it was wedding china and we used it for holidays. But the generation before mine who had nice dishes, generally, that stuff was put away. You looked at it; it wasn’t really to touch except at very special occasions. I think Kyra’s mother is somebody who would have had china but maybe wouldn’t have used it very much at all. I think it is the growth of generation that Kyra has this china that she doesn’t feel particularly connected to or care terribly much about, but then she starts to use it and has created the life that her mother would have liked to have, and all of a sudden, it is an extension of her mother. It is a representation of my mother’s yearning. This is a life she couldn’t have, and because of the work that she did and where I was able to go to school and the job that I was able to get and because of how she took care of me, I now have this china, so it’s almost an extension of her in my home every time I put it out.
I loved watching the dynamic between Kyra and Richard Thomas’ Elliott. There’s a conversation in which Elliott calls Kyra “cunning,” and Kyra pushes back on that word because she thinks he means duplicitous. How do you perceive Kyra? Do you think after that dialogue, when she knows she needs to make some power moves, she becomes cunning? How do you chart Kyra’s evolution over the course of the play?
Kyra was in corporate finance, so that tells you a lot about who she can be and who she’s needed to be. I don’t think she’s cunning, particularly not at the beginning of this play. I think she’s hopeful. I think she’s moved somewhere that she thinks is the answer to something; it’s going to be welcoming and a real neighborhood where she doesn’t have to be gawked at or talked about behind a hand or peered out from a window curtain. I think that it is offensive to her that someone would call her cunning, as if she had an ulterior motive for even being there in the first place, when she’s just trying to live her best life as everyone is in that space.
But there is a shark inside, and Elliott made the first cut. I think it became clear to her that he’s a very dangerous person and that he moved with ulterior motives and he was somebody for whom business was more important than life. When she realizes that, the game is over, now I know who you are, now I know what game we’re playing, now I’m gathering pieces. Now you have called forth the thing that you thought. Sometimes people bring a monster out of you that they called forth.
The climax of the play is so dramatic, surprising, and delicious. It seems like the whole ensemble is having so much fun, and the audience is as well. How does their response every night to all the turns in the plot feed what’s happening on stage?
I love taking the ride with the audience every show because when I first read the script, I had no idea the twists and turns that we were going to go through and I was laughing out loud reading it on paper. It is so much fun, and sometimes we tickle each other. Someone will do something a little different on one day and it becomes funnier, or the response from the audience is so uproarious that it also tickles us in that moment. The speed at which we’re delivering the play felt really fast to us when we were in rehearsal, but it feels very normal and real while we’re doing it. I want to say it’s like tennis, but it’s not, it’s like ping pong. It’s tighter and closer. As Kenny [Leon] would say, it’s like the Williams sisters playing themselves. That’s the kind of movement that’s happening on stage.
It is a joy to be on stage with these people. It’s a cast of goodwill, it is a cast that cares about each other, not just in the space on stage, but in life. If you’re backstage, you hear a lot of laughter, while we’re getting ready or after the show, there’s a lot of ribbing that happens in a very good-natured, easy way, and it’s a safe space for all of us. David gave us fun on the page, Kenny allowed us fun in the room and encouraged it, really told us to enjoy each other on the stage, and he gave us the freedom to play and enjoy each other.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
