Dowd, Ann

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares199 Views

    Home-Cooked Spaghetti Dinners and a Glam Photo Shoot: Eight Unusual Oscar Bids

    by

    The campaign on behalf of Andrea Riseborough is the latest to provoke controversy, but it’s hardly the most memorable.When the actress Andrea Riseborough wrapped a 19-day shoot on the microbudget indie “To Leslie” in Los Angeles during the height of the pandemic, her hopes probably extended to positive reviews from critics and indie film enthusiasts.But now, after a social media campaign on her behalf by some famous friends, among them Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton and Sarah Paulson, she’s been nominated for an Oscar for best actress — an honor she can keep, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled Tuesday after reviewing the unorthodox lobbying on her behalf.While the regulations around campaigning have become ever murkier in the age of social media, the Riseborough campaign was hardly the first to stretch the rules, which forbid, among other things, mentioning competitors or their films directly or calling academy members personally.Here are eight memorable bids for a statuette that went rogue.1961Chill Wills, ‘The Alamo’After Chill Wills was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Davy Crockett’s buddy Beekeeper in “The Alamo,” he hired the veteran publicist W.S. “Bow-Wow” Wojciechowicz to run his campaign. Wojciechowicz submitted an ad to Variety with a photo of the film’s cast and text that read, “We of the ‘Alamo’ cast are praying harder — than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo — for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as best supporting actor.”Variety refused to run it, and John Wayne, the film’s director and star, took out his own ad rebuking Wills that said neither he nor his production company were in any way involved in the effort. (“I am sure his intentions are not as bad as his taste,” Wayne wrote of Wills, who later blamed Wojciechowicz.) After this fiasco — Wills lost to Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus” — it became rare for actors to run their own campaigns, which have since mostly been the purview of studios and teams of publicists.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.1974Candy Clark, ‘American Graffiti’Candy Clark with Charles Martin Smith in “American Graffiti.”Universal PicturesThe nostalgic coming-of-age feature “American Graffiti” included some future big names like Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford among its ensemble cast, but Candy Clark, then a little-known actress, was the only one to embark on an Oscar campaign. She paid $1,700 to take out a series of quarter-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — a strategy that paid off when she was the only member of the film’s cast to be nominated, for best supporting actress. (She lost to a 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon.”)1975Liv Ullmann, ‘Scenes From a Marriage’The Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann delivered a standout performance in Ingmar Bergman’s domestic drama “Scenes From a Marriage,” but a potential nomination was tripped up by a technicality that The New York Times likened to a situation “one usually encounters at obscure border stations in Central Asia.” Because a television cut of “Scenes From a Marriage” had premiered on Swedish TV in 1973 — the year before its American theatrical release — it was deemed ineligible for the Oscars thanks to an academy rule that prohibited the film’s being shown on television during the year before its theatrical release.Three of that year’s eventual best actress nominees — Ellen Burstyn (who went on to win), Diahann Carroll and Gena Rowlands — took up Ullmann’s cause, even signing an open letter supporting her right to compete, but the academy stood firm. (Ullmann, now 84, did receive an honorary award from the academy last year.)1986Margaret Avery, ‘The Color Purple’Margaret Avery with Bennet Guillory in “The Color Purple.”Warner Bros.After being nominated for best supporting actress for “The Color Purple,” Margaret Avery used $1,160 of her own money to pay for a Variety ad promoting her performance. Intended to suggest the voice of her character, Shug Avery, it read: “Well God, I guess the time has come fo’ the Academy voters to decide whether I is one of the best supporting actresses this year or not! Either way, thank you, Lord for the opportunity.” Avery was criticized for the ad, which did not reflect the way her character actually spoke in the film. (She lost to Anjelica Huston for “Prizzi’s Honor.”)1988Sally Kirkland, ‘Anna’Sally Kirkland took a letter-writing fiend approach in an effort to score a best actress nomination for her role as a once-famous Czech actress in the small indie “Anna.” Kirkland not only personally wrote letters to academy voters, she also financed her own ad campaign — the film had no budget to do so — and spoke to any and every journalist who asked. Her persistence paid off with a nomination, though she eventually lost to Cher for “Moonstruck.”1991Diane Ladd, ‘Wild at Heart’After she was nominated for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” Diane Ladd — Laura Dern’s mother — decided that the way to voters’ hearts was through a home-cooked spaghetti dinner. She embarked on a one-woman blitz that involved not only writing personalized letters to voters, but also inviting 20 academy members to a screening of her film, accompanied by a spaghetti dinner that she prepared herself. She might have wanted to spend more time perfecting that spaghetti recipe, though — she lost to Whoopi Goldberg, who won for “Ghost.”2011Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’Melissa Leo, fourth from right, in a scene from “The Fighter.”Jojo Whilden/Paramount PicturesUnlike other nominees who took matters into their own hands, Melissa Leo was considered the front-runner when she began her campaign to secure a best supporting actress win for the boxing drama “The Fighter.” But she took out her now-infamous “Consider” ads anyway, she told Deadline in 2011, because she was frustrated at not being able to land magazine covers as a 50-year-old woman. The ads, which showed off her glamorous side as she leaned forward in a low-cut black evening gown, presented a stark contrast to the gritty, blue-collar mother and fight manager she played in the film (which was not even mentioned in the ad). There’s no way to say for sure if the strategy helped her chances, but it certainly didn’t hurt — she beat out her co-star Amy Adams, as well as Helena Bonham Carter of “The King’s Speech,” to claim the Oscar.2013Ann Dowd, ‘Compliance’Ann Dowd received stellar reviews for the Craig Zobel thriller “Compliance,” a flop of an indie with such a tiny budget that Dowd was paid just $100 per day for her role. But she believed in her performance, and after raising $13,000 by dipping into her bank account, borrowing money from friends and colleagues and maxing out her credit cards, she mailed DVDs to academy members and placed ads in trade publications in an effort to secure a best supporting actress nomination. While the Oscar recognition proved elusive — Anne Hathaway won that year for “Les Misérables” — the media coverage of her efforts may have helped put her on the radar of directors. (And now she has an Emmy for “The Handmaid’s Tale.”) More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Ann Dowd Sails Around New York Harbor

      by

      The Emmy-winning actress stars in an indie film, “Mass,” which opens this week.The actress Ann Dowd stood straight-backed at the helm, hands gripping the wheel, eyes fixed on the green-gray-blue river spread before her like a rumpled blanket. The Statue of Liberty beckoned just beyond.“Everyone looks awesome behind the wheel of a sailboat,” Jonathan Horvath, the captain, said. “But some people look more awesome than others.”Ms. Dowd, 65, perhaps best known for playing Aunt Lydia, a brutal enforcer of the theocracy on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” grew up boating. She and her six siblings spent summers at Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire, piloting motorboats and a Sunfish. They still gather there on weekends, though she insists that her siblings are all better sailors.“This sister,” Ms. Dowd said, pointing to herself. “I don’t know what happened there.”Ms. Dowd, who lives in an apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, thought it was time to improve, so on a recent Thursday morning, she ventured down to TriBeCa for a lesson with Mr. Horvath and Eric Emerick, instructors at Atlantic Yachting.Heather Sten for The New York TimesShe had dressed for a calmer day, in a nautically striped, white-and-navy-blue dress with sequin details. But that morning, winds whipped down Pier 25 and thunderstorms threatened.Mr. Horvath and Mr. Emerick led Ms. Dowd to the boat, a 38-foot single-mast sloop named the Vitamin Sea. Used mostly for pleasure-cruising the Bahamas, it sleeps four — six if you put some cushions on the dining table. The dock rocked in the wind. The boat, as Ms. Dowd clambered on, rocked, too.Mr. Emerick loosened the stern line and the bowline, then leapt aboard as Mr. Horvath steered into the river. Military helicopters churned overhead, probably because the United Nations General Assembly was in session upriver.Under Mr. Horvath’s direction, Ms. Dowd raised the luffing sail, using a winch to pull the line tight and then secure it. “Beautiful,” Mr. Horvath said, encouraging her. “Well done.” She asked why they hadn’t raised the sail all the way. It was because the wind, which sometimes gusted to 30 knots, was too strong. But if there’s a woman who can stare down a storm, it’s Ms. Dowd.A longtime veteran of the Chicago stage, Ms. Dowd began booking larger roles in her 50s, as a credulous fast food manager in “Compliance,” as a cult leader in “The Leftovers,” and as Aunt Lydia, the role which brought Ms. Dowd her first Emmy.A compulsively kind women, she specializes in characters who do cruel and terrible things — terrorizing women with cattle prods (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), conjuring demons (“Hereditary”). She doesn’t understand why casting directors call on her to play these terrifying women, why they never see her for nice moms, fun grandmas, skilled surgeons.“But I know I enjoy playing them,” she said of her wicked characters. “It is make-believe, and I can’t get to it fast enough.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesHer latest tortured role is in “Mass,” an independent film that premieres on Oct. 8, in which she plays a gentler character, Linda, a church mouse of a woman reckoning with the harm her son has caused and what responsibility she bears. She spends the movie mostly listening, eyes sunken, mouth a wound.As soon as she read the script, she knew she wanted to play the role. But she hesitated, which was unusual for her. “How will I live in this level of grief?” she wondered.So she did what she often does: she offered a kind of prayer to the character. And Linda answered. “It was as though she had said to me, I got this,” Ms. Dowd said. “There’s something about that experience that was sacred.”Winning the Emmy four years ago has changed the arc of her career somewhat. She is now offered roles, like the one in “Mass,” rather than having to audition. But she still lives in the same Chelsea apartment where she raised her children, and her concern is still for the work rather than the trappings of celebrity.“My desire is to keep it very simple. Because the work is always the work,” she said. “And that’s where the focus should be.”As the boat passed the Financial District, Mr. Horvath invited her up to the helm where she spun the wheel with a practiced hand. With the motor switched off, the boat cruised at 7 or 8 knots, heading out into the bay and toward the Statue of Liberty. But once the boat cleared Manhattan’s southern tip, the wind became stronger and the boat listed to a startling degree. “Well, I’m going to make someone seasick,” she said.The sailors prepared Ms. Dowd to change course. “Do you remember the name for turning into the wind?” Mr. Horvath asked her.“No, honey,” she said.It was tacking, he told her. Hand over hand she turned the wheel and the boat tacked, straightening in the water. Ms. Dowd sailed for the next hour, back and forth, carving a wake through New York Harbor, the downtown skyline behind her. The water made her feel, she said, “Entirely relaxed and interested.”Still the wind kept gusting, rising every time the boat passed Manhattan and navigated the more open waters of the Upper Bay.“Yeah, there she is,” Mr. Horvath said as a strong breeze slammed into the stern.Heather Sten for The New York Times“There she is,” Mr. Emerick agreed.“Why is it always she?” Ms. Dowd asked.“Because of the patriarchy, I’m sure,” Mr. Horvath said. “Sailors talk about the wind as she. They talk about the boats as she, almost like romantic relationships.”The gusts never rattled Ms. Dowd, though she did worry when the occasional water taxi neared her. But she held her course, even through what Mr. Horvath called “varsity-level wind,” which sent her skirt flapping like a second sail.When it was time to head back for the dock, Mr. Horvath had her steer behind a garbage barge, zigzagging back and forth until she returned the boat to its moorings.“Prepare to tack,” Ms. Dowd said as though she’d been saying it all of her life. “We’re now tacking.” She had embraced the role of sailor fully. “Someone takes direction really well,” Mr. Horvath said. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Enemy of the People,’ Water and Democracy Are Poisoned

      by

      Ann Dowd stars in a contemporary rewrite of Ibsen’s play that forces a community, played by the audience, to make a series of fateful choices.Elections in Weston Springs are so simple. When a question comes before the townspeople, they confer in small groups, reach a consensus, press a button marked “X” or “O” and get the result, all within a minute. To a New Yorker, that sounds nice right about now.But alas, Weston Springs, with its world-famous hot-water baths and grass-roots democracy, isn’t real. It’s the invented setting for “Enemy of the People,” Robert Icke’s enjoyable if gimmicky rewrite of the 1882 Ibsen drama originally called “En Folkefiende.” That play, structured traditionally in five acts, had 11 speaking roles and heaps of extras; Icke’s 95-minute version, which opened Wednesday night at the Park Avenue Armory, is a shiny one-woman show starring the formidable Ann Dowd as everyone.Well, not quite everyone. For the occasion, the Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall has been set up as a kind of laboratory of democracy, with a map of Weston Springs painted on the floor and 45 tables, seating two to five citizens each, deployed at different “addresses.” My pod of four was at Table 16, otherwise known as 16 Waivers Way.So the audience plays the extras, each table getting one vote. As Dowd explains in a brief prologue, the results of the five “elections” that take place during the performance will affect the direction and even the content of the play, and help us answer its overriding question: “What does this community think?”I’m not sure that goal was ever achieved. True, we voted on issues raised by the plot, which involves a public health crisis that butts up against an economic one when Professor Joan Stockman, chief scientific officer of the Weston baths, discovers lead in the water at levels even higher than the levels found in Flint, Mich., in 2015. (In the Ibsen version, the pollutant was apparently salmonella, which caused typhoid.) Surely the thing to do, Joan assumes, is to shut down the joint until new pipes can be laid, regardless of cost.But the mayor — who, as it happens, is Joan’s older brother, Peter — doesn’t see it that way, or can’t afford to. The baths are not merely successful in themselves but have brought prosperity to the town as a whole. Since the complex was refurbished, tourism has increased ninefold, drawing people to its pools and potations while also creating an ancillary industry of high-end hotels and candle shops. When Peter learns that remediating the problem will take at least five years, and untold millions, he conveniently begins to suspect that the science is wrong.The formidable Ann Dowd plays all of the characters, including the two opposing siblings at the heart of the play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat both siblings are played by Dowd is a problem, and a plus. The plus is that Dowd is, as fans of “The Leftovers” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” know, an endlessly and effortlessly compelling actor, apparently unafraid of any extreme of human depravity. Her baseline naturalism — just looking at her face, taking in her posture, you believe that whomever she’s playing exists — allows for some terrifying flights into surreal psychology.That’s the problem, too. Ibsen already loaded the deck in creating the contrasting siblings: Thomas — as Joan was originally known — was candid but excitable and arrogant; Peter, devious but phlegmatic and cordial. Because Dowd is playing both, and because she is a tiny figure on Hildegard Bechtler’s giant catwalk of a stage as it branches out amid the tables, she must push both characterizations to extremes.So Peter, as projected live on jumbo screens, is no longer a worm but a snake, making arguments that (it seemed to me) were utterly transparent in their hypocrisy. And Joan, in return, is a mad fury instead of a mere idealist. As she bullies her brother, she undermines her positions by making them seem personal or even pathological. (She’s nasty to her husband, too, as Ibsen’s character never was to his wife.) Far from receiving the gratitude she expects for saving lives, she manages to make a mayor who is willing to sacrifice people for profit seem almost prudent and reasonable.I suppose that isn’t so extreme. We have only to look at Flint — or at Covid-19 or the building collapse in Surfside, Fla. — to see how often, in real life, the advice of experts may be perverted by political or even democratic means. (Condominium boards, no less than municipal officials, are elected.) Biologists, virologists and engineers are just some of the modern-day scientists who become “enemies of the people” by trying to save them.But neither Ibsen’s Thomas nor Icke’s Joan is able to stop at advancing a lifesaving crusade; both extend their arguments into weird, troubling territory. Enraged, Joan shouts that “molecules are not subject to majorities” and “facts are not a democracy” — viewpoints that soon merge into a profoundly elitist and even eugenicist worldview. In a properly organized society, she suggests, only experts would be allowed to vote. Or maybe only her.In writing Joan this way, Icke, the director of the acclaimed Andrew Scott “Hamlet” in London and the excessively brutal “1984” on Broadway, puts an even heavier thumb on the scales than Ibsen, never a light touch, did. Clearly the attempt is to balance the arguments, or at least to balance our antipathy toward them. The voting likewise forces our hands, as the ballot issues are worded tendentiously. The last of them — “Who is the enemy of the people?” — requires you to choose between Peter and Joan, as if that were how democracy worked or was even, at least at Table 16, a question.In Robert Icke’s version of the Ibsen classic, the audience is forced to consider whether democracy is the same as consensus, and their votes determine the direction of the play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe voting concept is further trivialized by the doomy “quiz” music that plays as you deliberate, and, more fatally, by the outcome’s barely altering the experience of the play. Apparently, Dowd performs different scenes at two points, depending on the tally; on Wednesday, we met a local physician and the mayor’s public relations chief, whereas other audiences may spend time with Joan’s husband and a newspaper editor. But any one audience can only know the one sequence it sees, so the dramatic value of the gimmick is moot.Which is not to say that “Enemy of the People” is too. Though it has stripped away most of the detail that Ibsen uses to dramatize the way civic crises arise from (and filter back down to) domestic ones, it offers a compensatory challenge. Icke asks us to dramatize these issues for ourselves, at our own tables. Communally, we are forced to consider: Is democracy the same as consensus? Is the ballot the best guarantor of good policy?I ask because the four residents of 16 Waivers Way, split 2-2 on a key issue and unable to decide how to decide, ran out of time without hitting “X” or “O.” Ranked voting, anyone?Enemy of the PeopleThrough Aug. 8 at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; 212-933-5812, armoryonpark.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      A Complicated Collaboration for a New ‘Enemy of the People’

      by

      Without seeing a script, Ann Dowd jumped at the chance to work with Robert Icke on his solo adaptation of the Ibsen classic. Then the debates began.You are an established stage and screen actress, an Emmy winner with pivotal roles in two of the most critically acclaimed series of the past decade. One day, a young theatermaker rings with an offer you should refuse: a drastic remix of the Henrik Ibsen play “An Enemy of the People” as a solo show in which you would play all the parts. Oh, and he hasn’t written it yet.Ann Dowd (the cult leader Patti Levin in “The Leftovers” and the brutal enforcer Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale”) did not hesitate. “I knew on that first call that I would trust him completely,” she said.That bond was evident during a recent chat with Dowd, 65, and her new collaborator, the British writer and director Robert Icke, 34, at the Park Avenue Armory, which commissioned and is presenting their show from June 22 through Aug. 8. Sitting on an overstuffed maroon couch upstairs at the Armory, the pair batted around ideas, arguing affectionately but spiritedly, and dryly teasing each other.In the original play, Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the waters feeding his town’s popular spa baths are contaminated. For the sake of public health, he wants to disclose his findings and close the baths; this pits him against his own brother, Peter, who happens to be the mayor and fears a fatal blow to the local economy.Icke (pronounced Ike) kept that mainframe, which feels prescient in the light of debates surrounding Covid-19, then changed … a lot. For starters, Thomas is now Professor Joan Stockman, the town has become Weston Springs and there are references to pizza delivery and TV. More importantly, the audience gets to influence the outcome by voting at key points of the story.“Rob rewrites classics to bring them closer to us,” said Pierre Audi, the Armory’s artistic director. “Not by trivializing them, but by going straight to the complexity of why they are great plays. He’s categorical about being able to understand why a play needs to be done, why it’s a story we want to tell now.”Icke’s only other New York credit, “1984,” received mixed reviews when it ran on Broadway in 2017 but in his native Britain he is celebrated for daring, bracing productions that strip the rust and barnacles off familiar material. Dowd — whose stage career includes a 2008 Broadway production of “The Seagull” opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard — is not shy about disagreeing about some of Icke’s aesthetic choices. But these differences appear to fuel their artistic collaboration, not hamper it. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was your starting point when you decided to rethink Ibsen’s play?ROBERT ICKE All I really had was the notion that it was interesting but maybe there was a different route through the story that might make a social-distanced environment feel natural rather than pragmatic. And it relied on me finding somebody I felt 100 percent confident I could write for.ANN DOWD Were you sure it would be a woman?ICKE Yes.DOWD How come?ICKE Good question. I don’t know. There’s just something about this show with a man that is completely uninteresting to me.Dowd in rehearsal with her director Robert Icke. They are fond collaborators — except when it comes to their respective takes on Chekhov.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAnn, how did the project reach you?DOWD My very wonderful agent and manager said, “You have an offer to do a one-person show based on ‘Enemy of the People’ with Rob Icke” — Robert Icke, I think they said. Block your ears — can’t compliment him, I mean, truly, don’t even try. I could tell from the sound of their voice that it was an extraordinary honor to be asked. I didn’t know Rob’s work — I don’t really know anything about a lot of things [stage whisper] you can just cut that part — but at any rate they educated me. Part of me was thinking, “Give me a reason to say no, please, let me avoid this walk up Everest.” I say “walk” because there’ll be no climbing. Then we spoke and I thought, “Who would ever turn this man down?”ICKE Oh, it’s happened.Were you familiar with his work?DOWD My sister is a casting director in London and said, “Rob Icke? Oh, my God, I saw his ‘Vanya,’ I was riveted and when it was finished it had been four hours.” [Actually, about three and a half.] I said, “Wait a minute — whaaaat?” She was just so in the story.ICKE Chekhov said he wants that play to feel like real life so sometimes it was just like, “I just want to watch you all live for a minute, so you just tune your guitar and you maybe look at your phone for a second and then you put it back.”DOWD Well, that irritates me: What is a phone doing in “Vanya”?ICKE We do differ about this. What is our experience of being in the country in the modern age? [He pretends to hold a cellphone up in the air.] “Have I got any bars?” So there’s that idea that wherever they are, there’s no phone signal, just a rusty landline somewhere in the house.DOWD My pushback was: “No, no, it’s called imagination.” Having played Sonya [in a 1986 production] and loving her — lo-ving her — I said, “I’ll trick you: I want to be in ‘Vanya’ and I’m going to play Sonya.” But he said he would never cast me in a role I’ve played before.ICKE But there would be something interesting in asking where Sonya is when she’s your age. Like, what happened?DOWD Yeah, write that play! But let me wear the damn clothes that I wore in Russia and don’t change my name. And don’t take out a cellphone!ICKE Unfortunately if you’re doing Chekhov with me, you’re wearing contemporary clothes. There will be no samovar, there will be no parasols.How did you approach the central character of Joan? She has become a distinct person, not just Thomas Stockmann in a dress. And she can be aggressively intransigent, bordering on zealotry.ICKE It’s both simple and incredibly complicated: the genius of this lady [pointing to Dowd] is that the characters are like real people. I came in one day with a rewrite of a section. She looked at me with a genuine hurt and said, “I just don’t think that’s fair on Joan.” Joan was now a real person who existed inside the actor.DOWD If you track her early years, I think she was probably shut down quite a bit: “Lower your voice, let your older brother” — mother taking you aside — “Joan, he’s the shy one, don’t bully him.” So just learning: “I’m not going to be listened to so might as well just yell it out. And [expletive] every one of you!” I imagine one or two women have experienced that in their lives.The play now introduces an interactive element with the audience votes: The majority’s decision has an impact on what happens in the town and in the play, and it might not be to everybody’s liking.ICKE I think the same thing is true of Trump because he was democratically elected: He won a fair and free election. Whether any of us like that or not, there’s a horrible dichotomy to wrestle with.DOWD How does that excuse —ICKE It doesn’t excuse anything. But that’s the big bind: the process that put him there is the process we all claim to like and the one we signed up to. The British equivalent of that is Brexit.Audience members at this “Enemy” will be asked to respond to plot points by voting from their seats.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesDOWD If Peter [the mayor] had said, “Look, we are going to have to close down the baths, we’re going to figure it out together. We will find a way to get help. You are not alone.” Real leadership.ICKE Isn’t real leadership to just get it done quietly: shut the baths, give a vague reason?DOWD No, people deserve to know the truth about their lives.ICKE But does it help us? Sometimes I wonder whether we’d all be happier if we knew a bit less. I sometimes think we’re all so flooded with information, it’s more than we can take in.DOWD This is slightly off topic, sorry, but you think about the people who knew what Trump knew [about Covid-19] and stayed quiet. What is that? Your job is more important than your integrity?Ann, how do you burrow into the heads of these tough characters? Of course Aunt Lydia comes to mind.DOWD I was a pre-med student for four years and the way you get through it is that you study to the point of insanity. Then I realized, You know what? Let’s go to acting school! But I applied those same rigorous studies to acting for a very long time. That’s misery because you’re not letting anything in around you. All the doors shut, except for the one you choose to go through.The other thing, and this is big: It’s playing. People ask, “How do you ever play Lydia?” I can’t get to her fast enough. It’s make believe — not to diminish the intensity — but if it wasn’t, emotionally, you’d go home, put a pillow over your head and end it all! Just chill a little bit: It’s a play, there is supposed to be fun in it.Have you reached the fun stage on this one yet?ICKE We had fun on Sunday, when you did all of it.DOWD I was in a state of shock!ICKE I’ve got the WhatsApps to prove it.DOWD [resigned] OK. The point is, that’s the goal. I’ll get there.Enemy of the PeoplePerformances June 22-Aug. 8; armoryonpark.org More