INTERVIEW: Angelica Page channels her mother, Geraldine Page, in new solo play
Some people have memorable mothers, and then there’s Angelica Page. The Broadway actress who appeared in The Best Man, Anna Christie and Side Man is the daughter of legendary actress Geraldine Page. Their real-life mother-daughter relationship is explored in the new solo play, Turning Page, starring Angelica from Feb. 10 to April 8 at New York City’s Dixon Place.
Geraldine Page, dubbed the greatest actress of the English language, was an actress on Broadway and in many Hollywood films who broke records and impressed fans for decades. She won an Oscar for her role in The Trip to Bountiful in 1985 and was nominated seven other times, which is a record for the Academy Awards. Her indelible turns include roles in The Pope of Greenwich Village, Sweet Bird of Youth and Summer and Smoke, among many others.
Tragically, Geraldine Page died in 1987 and left her daughter with an important task.
“She had begun her autobiography and told me she wasn’t going to be able to finish it,” Angelica said in a recent phone interview. “[She] made me promise that I would make sure when a book got done about her, or the books, that I would make sure that no one f—ed it up.”
Years went by, and no one stepped forward to write a book on Geraldine. Finally, in 2000, when Angelica was making her West End debut in Side Man, the fact that there had been no written testament of her mother’s life began to gnaw at her. She decided to try a different route.
“I went to a psychic to try to connect with my mother’s spirit and ask her to let me off the hook,” she said. “I had so much guilt about it. … I just went and didn’t say much. She started to channel my mother, and she said, ‘Your mother is telling me that she wants you to write the book. Do you know what this is about?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ That didn’t really help very much because now I had to write the book. I wasn’t a writer. I’m not a biographer, and I had so much frustration trying to write the book that I ended up writing a play about not being able to write the book.”
That play is Turning Page, and the creation of the theatrical piece with director Wilson Milam has actually led to Angelica Page’s initial goal: She now has a first draft of a book as well.
“So the book is based on the play, rather than a play being based on the book,” she said. “I tried to write it, and I couldn’t get past the first page. And the psychic said, ‘Your mother is saying to me that do you know of such a thing as channeling?’ … And she’s like, ‘Your mother will be able to tell you how to write the book if you channel her.’ And I have these clips from this psychic reading, and they’re in the play, the actual, original tapes of this woman saying these things.”
Turning Page began to take shape in 2012, and it has been a long five years of workshopping and staging a Los Angeles production. Today, the play is a thoughtful biographical sketch that is intended for audience members who know of Geraldine’s legacy and those who might be new to the legend.
“It’s so interesting because when I was born in ’64, I was born into the center of her skyrocketing career, and so to be 30 years after her death to hear that people don’t know who she is, it’s such a weird experience to be on the other side of it,” Angelica said. “She was so famous when I was little, but even if somebody doesn’t know who she is, it’s a mother-daughter story as well. It’s about being a mother. It’s about being a daughter, and I would say everybody has a mother. … She was a really private person when she was alive and very different from the roles she played, so we get to experience her magic intimately. And it’s a wonderful gift to be able to share her in that way with other people.”
Angelica’s memories as a child are riddled with famous people coming and going. She remembers both Tennessee Williams and Miles Davis coming over her house. She remembers joining her mother for rehearsals on Broadway. She’s told that her mother nursed her during a production of Three Sisters.
“I had always been around these legendary, huge personalities from infancy,” she said. “So I knew very early on that it was very special and different than the way most people lived.”
Audience members will also be able to see the connection between Geraldine and Angelica. Both mother and daughter took a liking to the arts and built careers in the theater. They shared professional triumphs and setbacks. “I had to experience a lot of the same emotional turmoil that she did,” Angelica said. “We definitely have similar lifestyles, for sure. I completely used her as my role model. I was lucky to have such a great one.”
Performing in Turning Page can be difficult and emotional for Angelica, especially the scenes when she remembers the final days with her mother. “The hardest part for me is at the end of the play when I let her go and come back to me, when I take all of her clothes off and her wig off,” she said. “I have her actual items that I use, so there’s also that level of emotional connection and memory. I use an old bottle of her perfume. … I think that most agree that smell is a sense that really brings us back in time to experiences that we had from the past, so it’s definitely a very layered, emotional piece on many, many levels. But the hardest thing for me is coming to the point in the play where she has her death.”
She added: “I’m very proud of myself for continuing to finish what I started. I’m not done with it yet, but I do feel like I’ve taken very good care of this project and am proud of the outcome. So I’m really excited to share it with New York.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Turning Page begins performances Friday, Feb. 10 at Dixon Place at 161A Chrystie St. in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
