On her first read, the director considered Pfeni a "wallflower," while Johnston saw her differently.
"I read a Broadway review of this play and the critic got it right," she recalls. Pfeni is both Auntie Mame with her eccentric life and Emma Goldman, a passionate feminist and humanitarian. I took that critique and ran with it."
Although Johnston admits her laundry is piling up, she can't resist taking on acting assignments. It's not all about the character either, to make Pfeni believable, Johnston knew it required little self-psychotherapy.
"The biggest difficulty I have is letting down my own defenses to portray Pfeni's loneliness and fear," she points out.
Johnston and Trout may not always be self-assured, but it is hard to fathom that Wasserstein was insecure. Even with her Tony and Pulitzer prizes for her play "The Heidi Chronicles," doubt sometimes paralyzed the author, who near the end of her life lampooned self-help books by writing her own, titled "Sloth." She may have been an insecure feminist, criticizing religion, Reaganomics and Republicans, but in 2004, she decided it was time to take on her own kind – liberals — and wrote "Third."
In this serious production, Laurie (Trout) plays a college English professor at an unnamed northeastern liberal arts college – think Williams or Dartmouth. A rich Groton-educated jock Woodson Bull III (Third), taking Laurie's advanced English class, informs her he cannot see the movie she has assigned because he has a wrestling match. Of course, she hits the ceiling, wondering out loud why he even is attending this bastion of brilliance and suggesting he drop the class. But when he finds a way to take his whole wrestling team to the film and then turns in an impressive assignment on the relationship of Lear and his daughter Cordelia, she become apoplectic. The supposedly open-minded liberal loses all sense of proportion, especially when he casually mentions his post-college plan to become a sports agent. Laurie's fury at Third, coupled with her obsession with the war in Iraq, seems to be replacing her own personal problems: a dead-end marriage, taking care of her father suffering from Alzheimer's, missing her college-age daughter and worrying about her best friend's cancer.
It was Laurie's "sublimated passion" that first drew Trout to the part. Even then it was a stretch. The role required getting out a "dictionary," she explains. "I am not a college grad so I spend time learning words and figuring out who these people are. Now I am looking up King Lear,' trying to understand a line I quote, Nothing can come of nothing.'"
And with the playwright's propensity for wordiness, "there aren't people slamming doors or standing on a ledge ready to jump," Rogers says. No matter the amount, "the words better keep people [the audience] involved."
With dedicated actors and brilliant lines, it's not a problem.
"Third" opens Friday and runs through Nov. 30 at Silver Spring Stage, 10145 Colesville Road. Shows start at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. Sundays, Nov. 16 and 30. Tickets range from $13 to $18. Call 301-593-6036 or visit www.ssstage.org.
Montgomery Playhouse's production of "The Sisters Rosensweig" opens Friday and runs through Nov. 23 at the Arts Barn, 311 Kent Square Road, Gaithersburg. Shows start at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $14, $12 for City of Gaithersburg residents. The show is suitable for ages 13 and older. Call 301-258-6394 or visit www.gaithersburgmd.gov/artsbarn.