Corinna May is an actor, teacher, writer and vocal coach. She holds her BA from Barnard College and is also a graduate of Circle in the Square’s 2-year professional actor training program. She has studied with Kristin Linklater, Tina Packer, Robert Neff Williams, Andrea Haring, Nikos Psacharapoulos, and David Zemach-Bersin, among others. Corinna is an Authorized Feldenkrais Method “Awareness Through Movement” teacher and has been a designated Linklater voice teacher since 2003.
A 28-year member of Shakespeare & Company, Corinna has appeared in more than 30 productions and is core faculty member in the Company’s internationally-renowned Training and Education programs. She is also known regionally for her interpretation of many of Edith Wharton’s characters in stage adaptations presented by Shakespeare & Company, The Wharton Salon, and Pythagoras Theatre Works.
Corinna is thrilled to be making her WAM Theatre debut as Geert Piller in our 2016 Main Stage show The Bakelite Masterpiece, alongside her husband, David Adkins.
WAM Theatre: Tell me about your character, Geert Piller. Unlike Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), she is a fictional character, not an historical one. Who is she? Where does she come from?
Corinna May: Most of Geert’s history is shrouded in mystery. Bits and pieces of her past are revealed in the course of the play, but the playwright doesn’t spell it all out, so I’m free to create quite a lot of her story. The simple answer is she’s an art historian who joined the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation. She has sacrificed almost everything, seen and experienced unimaginable things, and she tends to play her cards close, close to her chest. Something I deeply admire about her is that spite of all the pain and horror she has seen and known, she struggles to keep a place within herself alive and responsive to beauty, truth, and goodness. No small feat.
WAM: What does she think of van Meegeren? Why does she care about him and his paintings?
Corinna: At the outset she considers him to be one of the greatest traitors to Holland who ever lived. She is charging him with having sold a previously undiscovered early Vermeer painting to Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (1893-1946).
Johannes Vermeer (1635-1692) is revered and beloved as the quintessential painter of Holland. Goering desperately wanted to get his hands on a Vermeer, especially as there are fewer than 36 Vermeer paintings known to exist in the world.
I don’t know how many people know that Goering (Hitler’s second in command) was a rapacious art collector. He cared almost more about amassing the world’s greatest art collection for himself than he did about world conquest. In between directing his Luftwaffe to bomb one country after another into submission and ordering “an overall solution to the Jewish question” – which became the unspeakable Final Solution – Goering was competing with Hitler to “collect”, mostly plunder, as much European art as they could get their hands on. Paintings, sculptures, objets d’art; Rembrandts, Rubens, Monets; “acquired” from museums, or privately held collections (many of which belonged to Jewish victims of the Holocaust) or individuals, people so desperate to raise cash they would part with ancestral family treasures.
One thing that was particularly disgusting was that Goering and Hitler often made a great show of paying for the art (which they had crated up and loaded onto long trains and shipped to German warehouses and their private residences), often paying large prices – of course price didn’t have to be an object for either of them, because they paid for everything with stolen money.
WAM: What appeals to you about this play and character?
Corinna: Geert appeals to me because as written she’s a woman of complexity and paradox. She’s not easily pigeonholed or defined. In other words, she’s recognizably a human being. It’s always exciting to work on complex characters because there’s so much to discover and the process demands so much of me as an actor. And the play, I’m very drawn to the play, our playwright is a poet and there’s depth and richness to her storytelling. And best of all, the story is suffused with love. And that’s not always the case with new plays in this increasingly detached world.
WAM: How are rehearsals going so far?
Corinna: Rehearsals are terrific. It’s my first time working with with Kristen and she’s an exuberant joy to be with in the rehearsal room. She has keen and intelligent artistic sensibilities and a big heart.
And I always count myself extremely fortunate when I get to work with my favorite actor in the world, David Adkins.
David and I have worked together several times and we always been a couple, husband & wife or love interests. It’s a whole new thing playing a woman who wants to bring his character to justice, who starts the play wanting to execute him. And it’s truly a gift as an actor to be able to go to some of the often very dark places we go to, and know that there’s absolute trust between us. And that we can find all the different layers and threads of love and sadness and joy and anger and loss and retrieval; everything that weaves through this relationship, this story.
WAM: What brought you to the Berkshires and what keeps you here?
Corinna: I came to the Berkshires years ago to work with Shakespeare & Company when I was a young actor, and I count myself one the luckiest people in the world that I’ve gotten to live so much of my life here since then. I’ve gotten to work with so many terrific theaters and artists while surrounded by these beautiful lakes and hills and valleys and woods…. It’s a dream come true, well & truly.
WAM: What is next for you?
Corinna: Oh if I had a crystal ball! Lots of irons in the fire. So many theatre artists I want to collaborate with. A couple of projects I’m secretly writing. The Unknown. And further adventures with David! As Walt Whitman says in Song of the Open Road: “Allons! To that which is endless as it was beginningless …”
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