Tod Randolph began directing in 2009 with John Patrick Shanley’s the dreamer examines his pillow, starring John Douglas Thompson, at Shakespeare & Company, where she has been an acting and teaching member since 1991, and where she also directed As You Like It and King John in the Conservatory Actor Training Program. As an actress she has also appeared with Palm Beach Dramaworks, Portland Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival/Unicorn Company, The Nora Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Trinity Rep, Milwaukee Rep, Stageworks/Hudson, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, The Wharton Salon, Mixed Company, and at Theatre Row Theatre in NYC. She can be seen this spring in the film Infinitely Polar Bear, starring Mark Ruffalo.
Tod participated in the inaugural season of Fresh Takes as a performer and is delighted to return for the second season as the director of Moira Buffini’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner, Silence. She took a few moments to talk about her interest in the play.
WAM: How were you involved with the Fresh Takes Reading Series last year?
Tod Randolph: I acted in two of the readings last year –Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with an all-female cast, directed by Jenna Ware, and Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale, directed by Kelly Galvin. It was great fun! So I submitted Silence for consideration this year and I am delighted its happening.
WAM: How did you come across this play? It was written in 1999 and won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize so it’s been around for a while but we’ve never seen it in the Berkshires.
Tod: A friend of mine, who had been the Artistic Director of a theatre down in Houston which had performed it, told me about it years ago. I got a copy and fell in love with this British playwright, Moira Buffini. Her dialogue is wonderful – witty, funny, and intelligent – and it’s a great ensemble piece with wonderful acting parts. But the story is the most important part. It’s a beautiful play about people discovering who they are and all the ways it’s possible to make those discoveries. I find it very funny and entertaining with some dark moments, and some very odd moments. For instance, a stew is cooked one night and hallucinogenic mushrooms are involved…
WAM: Oh my! Give us more of a preview, please.
Tod: The play is set in the Dark Ages, in an ancient time and place, but it’s written in a contemporary idiom with a very modern sensibility. Ymma, a beautiful and feisty young noblewoman from Normandy, has been sent to England by her brother as a punishment. He needs to get rid of her. Fourteen-year-old Silence is the Lord of Cumbria, a pagan land in the northwest of the island of Great Britain, bordering Scotland and the Irish Sea, (and incidentally the place where Moira Buffini was born). He has been brought to England by the young and scrawny King Ethelred to help him cope with the Vikings, but the King is furious to discover how young and slight Silence is and decides to punish him and Ymma by marrying them to each other. Ymma is furious, but as secrets are revealed she and Silence become close and embark on the odyssey of discovery, accompanied by a young Christian priest named Roger, that forms the heart of the play.
WAM: How do you feel Silence dovetails with WAM’s mission to tell the stories of women and girls?
Tod: It’s all about gender roles, which were very strictly prescribed in those days. There are six characters – three men and three women – and throughout the play we see how the characters cope with their gender identities and how the trauma in their lives affects their personal choices.
WAM: Tod Randolph and WAM seem like such a great fit! We hope to see you involved in other projects with us in the future.
Tod: I love WAM and I’ve wanted to get more involved for many years, but things haven’t worked out timing-wise. These readings are a great way for me to support WAM and have fun with other actors.
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