“There is this thing about being a Washington actor, performing in a lot of theater in town,” she says, laughing as an illustrative recollection comes to mind. “My friend, she was working in a store,” she recalls, and an acquaintance went up to her, mentioning Twyford and declaring: “ ‘If I see Holly Twyford in another play, I’m going to shoot myself in the head!’ ”
Twyford’s face registers a fresh mixture of shock, amusement and terror. “I thought, ‘Hell, I should get off the damn stage! Are audiences going to get bored with seeing the same person all the time?’ ”
That discernible membrane of insecurity may help to explain why Twyford has not, after all these years, pursued many opportunities beyond the metropolitan area. (Another, friends and colleagues say, is the importance of the stability of her nuclear family.) Having attained a certain status, she’s now viewed in casting circles like that model office employee, the one who’s relied upon to handle the major-deadline projects.
“She can take care of herself,” says Zinoman, who directed her in, among other Studio productions, “The Road to Mecca.” “But when we were working on ‘Mecca,’ she came to me and said, ‘On this project, I want to really go somewhere emotionally, so please take me there, let’s do it.’ I was very moved by the fact that someone of her skill was still interested in stretching herself.”
Then there’s the highly seductive advantage of being able to pick your projects: “You’re constantly selling yourself at a certain point in your career,” Twyford says. “I guess if that’s not in your genetic makeup, it’s very difficult to do; the product you’re selling is you. So any rejection of that is rather personal.”
This ubiquitous stage creature knows of what she speaks. Her first serious brush with the theater was potentially a deal-breaker — after two years in Boston University’s competitive, conservatory-style acting program, she was cut and had to settle for a spot in the school’s theater-arts program. (She later went along, Cinderella-style, as a helper for her former peers as they auditioned before groups of casting people.) Having grown up in Great Falls and graduated from the Madeira School in McLean, Twyford returned to D.C., where she got a job as a wig mistress at Arena Stage.
She says she had a great time, caring for the ’dos of actresses of the caliber of Tammy Grimes and Tana Hicken — the latter would one day be her co-star, in “Mecca” as well as “Lost in Yonkers.” Soon enough, the opportunity to act came, in “Her Aching Heart” by Bryony Lavery. A result was her first Helen Hayes nomination, and she was on her way.
Kahn was at the ceremony last year at which he says Twyford was getting “I don’t know, one of her thousand awards for best actress”: it was recognition for Signature Theatre’s “The Little Dog Laughed.” Watching her give her speech, he recalls, “she was sophisticated in a way that I’d never seen her, and I’d been thinking about ‘Old Times’ and thought, ‘Gee, it would be a different part for Holly.’ I think I offered it to her at the party.”
“I’ll tell you one thing about her: You can give her an adjustment for the character that’s very different from what’s she’s been doing, and she can do it RIGHT THEN. I think she has a good way of switching her insides to become this other person. I think that she’s very smart, but she doesn’t have to work from her head.”
As intently as Kahn was watching Twyford, she in turn was studying him, seeking to absorb anything that might help her in her foray into directing. “Michael says something,” she says, “and I go write it down.” She has had enough variety in men and women who guided her through plays to know good direction from bad: “A vision is nice, but if you can’t communicate that vision, it’s worthless.”
Twyford likes active give-and-take in rehearsal, and sometimes feels as if she’s not getting her fill. “When I’m acting in a show, I cannot keep my mouth shut,” she says. Now that the room will be in her control, one wonders what she’ll do with the more boisterous members of her cast.
She laughs at the idea of having to direct someone with her temperament. “That’s fine,” she says. “I’m going to deal with it.”
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