Rena Cherry Brown on Bay Theatre Company’s ‘Wit’

Bay Theatre Company Artistic Director Janet Luby says of “Wit,” Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opens at the theater Friday: “It holds your hand and it takes you somewhere that you don’t want to go, but you’re glad that you went.”

“Wit” is also set to open on Broadway early next year, starring Cynthia Nixon. The BTC production stars Helen Hayes Award-winner Rena Cherry Brown as Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old English professor who realizes, as she is dying, that she led an incomplete life. Just before heading out to cut off her hair to take on the appearance of Bearing, a chemotherapy patient, Brown spoke about baring her soul and her body in her most trying theatrical endeavor.

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( Nigel Reed / ) - Rena Cherry Brown, star of The Bay Theatre Company's production of \"Wit,” is shaving her head for the role of a cancer patient.

  

You’re shaving your head in a few hours. Are you nervous?

I am a little nervous. For most of my life, I’ve had very long, full hair, and it was sort of a part of who I was. . . . But I’m looking forward to it because of everything I’ve heard about how it affects the performance of this particular play, and how it affects your life.

 

You play Vivian, a woman dying of ovarian cancer. How do you prepare for a role like this?

It’s without a doubt the most challenging role I’ve ever done. . . . It’s like you’re in this tunnel, in a very selective place where part of my day is just consumed with thinking about it [and] looking at blogs of women who have ovarian cancer.

 

It’s a lot to ask of an audience, to sit through a show about a woman dying of cancer.

Cancer is just the vehicle. It could have been anything. . . . It’s mostly about this person’s journey to grace. It’s her layers peeling off, how she learns, almost, you think, too late, all the lessons in life in that eight months of treatment that most of us build up over a lifetime.

 

What should audiences expect from the show?

It may be unpleasant to watch, but it also has humor. . . . And if you come out thinking it was only a play about cancer . . . I haven’t done my job.

In good company

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company knows how to put on that show you’d take a date to if you wanted to make sure your date is cool and has a good sense of humor.

Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz wanted more. ‘‘Woolly is a leader in new plays,” he said “But for what?”

Last year, Shalwitz headed a year-long company task force addressing the issue — what is our goal, and how do we get there? — and came up with what he called “the first important structural change to Woolly in 25 years.”

Woolly’s original mission statement remains unchanged. The Company of artists is expanding beyond actors to include playwrights, directors and designers so as to facilitate a more collaborative process. The new company members, beginning this season, are: Colin K. Bills, lighting designer; Michael John Garcés, artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles; Misha Kachman, set designer for “A Bright New Boise”; Robert O’Hara, playwright and director of “Bootycandy” and other works; Emily Townley, “A Bright New Boise” cast member; and John Vreeke, “A Bright New Boise” director.