Amy Morton, who is directing “Awake and Sing!” at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, is uncomfortable with all of the trimmings that come with acting in films.
Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago News Cooperative
Amy Morton has a role in “Up in the Air,” one of the year’s most lauded films, sharing the screen — and her character’s wellspring of acerbity — with none other than George Clooney.
And yet, as the film and its stars continue to rack up nominations and the Hollywood awards season reaches its frenetic climax, Ms. Morton is 2,000 miles away, directing regional theater and hunkering down against a particularly brutal blast of Midwestern winter weather. She couldn’t be happier.
“Am I going to the awards shows?” Ms. Morton, an Oak Park native who played Mr. Clooney’s sister Kara, said, shaking her head as if warding off an incipient nightmare. “No, thank God.”
Sitting in an aisle seat in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, where she is directing the Northlight Theater production of “Awake and Sing!” by Clifford Odets, Ms. Morton is in the thick of previews less than a week from opening night. A longtime ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theater Company, she has come only recently to directing, and one might expect her to be a bit nervous. But she seems quite sanguine about the play; she is far more unsettled by the thought of facing the red carpet gantlet again.
She did it for “Up in the Air” at the Toronto Film Festival, and she is not eager to repeat the experience.
“I would have paid money to be able to run away,” she said. “I find walking the red carpet to be probably the most nerve-racking experience in the world. I don’t like that much attention unless I’m on stage. I don’t like questions about me, Amy.”
Those questions have become increasingly difficult to avoid in recent months, thanks to the success of the movie and a two-year stint in Steppenwolf’s production of “August: Osage County,” the Pulitzer and Tony-winning play by Tracy Letts, an ensemble member.
That role, which Ms. Morton describes as emotionally and physically grueling, is an experience she is deeply grateful for but which she hopes never to repeat.
“I don’t think I could do it again,” she said of her scathing, vociferous depiction of Barbara Fordham, which earned her a Tony nomination. “If it were a different role in a different play, maybe, but it was just extremely difficult to do it eight times a week.”
But if playing Barbara Fordham was the toughest acting job she has had, it also pushed her into the national spotlight.
“Osage County” changed things, Ms. Morton said. It got her “Up in the Air,” and that is likely to be only the beginning.
“Certain people know who I am now,” she said. “So hopefully that will translate into more work that pays good money.” In other words, more film work.
Dressed in layers of gray and black, a red scarf her sole concession to color, Ms. Morton is a game, if slightly cagey, interview subject. It is quickly clear that she is not going to provide a wealth of introspective philosophizing or engage in the easy banter many actors have perfected. She is here to answer questions because it is part of her job, and while she is nice about it, she does nothing to dispel the impression there are other things she would rather be doing.
Happily, she is usually engaged in one or more of those preferred activities: Acting, directing or teaching the Meisner technique at the School at Steppenwolf.
Ms. Morton’s professional destiny was never in question, at least as far as she was concerned.
“I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was 6,” she said.
After an abortive college career, Ms. Morton trained at the St. Nicholas Theater Company in Chicago, which was founded in 1972 by William H. Macy, Steven Schachter and David Mamet and which is now defunct. At 20, Ms. Morton began a 15-year association with William Petersen’s Remains Theater Company (also now extinct). In 1997, she joined the ensemble at Steppenwolf, where she has appeared in 33 productions and where she was directing Mamet’s “American Buffalo” until it closed last Sunday.
Directing two plays at once sounds overwhelming, or at the very least distracting. But Ms. Morton is managing just fine, said Mike Nussbaum, the actor who plays the heartbroken, heartbreaking Jacob in “Awake and Sing!”
“Working with her has been a rare experience,” Mr. Nussbaum said. “She has the ability to give the most astute and penetrating notes I’ve ever heard.”
BJ Jones, a longtime artistic director at Northlight, has known Ms. Morton for 25 years and marvels at her skill and commitment.
“She hurls herself into the process,” Mr. Jones said, whether it is directing or acting. And yet, he added, that state of pitched energy — insistent and relentless — is markedly absent from Ms. Morton’s off-stage presence.
“If you walked into a room, and there were a dozen actors and directors in that room, she’d be the last person to catch your eye,” Mr. Jones said, “because she doesn’t radiate the kind of energy that demands attention.”
Whether she demands it or not, that attention is likely to follow Ms. Morton for the foreseeable future. And if it nets her a few more film roles, so much the better.
But while film pays the bills, the theater remains Ms. Morton’s first love, and she seems eager to tackle her next role, to face her next challenge.
Of course, for a workhorse like Ms. Morton, who has made her name as a tireless, wholly unselfish performer, the biggest challenge may look a lot like taking a deep breath.
“In my next role,“ she said ruefully, “I’d like to sit in a chair, say something pithy, and then walk off stage.”
“Awake and Sing!” runs through Feb. 28 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Boulevard, Skokie, Ill. (847) 673-6300, northlight.org.
