OnStage: Putting on 'Eyre'

Some youngsters see a production at, say, the Guthrie Theater or on Broadway and are so jazzed by stage magic that they have to be in plays. That is true for Stacia Rice, who saw her first play at the Guthrie at around age 9 -- the same year she first read "Jane Eyre."

When she headlines as the title character in the Guthrie's "Jane Eyre," which opens today on the Wurtele Thrust Stage, she will have arrived at a childhood dream in a most unusual way.

For starters, the Minneapolis native ended her formal education after graduating from Edina High, even though she has continued to hone her craft through vigorous study and practice.

"I don't want it to come out the wrong way, but college would have been wasted on me," she said in a recent interview. "I was so ready to be out there working -- at 16 I had a job with benefits -- I didn't have time to go to keggers."

Working for a living nearly consumed her dream of acting. After more than a decade in advertising -- her jobs included being a secretary, a producer and an assistant to a creative director -- she decided five years ago to dedicate herself full-time to acting. Now she is stepping into the biggest role of her career on one of the biggest stages in the nation.

If it all seems like a Cinderella story, Rice and her growing base of boosters want you to know that it didn't just happen by fluke or fairy dust.

"Through her dedication to broadening her range, through her tenacity, through her continuing reach, Stacia has earned it," said "Jane Eyre" director John Miller-Stephany, who has followed and nurtured Rice's talent over the past several years.

Director Michelle Hensley, who cast Rice as Portia in "The Merchant of Venice," agreed. "She has a fierce desire to work and she's fearless in rehearsal," she said. "Onstage, Stacia can be confident yet vulnerable. She's able to go deep to draw the deep empathy of viewers."

Enduring classic

Rice will need to tap into empathy and more for her Jane Eyre. While Englishwoman Charlotte Brontë published her novel in 1847 under a pseudonym, the story has resonated through the ages because of the masterful way it interlaces themes such as romance and morality, class and personal conflict.

The story tracks the development of orphan Jane from childhood, where she is abused by her extended family, through her education and adulthood, when she becomes a governess.

The narrative pivots around romance and revulsion, as Jane falls for her employer and as her cousin seeks her hand.

In the Guthrie production, adapted by Irishman Alan Stanford (his version of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" played the Guthrie four years ago), three actors portray Jane. Rice plays the journeying Jane most familiar to readers and viewers of many film adaptations.

"I think of family when I see Jane," said Rice. "She's simple and strong, plain but complex."

Rice made her stage debut in 1982 as a preteen in a Children's Theatre production of "The Little Match Girl."I'm sure I didn't have many lines but it was a dreamy, surreal portrayal with dance," she said. "I remember that we had an amazing time and I missed a lot of school." Her sixth-grade teacher from that period still comes to her shows.

While she began working as soon as the law allowed -- "I always intended to go back to school someday," she said -- she kept her toe in theater, doing improvisation with Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop, and acting. She studied comedy, voice, technique and other elements of stagecraft through private teachers. And she would perform in such small venues as the Acadia Cafe, Cedar-Riverside People's Center and the Minneapolis Theatre Garage.

"You have to be crazy or completely in love to keep at it," she said. "I guess I was a little bit of both."

Rice even moved to New York -- the nation's theater mecca -- for a year and a half, but not for acting. She was an assistant to a creative director for an ad agency.

Moment of doubt

In 1995, Rice decided that the costs of doing theater -- emotionally, financially and in other ways -- were too high.

"I was about to quit," she said, when actor/director Matt Sciple encouraged her to keep at it. "He cast me in a small role at Park Square in a show called 'The Women.' I was an exercise instructress."

If Rice had given up, she might never have been seen by Miller-Stephany.

As associate artistic director at the Guthrie, he attends about 150 productions in the Twin Cities each year. "I go to so many plays because I need to know who the actors are, what they are capable of," he said. He then makes recommendations to Joe Dowling, or any of the Guthrie's guest directors.

Miller-Stephany cannot remember in which show he first saw Rice -- it could have been Outward Spiral Theatre's "David's Redhaired Death" in 2001 at Old Arizona Theatre or Fifty Foot Penguin's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" a year later. But he remembers being impressed by her range. "The Outward Spiral show was otherwise forgettable," he said. "But seeing Stacia made it worth it."

He eventually suggested Rice as the understudy for all the female parts in "Othello," directed by Dowling at the former Guthrie Lab and for a national tour. Still, because of the good health of the female actors in "Othello," Rice never got to go on.

She has had smaller parts in a pair of other productions at the Guthrie, playing a parlor maid in "Pygmalion" and a flapper in "The Constant Wife."

Meanwhile, she won an Ivey Award in 2005 and founded her own company, Torch Theatre. Torch has staged some well-received works, including "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Miracle Worker."

When he cast Rice as Jane Eyre, Miller-Stephany was confident that she could easily move into all the styles that the play calls for, including romance and gothic. But he had one concern.

"I thought she may have been too glamorous for the part," he said. "Charlotte Brontë wrote this book to expressly portray a plain person."Look at me," Rice said, going into character. "I have no makeup on. I can play plain."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390

Rohan Preston • rpreston@startribune.com