Actor Anna Sundberg is searching for everything

Youngsters, there are varied means by which to build a theater career. To wit: Methodically pursue your BFA, go to grad school, meticulously hone your audition for "Hamlet" or "Medea" and then hope you get it -- really hope you get it. Or do as Anna Sundberg did: Get a liberal arts degree, audition for every show in sight and see what happens.

"It's pointless to get hung up on something," Sundberg said over tea recently. "I used to be a worrier, but now ..."

She shook her head and laughed. "That's my mom's job."

Sundberg's "que sera, sera" philosophy has served her well. Named the Ivey Awards' emerging theater artist last fall, she steadily has climbed the small-theater ladder and found herself in Park Square's production of "Doubt," which opens Friday in a production directed by Craig Johnson.

The role of Sister James is something of a pawn between the heavyweights (Linda Kelsey and David Mann at Park Square) in John Patrick Shanley's gripping and taut play. Still, it's progress. She had a tiny part in Park Square's "Rock 'n' Roll" a few years ago but was primarily a set jockey.

"This is the first role where I don't also have to move furniture," she said.

Eight grand last year

"I quit my day job in 2011 and decided to be brave," she said of her theater career. "I just did my taxes and my year of brave living got me about $8,000. So I need to get a job after I get done with 'Doubt.'"

Sundberg did quite a bit of theater at St. Olaf College, where Gary Gisselman was a mentor.

"He taught me that theater isn't about theater," she said. "It's about everything else."

Her studies were broad and diverse, not narrowly focused on theater. Asked about her favorite all-time plays, she mentions Peter Brook's "The Man Who," because she had the opportunity to learn about brain chemistry and neurological syndromes.

"I like seeing plays about something I know nothing about," she said. "'Circle Mirror Transformation'? C'mon. People in an acting class? I want to see a show that's going to reveal a world to me."

The world's a stage

After graduating in 2005, Sundberg worked for a year with a theater in Christchurch, New Zealand. She did a little of everything, including acting as the title character in a touring children's show, "The Sheep That Wouldn't Be Shorn."

After her money ran out, she came home and "auditioned like crazy" but came up against the familiarity law of Twin Cities theater: Directors rarely hire people they don't know, and when "every girl in the room looked like me," it was difficult to make an impression.

In 2007, she won an apprenticeship at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minn. The next year she did three shows in the Twin Cities and in 2009, "things started happening." She made important connections with directors Johnson and Leah Cooper, writer Alan Berks, producer Kirby Bennett and the leaders of Walking Shadow Theatre Company.

Sundberg's work with Bennett and Johnson included "Street Scene," which also received Ivey recognition last fall. Cooper directed her in "After Miss Julie," a red-hot production in the servant's basement of the James J. Hill House. With Walking Shadow, Sundberg played key roles in the premiere of John Heimbuch's rich "The Transdimensional Couriers Union" and 2011's "Reasons to be Pretty."

Especially for "Couriers Union," which was a fresh piece, Sundberg helped form a role.

"Her character by far had the most complications and her ability to turn on and off emotional states was really solid," Heimbuch said.

Winning an Ivey

Sundberg hadn't entertained the possibility of winning the emerging artist Ivey ("I would have bought a new dress and invited my mom"). The honor hasn't changed her life much and she laughs at the mention of a five-year plan. She played a slot machine last winter in "Flesh and the Desert" for Workhaus Collective and then took on a spiky, pigtailed druggie in "Beautiful Thing" for Latté Da. The well has run dry now, of course, which means she'll be browsing help-wanted ads. Still.

"Failure is the most liberating experience," she said. "If I don't get a role, I figure I should be doing something different -- writing that play, or auditioning for something else."