When Linda Kelsey performed "The Belle of Amherst" 16 years ago, the one-woman play was a mountain.
Her character, Emily Dickinson, is on stage for its entirety. That was in her mind when she contemplated playing the poet again, but then came an "incredible" surprise: She remembered the whole play.
"I had said the play every Monday for one year because I wanted to see if I could get it into my long-term memory," said Kelsey, a Minneapolis native who lived in California for years and then moved to St. Paul with her husband and daughters in 1996. "When Kevin Winge asked us to do it at the Woman's Club in this short little run, I thought, 'It's too many words to learn.' But then I realized I knew it well enough to fix it in the few places that needed fixing."
That's not always the case. Kelsey has committed bits of roles to memory because she loved the language. But, she says, like most actors she is "notorious for two weeks after doing a play, not being able to remember a word of it."
Based on Dickinson's poems and letters, "Belle" is written as if the writer, who died in 1886, has invited guests into her home. So it'll take place not on the stage of the venue but in its parlor. The show at Woman's Club of Minneapolis runs Friday through Sunday.
A five-time Emmy nominee for the "Lou Grant" TV series and a memorable "Mary Tyler Moore Show" guest star in an episode in which she tried to "All About Eve" Sue Ann Nivens, Kelsey most recently appeared in this winter's "The Boys Room" at Gremlin Theatre. The Star Tribune asked her about revisiting a character she adores.
Q: What is it about Dickinson that transfixes you?
A: The letters are just as interesting and incredible to read as the poems, if not more so, because she was talking directly to people in her life. She had a way of grappling with ideas that just astonishes me. It's delightful to imagine the kind of brain that woman owned. I get to climb inside her head — not to say I'm the ultimate interpreter of Emily Dickinson at all, but I find it amazing to think about her. She's funny and energetic. It's clear from the letters how much she loved life. She's known for poems about death and stuff but she was interested in so much else.
Q: Even though she was a recluse?
A: She had a conduit to the natural world through her garden that I think is unparalleled. She says in the play, "Father's house and my garden, this is my world. This is my paradise. I've never had to go looking for anything else." She saw so much in a flower, a butterfly, a bird flying past that it was an entire universe for her. I think she may have had — I think it's called synesthesia — the condition where words have a sound and color. All of her senses are combined somehow and she was vibrating on this level that very few of us understand.
