During play rehearsal two weeks ago, lead actor Sharron Drake was trying to perfect the emotional turn from despondency to delusion. Her fiancé has abandoned her, but she suddenly rationalized that he could have fallen terribly ill.
“If he were ill, of course he couldn’t come!” said Ms. Drake, dressed in a makeshift period dress of pink plaid. Her eyes lit up and demeanor turned on a dime as she started pacing across the Dance Palace Church Space.
Ms. Drake, who lives in Inverness Park, is starring in and organizing a production of “The Heiress” with a mostly union cast, a rarity in West Marin in recent years. The play is based on an 1880 novel, “Washington Square,” by American-British literary realist Henry James, of whom Ms. Drake is a relation. She is a direct descendent of his brother, the famed psychologist and philosopher William James. Ms. Drake’s mother told her that the heroine is purportedly based on the James’s sister, diarist Alice James, who had a retiring nature and “quirky manner of speech.”
“I would like to think that I have at least somewhat of a genetic imprint of what the original author intended for his heroine,” she said in an email interview with the Light.
Ms. Drake caught the theater bug in high school, and she acted in all kinds of plays—comedies and dramas—at the College of Marin, where she met her husband, Matt Gallagher. (In a production of King Lear, he played Edmund, while she was Cordelia, whom he orders to be killed.) She has acted with other Bay Area companies, but not since moving to West Marin.
“Since I have a full-time job in the city, an 8-year-old and a pretty full plate of musical projects here and there, I don’t think that there is a way to fit theatre into my life without being part of something close to home,” she said. (Ms. Drake works for a film studio in San Francisco.)
She is, however, part of an actor’s union, which has also made it difficult to participate in local theater. But changes instituted a few years ago allowed union actors to self-produce shows with the union’s blessing, as long as it has a short run, in a small space.
Adrienne Pfeiffer, a Bolinas resident who plays the maid, Maria, said at a recent rehearsal that one of the most notable things about the production is its scale— large sets, full lighting and many costumes. “There used to be more in the way of full-length theatrical productions” in West Marin, Ms. Pfeiffer mused, adding that she was excited to work with a cast of mostly union actors. “There’s something unique about a professional production,” she said.
Ms. Drake has managed to mount the production by working around many classes and meetings, asking others to reschedule to accommodate her dress rehearsals and agreeing to load the sets at the last possible minute.
For the most part, the play takes place in the home of the two main characters, father and daughter Austin and Catherine Sloper. The play, like many nineteenth-century plots, revolves around a potential marriage.
Catherine, a shy, awkward young woman who struggles to live up to her father’s expectations to be graceful and clever like her deceased mother, falls in love with a poor man, Morris Townsend, and they become engaged. Austin, a wealthy doctor, disapproves, believing her suitor is only interested in her money. (She has a $10,000-a-year inheritance from her mother’s death and will receive an extra $20,000 a year once her father passes, a whopping sum in those days.) He eventually tells Catherine that she is so dull-witted that money is the only reason anyone might want her hand in marriage.
The question of whether Morris truly loves her is never directly answered. But that’s what Ms. Drake likes about it.
“The most wonderful thing in my mind about Henry James’s style of writing is that he provides an extremely detailed picture in his scenes, but remains completely objective—leaving all interpretation to his audience,” she said. “I came into this project with a firm mind of what it means to me, and now in the rehearsal process and delving deeper, I am seeing other sides and perspectives as well. I am aiming to play the emotional truth of the character without trying to spin something one way or the other so the audience has more to chew on.”
The Heiress shows at 7 p.m. on May 1 and 2 and at 4 p.m. on May 3 in the Dance Palace Church Space. Seating is limited, and advance tickets ($20) are available at pointreyestheater.brownpapertickets.com.