An Interview With
Lenora Champagne

TRACES/fades

TRACES/fades covers a lot of ground: aging and the elderly, war, and the tricky fleeting nature of memory. How exactly would you describe the play, and what initially inspired it?

I always describe it as a meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history.

The major inspirations were my own mother having Alzheimer's, and the U.S. entry into the war in Iraq.  I felt powerless to stop or have an effect on the outcome of either.  So I channeled that frustration into something that I could have some control over — the creation of a performance. 

The Ice Factory production of TRACES/fades was a real family affair: your husband, Robert Lyons, co-directed it, and your daughter, Amelie Champagne Lyons, was in it. How did it go with all three of you working on the same show together?

I love working with them.  We've done it before, when I did student productions in France and Italy (where I sometimes teach), and it was a pleasure to take it into the Ohio Theatre, which I've always thought is a space with great karma.  Robert has of course directed me in solo work before, and Amelie has the best memory of anyone who worked on the show!  It was a great way to not have to choose between my work and my family. 

You also appear frequently in your own work. What's your impetus for both writing and acting instead of choosing one over the other?

I didn't mean to be in this show myself.  It's just that sometimes I just know how to make it work.  It's a kind of shortcut — my work can be played too darkly, whereas there's a kind of matter-of-factness to even the dark stuff that can shade into humor — you have to skate over it, let the audience feel it instead of playing the emotion yourself.  I also enjoy performing, and, like Maria Irene Fornes, whom I admire, I sometimes think directing the first production yourself is the way to finish a play.  Or, in my case, co-directing and performing in it.

You've mentioned before that when you were growing up you always thought you would go into politics. How so? And how did that road lead you to the theatre?

We always discussed politics at home, and racial integration happened when I was a teenager, which had a tremendous impact on me and my family.  Our family and my friend Andree's family (her dad was principal) were among the few white families that crossed the picket lines — my dad, who had some standing in our small community of 2,000 people, actively worked to make the transition as smooth as possible, and got death threats and lost business as a result.  Even so, he was subsequently elected to the state legislature, where he served for a time.  At college I ran for various offices and was in student government and judicial board chair — even in New York, I was torn between law school (because I'd seen with integration that legal change can provoke social change) and theatre.  I do think that theatre is the art form that has the potential to be the most politically engaged (except for possibly film, because of its wider distribution).

Which works and artists have shaped and influenced your tastes and aesthetics over time?

I bet by now you can guess:  Maria Irene Fornes, Bertolt Brecht, Pina Bausch, Elizabeth LeCompte, Ron Vawter, Richard Foreman, Chekhov, Arianne Mnouchkine, Yvonne Rainer, Stephanie Skura, Frida Kahlo, Pierre Bonnard.  It's not a complete list.

You also teach in the Theatre program at SUNY Purchase. For you, how do the teaching and the playmaking inform each other, if at all?  

Teaching is a great place to pass on what you've spent a lifetime learning.  It also keeps you connected to a younger generation.  It can help you stay fresh.

Do you have a clear cut preference between being a theatre educator and a theatre practitioner?

If I could make a living (and have health insurance!) by only doing my own projects, I would be tempted to do so.  But I've been teaching since 1985, off and on, and consistently since 1999.  I began making my own work in late 1981.  So the performance making and the teaching have been co-existing for a long time. 

Interview with Lenora Champagne was conducted by Michael Criscuolo January 2009.

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