INTERVIEW: Tedra Millan on telling the important story of Marcel Marceau
Photo: Marcel on the Train features, from left, Tedra Millan and Ethan Slater. Photo courtesy of Emilio Madrid / Provided by BBB with permission.
Tedra Millan, an accomplished actor who appeared on Broadway in Leopoldstadt, is currently performing in Marcel on the Train, a new play about the mime Marcel Marceau, running through Sunday, March 22, at the Classic Stage Company in New York City. The show stars Ethan Slater as the title character, with Millan portraying the role of Berthe.
The play depicts events that may be unknown to audience members: Marceau was not only a well-respected and successful mime and performer; as a young Jewish man in eastern Europe, he was also tasked with the safety of Jewish orphans as they took a train journey out of Nazi-occupied France, according to press notes. Berthe is one of these orphans.
“I was in Budapest at the time when I read it,” Millan said about her entry into the project. “I had been living there for five months. My husband was filming something, and I would take my toddler to school every day. And I would pass these … commemorative stones for Jewish people who had been taken from their homes during the Holocaust, and I would walk by these stones every day. And there’s this very haunted vibe of eastern Europe and Europe in general, and I was really feeling that. And then this script came along.”
Millan felt that the script, which is written by Slater and Marshal Pailet, hit her at the right moment in her life. She felt the Holocaust-set tale was real and authentic, a story filled with ghosts and butterflies.
“I have actually done two plays about the Holocaust before, most recently Leopoldstadt, but this play could not be more different than those plays,” she said. “The first one was Arthur Miller’s Playing for Time, which is about people trying to save their lives by playing in an orchestra. … [This play[ moves like a train, which is what we’re on, and the first two times I read it, I just sobbed at the end because it really just took me. And I also feel like I’ve never read something like it before. And I knew who Marcel Marceau was, but I had no idea that he was Jewish. I had no idea that he had actually saved all these children, so, yeah, quite eye-opening. I just fell in love with this script immediately and my character.”
Millan came to the piece after Julie Benko had to back out of the production. The turnaround was quick. She read the script, and a couple of weeks later she moved from Budapest back to New York City.
“We really only had two weeks of rehearsal before we headed into tech, which is insane,” Millan said. “Julie Benko was originally doing it, and then she had to drop out due to a conflict with another show. And so they were auditioning people, and my agent sent me over the audition. And they had set up a Zoom if I wanted to take it on, and I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ So this was two weeks before I moved back from Budapest back to New York, and I Zoomed with Ethan and Marshal. And in this new world, we’re always self-taping and Zooming, but it’s rare that you can really connect over Zoom. … But Ethan and I were really playing with each other. … It was a really cool audition, and we just all really connected. And I fell in love with Marshal and Ethan, and I got the part and came on down.”
Some audience members might visit the Classic Stage Company for this show and have the same reaction as Millan when she first read the script: If this is a play about a famous mime, there will be humor, and to be sure, there are jokes throughout the piece. But the heart and historical reality of the production is never too far away; this is ultimately a story about coping during the most devastating of circumstances.
“I think Jews use humor for survival, and I think that’s what Marcel is doing,” she said. “He’s using humor to distract the children and create an atmosphere of levity amidst the utter terror, so, yeah, I think it’s very appropriate because he is a clown and this show is a bit of a clown show, even though it’s a Holocaust play. I think it’s super necessary. … Even in Leopoldstadt, there were moments of levity as well. You have to have humor amidst devastation or else it’s just too sad.”
The experience of working at the Classic Stage Company has been a positive one for Millan. She loves the intimate nature of the thrust stage and the backstage area.
“It’s so wonderful,” said Millan, who has also appeared in TV’s The Pitt. “I really feel like it’s the perfect theater. It’s just so intimate, and getting to work in a thrust is such a challenging gift. I just love the whole exposed brick of it all. It feels like there are happy ghosts here. It’s super haunted, but the ghosts feel like they’re having a good time. They’re laughing with us.”
She added: “We all share a dressing room. We have a curtain that separates men and women. That’s my favorite kind of situation because it just complements the collaborative effort that we’re doing on stage to have a company that’s so close in proximity. … And our group is so bonded. We’re all absolutely head over heels in love with each other, and it’s a really rare thing to have such an extraordinary bit of closeness. It’s a really wonderful process. Like, there’s a coffee shop when you walk into the lobby. It’s not this elitist lobby of a theater. It’s a coffee shop. It promotes this unserious vibe. There’s no pretension there.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Marcel on the Train, featuring Tedra Millan, continues through Sunday, March 22, at the Classic Stage Company in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
