Karen Allen—the actress who played opposite John Belushi in Animal House, Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich in The Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman—has become famous in Great Barrington for her eponymous Railroad Street store that sells Allen's locally-made knitted cashmere clothing and other luxe bohemian apparel. Though the movies made her a star, it is theater where she honed her craft, playing parts such as Helen Keller in the Broadway production of Monday After the Miracle in 1982 and Annie Sullivan in the 1987 revival of The Mircale Worker at New York's Roundabout Theater .
Now, Karen Allen is teaching the art of acting at Simon's Rock, the "early college” for high-school age students, up the hill from her store, and she is directing Michael Weller's Vietnam-era play Moonchildren, which runs for seven performances at the Daniel Arts Center from Wednesday, April 22, to Sunday, April 26. The play, which is set at a college in 1965-1966 just before the eruption of massive student demonstrations against the war, is deja vu for Allen. "I went to college in 1969 at George Washington University,” says Allen, who has set the play there. "Everything was changing. Students were co-habitating for the first time. They could live in an urban commune." Allen lived in what she calls an "urban commune” in Washington, DC. "It was a brownstone with five floors and we kept our bikes in the backyard," she recalls. "There were eight of us and we all contributed to taking care of the house and we took turns cooking dinner one night a week.” She chose Moonchildren, after reading dozens of plays, because she knew that she had the right students to cast in the roles (and for the two adults she cast David Wade Smith and Kale Browne, her ex-husband and father of her son) and because it would offer the students a literate way to learn about the pre-Woodstock era when everything started to change in American life. "Their parents were children in 1960s, if they were even born!" she says. Professor Allen has been challenged by a schedule that only allowed for 9 hours of rehearsal a week. "That's one day in professional theater," she notes. And she is concerned, as any conscientious mother and director would be, about the health of her actors who are busy with exams and final papers. "We don't have undertstudies," she says. "Every night I tell them, Go home and get a good night's sleep!" The original Broadway production of Moonchildren—"bitterly funny and funnily bitter" according to Clive Barnes's 1972 New York Times review—was a launching pad for the actors Edward Herrmann, James Woods, Jill Eikenberry and Christopher Guest, and it established Weller as an important voice of his generation. "Michael Weller, who I knew a little bit in New York in the 1970s, is such a gifted writer,” says Allen. "He studied jazz at Brandeis and he writes like a jazz musician. The play is a series of riffs.” She says the play differs from her own college experience in one important way. "I don't remember anybody in our house being this witty,” she says. Moonchildren at Simon's RockApril 22 - 24 at 7:30 PM; April 25 & 26 at 2 PM & 7:30 PM Reservations highly recommended; 413.644.4400 Suggested donation: $5
