A Piece of My Heart Interview

Director Elizabeth Appleby discusses A Piece of My Heart

Director Elizabeth Appleby served as Managing Director at Alley Theatre from 1981-1986. She directed extensively at the Alley, and has directed at Wheelock Family Theatre and The Theatre Company of Boston. She was nominated for Best Director by Boston Critics' Circle in 1982. She conducted a Master Class at the 1993 New England Theatre Conference. Ms. Appleby is a graduate of Tufts University.

In an interview conducted March 16, 1994, Ms. Appleby discussed her reasons for doing A Piece of My Heart, and the themes addressed by the play:

There is real power in this script. The characters aren't fleshed out very well and it's kind of skeletal. It's the challenge; I want to try to make it powerful enough with the acting to appeal to the general public. I love directing things that portray pain because in that pain is the power that moves people. I mean I like comedy, too, but I look for that conflict to connect to.

The part that struck me immediately and what I connected to is the sense of the fractured, dislocated self. As one person put it in "Forgotten Veterans," she describes herself as missing in action for twenty years. Each person said, "I feel like I'm someone else. I can't get back that piece of myself." I have experienced that sense of dislocation -- missing in action, physically present but "if only they knew what turmoil I carry with me" sort of feeling.

After the Alley closed, I found my greatest pleasure was cultivating actors. There isn't enough time to work one on one with actors when you're directing. My real passion is working with individuals and small groups. I really love teaching. I love production work, working to make the performance. Finding out how to make things work, to make them real.

In this show I needed to focus on the individual. This is not a series of people going through a slice of life story. It's stylized and very challenging to make work. If it was more naturalistic, it wouldn't hold as much challenge.

This script is written in an unusual way -- stories of women woven together to make a whole. What is the missing ingredient, that provides the challenge, is that the pieces of many women and many stories must make six believable people to make it work for the audience. Although the experiences in themselves are very interesting it doesn't convey a two-hour program without that human thread, that real person behind the story. That is what each of us is striving toward.