Party Face, a new comedy directed by Amanda Bearse, is now playing off-Broadway.
You might remember Amanda Bearse as the television actor from Married With Children who played Al Bundy’s nemesis, the feisty Marcy Rhoades D’Arcy. While Bearse loved her character and enjoyed aspects of portraying the forceful feminist foe of the hapless Bundy, she acknowledges that the show was “ludicrously misogynist and completely inappropriate—especially by today’s standards.
No-one knew it would be the 10-year hit that it became for the then-fledgling Fox cable channel. For some reason it’s had this amazing longevity,” she says of the show that also gave her a second career behind the camera.
But there’s a lot more to Bearse that is fascinating, including the fact that she was one of the first high-profile lesbians to come out in 1993—years before Ellen DeGeneres—and went on to pursue a career in directing while being a mom. She started out studying acting in New York City under the legendary teacher Sanford Meisner, which is one of the reasons she’s thrilled to return to the Big Apple for her off-Broadway directorial debut with Party Face.
Producers of Party Face, which was a hit in its native Ireland, thought of Bearse to helm the project because the ensemble piece for five women showcases strong female characters with heart and resonance, and underneath the party-premise tackles serious themes. “To see a piece of work that is so strongly a female really has been a delightful experience,” Bearse tells me.
“So often a lot of material written for women is written by men. So it is unique when you can have a full-spectrum creative realization of a project with that strong of a female force behind it.”
Iconic British actor Hayley Mills (The Parent Trap, Pollyanna) leads the ensemble cast as Carmel, an appearance-invested Irish mother with a slightly toxic grip on her troubled daughter, Mollie Mae (played by Gina Costigan). Bearse, 59, admits to being “all fan-girl” about working with Mills.
“Being a kid growing up in the ’60s and ’70s she was a huge role model for me. Here was this young person who was playing these precocious, outspoken, high-spirited, reflective young girls who meant so much to me. Especially in that era. She’s also just absolutely adorable and she has been a dream to work with. She is such a treasure.”
Irish playwright Isobel Mahon has gifted the women with a rich script. “I love the way the play is written and, as we know, the Irish have a way of telling a story, and this piece is no exception. It’s a wonderful and carefully told numbers of stories—each character has their own. There’s so much resonance in each of these women’s lives.”
The play is set in a young woman’s newly re-decorated apartment but all is not as it seems and the perfect surface begins to crack. Fueled by wine, stories unfold and secrets are shared in bristling dialogue that offers an honest look at relationships between women—mothers and daughters, sisters, friends and neighbors—and takes aim at the pressures on women to be perfect even when things are falling apart.
Marriage, mental health, and the real meaning of friendship are all dealt with in an entertaining evening that is a kind of coming out—as complex, flawed women.
“A sense of humor to me about everything is key to surviving in life,” says Bearse. “We’re all broken, so how do we get up each day, and what do we do to get through each day?” asks Bearse. “Carmel has learned to deal by not dealing, by numbing the pain—and many people who function that way. I just find such beauty in each of the characters, their stories, and who these women are, not only within themselves but to each other.”
Carmel, certainly, is the fulcrum in the plot, and performed with elegance and insight by Mills. “She was just up for the fun, and it does take a certain physicality, lots of energy,” says Bearse. “All of the women in Party Face attacked their roles with comedic verve and drive. There is high comedy and farce, but that’s not to discount the moments of the show that soften and resonate and touch on a lot of different issues.”
One of the key issues explored by the play is female friendship and the overwhelming need for women to support each other. It’s an especially well-timed message given the #MeToo movement, which is delivering us the next wave of feminism based on the proviso that women’s voices are heard and are stronger when expressed together. Bearse shares with me that one of the reasons she retired from on-camera work was to avoid the bullying that she endured as an actress and as an out lesbian in “Hollywoodland.”
To come out as she did in 1993 in such a commercial area as television took a lot of courage, but there was no other way for Bearse than to be authentic. “I had been out in my life, and my life was on the set, and so it was a known part of me. People who knew me on the set of Married With Children knew that was who I was and that was a part of my life and that’s how I lived my life.
It was around the birth of my daughter, the tabloids had been circling around me with various stories that I never bothered to answer to. I just went about living my life. Then when the story got out there and I decided they were going to bastardize it, as that type of media does, I decided that this was too sacred an event in my life—being given the gift to raise this child—I wasn’t going to let some trash rag tell the story without the integrity it deserved.
So that’s why I made the choice to come out then. And I had the complete support of all the folks at Married With Children.”
It may surprise some readers to learn that it was on the set of Married With Children—a show that is broadly comic and dependent on gender stereotypes—that Bearse asked the show’s creators for the opportunity to direct, and she was rewarded with their trust, directing the last six seasons of the show.
However, regarding her ongoing career as a working actress, Bearse felt “fractured in terms of being able to fully integrate all of who I was with an image—and image is so much about driving your career forward. That was the hard part.
“There are just a lot of bullies in Hollywood,” she says. “It is a white, male-dominant industry. But women do it too because people operate from a place of such fear in that industry as if it’s going to be taken away from them or somehow it’s going to cost them something if they let their guard down or if they soften.
I’ve found that you can do really good work and be a very well-balanced person. But unfortunately, Hollywood rewards bullies. I don’t need to name names but I just worked with one too many, and I don’t suffer them at all.”
To escape this toxic environment, Bearse moved back to where she grew up—the Southeast—raising her daughter, caring for her elderly parents—and then when she fell in love with a woman in Seattle, she relocated there, where she now teaches and directs, when and where she can.
She’s thrilled about coming to New York as an out-of-town director for Party Face. “New York is such a city full of energy, creativity, and to actually be there to work again is a dream come true. I had shot a series there some years back for Logo, so it’s great fun to have this full circle experience, with my roots in theater. It was tremendous and so unexpected.
I have great memories of New York when I was an acting student there. Experiencing it on that level for the first time was amazing. It’s such a different experience artistically than working in Hollywood. I can understand why people go to New York and they never look back because you’re given the time to develop, to connect, to really find the artistry in one another—from designers to casting to getting the play mounted.
Every step of the way with Party Face was just such a positive experience. In the theater you make these connections with people. It’s like a family.”
As a director, Bearse works to create a nurturing, protective environment and eschew the anti-woman, exploitive power dynamics of the film industry. “I certainly don’t objectify. I always try to fill up the room with a positive attitude as well as provide sort of that safety that I think is really important to bring out the best, creatively.”
She applauds #MeToo and Time’s Up. “It’s about time. It’s devastating the degree to which so many women have suffered. It’s amazing that the momentum is so present but it’s what’s necessary.
The women who have risen up and given their faces are not unlike the gay community and the coming out process which leant a face to the community. We have to show up, we have to own it in order for people to realize, Oh I have a personal connection to this. That’s what it takes for that kind of discrimination to start to fade away.
“Hollywood has always been a horrid place for women to work. There’s just no other way to say it. I was not on the receiving end of some of the horrible, violent acts experienced by a lot of women that have come forward or those who have not yet been able to do that for themselves.
Yet I experienced discrimination almost daily, even behind the camera. I made a conscious effort to not pursue my acting career; I wanted to pursue my career behind the camera, and even there I was met with discrimination—ageism is alive and well, particularly with women.
Bullying is devastating, especially on a daily basis, and in many ways, it was the catalyst that propelled me to say, You don’t have to suffer at the hands of these bullies anymore. And I’ve been a better person for it. My personal life was kept whole and so was my spirit. Lack of kindness, ruthlessness in order to keep moving forward—I just don’t ascribe to it.”
And that’s why directing Party Face has been so rewarding for Bearse. Both backstage and onstage at this female-driven night at the theater has been “so full of grace,” says Bearse. And even here in New York, where there are a million things to do and four million people living out their big city dreams, Bearse’s 25-year-old stand for gay rights has not been forgotten.
“I have had people come up to me at the play—people in the audience will stop and say hello and say, ‘You know what you did meant so much to me’. And there’s nothing in my career in terms of my work that means more to me than people whose lives were touched in a positive way because they were personally struggling or challenged, whether that was because of their internalized homophobia or the homophobia they were experiencing in the world, or people who had gay children. That they remember that means so very much to me, it really does.”