Profile: Marlane Barnes, MFA '10: Interview with A Vampire, The Alcalde

From the website for Texas Exes, the alumni organization of the University of Texas:







 
Interview With the Vampire

By Rose Cahalan in Nov | Dec 2012, TXEX on November 5, 2012

 
Marlane Barnes, MFA ’10, plays the Irish vampire Maggie in the new Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2. She told us how UT prepared her for Hollywood—and what happened when she forgot she was wearing her creepy get-up.


Have you always wanted to act?

I always loved theater, but I’m from Arkansas, where no one makes a living as an actor. So I got an English degree and planned on law school, but then I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer—I just wanted to play one. As an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas, I looked for an MFA program with a lot of support and resources. That’s how I came to UT.

How was your UT experience?

It was three years of immersion in the acting world. At the end, there’s a showcase in New York where you get to meet industry professionals—casting agents, managers, other actors. That’s where I met my current manager. Relationships are everything in this industry.

How did you get the Twilight part?

I did a 30-second audition, and not long after, my manager called to say I got the part. It was very shocking, because you can go to 30, 40 auditions and not book anything.

What don’t people know about Hollywood?

It’s not just that there are so many aspiring actors—it’s that messing up as an actor is really expensive. Movies cost millions of dollars, and if you make a mistake, it’s going to cost a lot of money. That’s why producers want to cast actors with a reputation for showing up on time and being professional. So it’s hard to break in because you don’t have anyone to vouch for you.

Tell us about shooting the film.

It was wonderfully fun and challenging. We shot in Baton Rouge, La., and I was on set for almost three months. I got really homesick and missed my family and friends so much. But it was an unforgettable experience.

What’s your character like?

She’s an Irish vampire named Maggie, and her gift is that she can tell when people are lying. I studied an Irish accent at UT, so that came in handy.

Does playing a vampire bring any unique challenges?

Actors work with their breath a lot, but vampires aren’t supposed to be breathing, because they’re dead. I was very conscious of that—it was tough to hide when I was out of breath. The vampire makeup was the same color as my regular foundation, which was kind of embarrassing. I also wore crazy blood-red contact lenses. I’d forget I was wearing them, and then I’d terrify the crew members with my crazy eyes! Mine and the other Irish vampires’ contacts were extra red to show that we were definitely people-eaters.

What’s the appeal of vampires?

I love that vampires are like humans, but they have all the capabilities of animals. They combine death, immortality, and sex, all in this impossibly beautiful way—they’re the ultimate predators.
Click to view article at the Alcalde on-line . . . .

UT MFA Grad Marlane Barnes Cast in 'Twilight Saga' Film

Published at the Daily Texan, November 18:

UT alum nabs role in new 'Twilight' movie

By Jody Serrano

UT alumna Marlane Barnes only had a vague idea of what the “Twilight Saga” was about before she went in to audition for an opportunity many would kill for: a part in “Breaking Dawn,” the fourth installment of the saga.

Officials gave her the scene and put her on tape ­— the audition took 30 seconds. Three days later, Barnes found out she got the job.

“Over 20 years to prep for that 30 seconds,” Barnes said. “I think the secret is I didn’t bother wanting the job. I didn’t think there was any chance in hell I would get it, so I did my prep watching the movie and reading up on the character and then went in and did it for me.”

Barnes landed the role of Maggie, a new vampire that knows when individuals lie to her in “Breaking Dawn: Part 2,” to be released next year. She graduated from UT in 2010 with a Master of Fine Arts in acting and moved to Los Angeles after graduation to join her boyfriend at the University of Southern California. Barnes said her agents got her the audition because “Twilight” officials were looking for low-profile actors to play the new characters.

Barnes said UT helped prepare her for the movie industry by teaching her to dedicate time to work on her craft and allowed her to experience a taste of the real world.

“The opportunity to make mistakes is really important,” Barnes said. “And it should be in school, on your time, not someone else’s.”

Read full text at Daily Texan on-line . . . .

Rooms, Secondhand Theatre at Uptown Modern, June 7 - 21

Rooms was an unexpected opportunity to inhabit Chekhov's The Three Sisters for a short time on Sunday evenings in June. The announcement -- more of an invitation, really -- was to visit the Prozorov family at their estate, between Acts II and III of The Three Sisters.

This piece may have originated as exercises for the MFA program at the University of Texas. We have seen each of these six vibrant actors elsewhere in town, both in UT productions and elsewhere, including at the Zach Scott and Hyde Park theatres.

You may have had the advantage of seeing St. Ed's production last fall at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre or you may know the play directly. The three sisters of the title are stranded at their provincial estate, yearning to return to Moscow, where they were raised. That hope is diminishing, for their father the General died a year earlier. Their only entertainment is socializing with the gallant men of the artillery regiment stationed for some indefinite time in the town.

Much happens in Chekhov's play, but Rooms takes only the first half as a given.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Rooms: A Reimagining of Chekhov's "The Three Sisters," Secondhand Theatre, June 7, 14 and 21

UPDATE: Click for ALT review of June 28

Received on June 1:

Rooms
A Reimagining of Chekhov's The Three Sisters

Brought to life by the Secondhand Theatre, a company of six MFA actors from the University of Texas, are the previously unwritten moments between Acts II and III of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters.

This site-specific piece invites the audience into the Prozorov's house and casts them as guests of the family. Taken from room to room amidst a home marked for sale, they bear witness to the most private scenes of sexual tension, blood, and tears from a family torn by duty and repression.

The cast of Rooms includes Marlane Barnes, Smaranda Ciceu, Kate deBuys, Lesley Gurule, Melissa Recalde, and Tom Truss.

For a limited engagement, previewing June 7th at 8:00 p.m. with additional peformances on the 14th and 21st.

Located at Uptown Modern, 5453 Burnet Road, Austin, in the Courtyard Shops.
Call 512-452-1200 for reservations, as capacity is limited. Code word: "Olga."
Suggested ticket price on a sliding scale: $5, $10 and $20.

Email secondhandtheatre@gmail.com with additional inquiries.

For more info about Uptown Modern, visit http://www.uptownmodernaustin.com.

An Ideal Husband, Austin Shakespeare/UT Drama at Rollins Theatre, February 11 - March 1

The conventional staging of Oscar Wilde, within the frame of a proscenium, gives us a bright window into the highly mannered scene of London's Victorian upper classes.

For Austin Shakespeare's An Ideal Husband in the Long Center's Rollins Theatre, the audience surrounds the stage. This staging in-the-square gives us a visual kaleidoscope of witty epigrams, paradoxes, brilliant costumes and exquisitely good manners.

There's a technical challenge here, since at any given moment an actor will be standing with his or her back to a quarter of the audience. Anne Ciccolella's direction keeps the actors moving, in Copernican fashion, and the gifted young cast from the UT Theatre Department subtly adjusts position throughout.

Every spectator has a different view of the play, necessarily missing some portion of facial or corporal expression. But stage business is full, diction and accent are at a high level, and vocal characterizations are rich. No part of the audience is short changed.

Advocates of theatre in the round often assert that it creates a closer community of audience as spectator reactions are exchanged across the playing space. The playing space in the Rollins is broad, however, and I found little of that effect. Concentrating on Wilde's words and characters, one easily loses the spectator background.

Beneath the wit and banter of An Ideal Husband, deeply serious outcomes are at risk. Sir Robert Chiltern's political career is in the ascendent. His sister Miss Mabel has set her cap for the brilliant but still noncommittal Lord Goring. Goring's crotchety father Lord Caversham insists upon choosing a spouse for the young man. Into this world comes the amoral, enormously wealthy Mrs. Cheveley of Vienna, threatening the blackmail ruination of one promising aristocrat and the matrimonial ruination of another.

An Ideal Husband is a vivid portrait of a bygone world and age. Wilde, the son of an impoverished Irish aristocrat, an extravagant self-promoter, longed to secure a place in that world. Five years after the 1895 success of this play, he had been disgraced, judged, jailed and was dying at the age of 46, an exile in Paris. The brilliance of the idle life of the British upper classes was largely ended by the Great War of 1914 - 1918.

It's fun to psychoanalyze the piece, seeing it as Wilde's self-promoting joke on that beau monde. For example, the foppish Lord Goring, who is a patent stand-in for Wilde, proves wittier and more effective than any of the other characters. Director Anne Ciccolella recounted another insight in the Q&A after the preview night: much of the tension of the piece is created by the anguish of Sir Robert over a hidden crime in his youth that can alienate the affections of his morally absolutist, adoring wife, Lady Chiltern. Wilde himself had recently married well and was presumably concealing from his wife the homosexuality that would soon ruin him.

The plot is that of a relatively conventional London stage melodrama of the time, with much of the action revolving around letters sent, not destroyed, stolen or misdirected. Sir Robert (Mark Scheibmeir, left) and Lady Chiltern (Sydney Andrews, lead photo above), are a relatively unsurprising married pair, and his exemplary political career seems based more on championing of morality and principal rather than on eloquence.

Lord Caversham (Robert Tolaro, right), constantly annoyed by his son, and the sententious gossip Lady Markby (Janelle Buchanan) are relatively predictable caricatures of the blindly self-important upper class.

Shaun Patrick Tubbs (left) as the Wilde surrogate Lord Goring does not have the bulk or the drawling dismissiveness one might conventionally expect. Instead, he is a lithe, cocky smiling fellow ready to mimic and mock his absurd old Pater but also quick to prove steadfast concern both for his friend Robert and for Robert's lady wife.


Ah, but the villainesse! Verity Branco as the spider lady Mrs. Cheveley (center) is beautiful and coolly efficient. With high cheekbones, perfect diction and a decisiveness betrayed in a measured strut, she is the antithesis of the polite goody-goody world of society. She lives abroad for good reason -- having been expelled from boarding school for stealing, she went on to wed and use up two husbands before lanching into the dubious but highly successful collaboration with a now-deceased European baron. Branco's vigor is captivating and her diction is as precise as a stiletto.

At the opposite end of the female spectrum is the ingenue Miss Mabel. Marlane Barnes bubbles with flirtatious mischief. Her tippy-toeing rushes across the stage manifest a fine sense of physical comedy, all the more comic because of the constraints of society and corsets. Her exquisite nonsense suggests that she does, indeed, share Lord Goring's non-jaded joy for things fine; one can imagine that she will some day become exquisitely scandalous while loving him always to excess . . . a promise of Bloomsbury, a decade or more before those lovely libertines were to flourish.

Wilde has a message -- approximately, "We men adore women for their imperfections but you women will insist on putting your men on a pedestal, obliged to perfection."

Those intent on seeking modern day relevance might force the matter by referring to recent scandals of political life, but I would not take that reading of the tea leaves from this aromatic cup. An Ideal Husband succeeds for what it is -- a witty send-up of conventional melodrama and of the differences between men and women.

"Aielli Unleashed" program on KUT.org -- February 12 interview with director and cast members, including scenes and Michael McKelvey's incidental music (26 minutes)

Audio piece and photos at KUT.org

Promotional article on OutinAmerica.com

Review by KelseyK on Austinist.com, February 20

Review by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin on Statesman's Austin360 blog, February 22

Comment posted on van Ryzin's review, February 24: It is a unique opportunity to bring our performance work off-campus and into the Austin community. The experience for our students is rich and rare as they enjoy a three-week run in a classic play housed in the exquisite Long Center for the Performing Arts. This collaboration seems very right. Hook ‘em! Lucien Douglas, Associate Professor of Theatre & Dance

Review by Laura Clark in the Daily Texan Online, February 24

Review by Barry Pineo in the Austin Chronicle, February 26