Marcia Haufrecht

Marcia Haufrecht is an American actress, playwright and director, as well as a noted acting teacher and coach. A life member of Actors Studio, and a longtime member of The Ensemble Studio Theatre, she is also the founder and artistic director of the Off-Off-Broadway company, The Common Basis Theatre.

Early life

Haufrecht was the first of three children born to Herbert and Judith Haufreucht, the former a noted pianist, composer, folklorist and editor. A Manahattan native, born and bred, Haufrecht attended Performing Arts High School, graduating in 1954 as a dancer.

Career

Dance

Haufrecht said that Broadway was scarcely clamoring for "a barefoot, modern dancer", much less for one of Haufrecht's diminutive stature and limited experience. She made her Off-Broadway debut as an actress that September at the Cherry Lane Theatre, with a small part in the Studio 12 limited-run revival of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies. Her Broadway and her professional dancing debuts occurred two months later, when she was signed for the musical, Plain and Fancy. The show's choreographer, Helen Tamiris was instrumental in being included in the show. The show's producers changed Haufrecht's professional name to Howard, and so she remained for at least six years.
In the summer of 1955, Haufrecht toured nationally with Can-Can, a part that she attributed to fortuitous timing:

I think the only reason they hired me was because it was in the dead of summer, and the only people that showed up to the audition were strippers; they weren't really dancers. So they had to hire me; I was the only dancer that showed up.

Before she was 20, Haufrecht turned her attention to acting, as she told The Montreal Gazette in 1969, "because I hated being part of the background. I felt so superfluous. And I felt I had something to say... It was my ego." In 2012, Haufrecht said that her early career change, however rewarding in the long run, was born of necessity:

After I was done with Can-Can, I auditioned for a lot of shows, and I couldn't get anything... One day, I auditioned - I don't know if it was Damn Yankees - it was a Bob Fosse show. And I'm down to the last fifteen and he needed twelve, or something like that. He pulls me aside and says, "I'd love to use you, Marcia. You're a wonderful dancer, you really are. But you're too short." I said to myself, "That's it; I'm outta here. I'm not dancing anymore."

Acting

Within a year or so, Haufrecht was working with Nola Chilton, a New York-based acting teacher and director. Haufrecht studied with Chilton for approximately four years, culminating in her participation in an Off-Broadway revival of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, staged by Chilton.
Village Voice critic Michael Smith, praised both performance and production. However, she seriously contemplated giving up acting altogether because of dissatisfaction with her own contribution and with the quality of her work in general and her perceived lack of progress. Quickly dissuaded by her colleagues, Leibman in particular, Haufrecht followed the latter's advice and joined him at The Actors Studio to meet with studio director Lee Strasberg. Allowed to sit in on sessions on an interim basis, Haufrecht eventually earned her full membership via audition.
A member of the Studio since at least 1964, Haufrecht is a veteran of stage and screen, in roles ranging from White Cargo's exotic femme fatale, Tondeleyo, to Richard III's eloquent nemesis, Queen Elizabeth, opposite Al Pacino. She has performed at Lincoln Center, La MaMa, The Public Theater, with The Ensemble Studio Theatre, Center Stage in Baltimore, at the Adelphi Festival Theatre in Garden City, The Open Stage in Sarasota, in Montreal at Place des Arts, and in Berlin at the Friends of the Opera Theatre. Haufrecht's film appearances have, in recent years, included The Producers, The Night Listener, Anamorph, and Win Win; on TV, she has been seen in The Sopranos, as well as Law & Order, Law and Order: SVU, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
In April 2001, more than 20 years after its first production, Tennessee Williams' Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? premiered in New York at Haufrecht's Common Basis Theatre, with Haufrecht starring. Daily News critic Howard Kissel wrote, "The play's heady combination of black humor and poetry is best handled by Marcia Haufrecht, as the woman pining for her former boarder." Ken Jaworski of Off-Off-Broadway Review added:

As Louise McBride, Marcia Haufrecht was exquisite: a frail woman struggling to appear strong, an aging southern belle masking loneliness behind false laughter. "Even in a dream one can suffer," Louise claims. Haufrecht embodied the premise, projecting a drowsy, fatigued lonesomeness with each action and word.

The previous month, Haufrecht had garnered even stronger praise from Off-Off-Broadway Review's Doug DeVita as Common Basis staged another, less heralded premiere, Grace Cavalieri's Pinecrest Rest Haven:

A frail-looking woman, her white hair tied up in a simple purple ribbon, enters a peach-and-white nursing-home waiting room and plaintively asks if anyone has seen her husband. The question, asked with a heartbreaking, bewildered innocence by the haunting Marcia Haufrecht, is a startlingly lucid depiction of the loss of clarity that can come with advanced age... the one thing this production had going for it was the presence of Haufrecht, who effortlessly rose above the obvious material and gave a luminous, moving performance of concise truth... As the late, great Madeline Kahn once said about her own work: "I have appeared in crap, but I have never treated it as such. Never." Haufrecht obviously goes by that same standard, and her performance displayed a level of professionalism that most actors would do well to emulate.

Writing

From a playwright whose initial motivation had simply been to provide – at a director/colleague's request – an interesting acting vehicle for herself, Haufrecht's plays have been produced in New York City by Common Basis Theatre, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Actors Studio, and, in upstate New York, by Performing Arts of Woodstock. Around the country, her work has been performed in Texas, Florida, in San Francisco, and, in Southern California, by Company of Angels and CSU Fullerton. Abroad, her plays have been staged in New Zealand, Australia at La Mama in Melbourne, and at the Kultur im Gugg in Austria.

Directing

As a director, Haufrecht has staged both original works and revivals at The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Actors Studio, The Barrow Street Theatre, The Common Basis Theatre, and in Australia, Portugal, and Austria.

Teaching

A student of Lee Strasberg from the early 1960s until his death, Haufrecht taught at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute for five years; later, she worked for two years as an adjunct professor in Columbia University's graduate film program. Haufrecht has taught and coached privately for over thirty years; her students include Ellen Barkin, Alec Baldwin, Uma Thurman, Janine Turner, John Leguizamo, Debi Mazar, Loren Dean, David Duchovny, Ian Buchanan, and Harvey Keitel. She taught for several years in Australia, and in Austria; more recently, she has taught, and continues to teach, in Lisbon, Portugal, since the mid-1990s. In New York, Haufrecht was on the faculty of The Actors Studio MFA program at The New School for Social Research.

Stage and screen credits

Theatre (partial listing)

These are acting credits except where otherwise indicated.

Opened	Title	Written by	Theater Company	Directed by	Role
1954-09-08	The Flies	Euripides	Cherry Lane Theatre	Denis Vaughan	Third Fury
1955-01-27	Plain and Fancy	Music - Albert Hague / Lyrics - Arnold Horwitt / Book - Joseph Stein, Will Glickman	The Mark Hellinger Theatre	Morton DaCosta	Dancer
1955-06-25	Can-Can	Music & lyrics - Cole Porter / book - Abe Burrows	National Tour	Abe Burrows	Dancer
1960-10-25	Dead End	Sidney Kingsley	Orphans Unlimited / 41st Street Theatre	Nola Chilton	Francie
1960-12-29	White Cargo	Leon Gordon	Players Theatre	Sam Rosen	Tondeleyo
1964-06-22	The Three Sisters	Anton Chekhov	The Actors Studio Theatre / Morosco Theatre	Lee Strasberg	Carnival person
1965-01-06	Galileo	Bertolt Brecht	Theatre of the Living Arts	Andre Gregory	Street singer
1968-01-25	Tom Paine	Paul Foster	La MaMa	Tom O'Horgan	Principal
1968-04-11	Having Fun In the Bathroom	Leonard Melfi	La MAMa	Edward Setrakian	Felicia
1969-06-15	Our Bed is Green	Aviva Ravel	Place des Arts	Howard Ryshpan	Rivka
1972-10-__	Once Again and Yet Again / Night / Eve	Marcia Haufrecht	Performing Arts of Woodstock	NA	Written by
1973-02-__	Richard III	William Shakespeare	Theater Company of Boston	NA	Queen Elizabeth
1973-08-__	The Independence of Striva Kowardsky	Marcia Haufrecht	Performing Arts of Woodstock	NA	Written by
1974-10-30	Mert and Phil	Anne Burr	New York Shakespeare Festival / Vivian Beaumont Theater	Joseph Papp	Mert, Lucille
1977-11-17	Eulogy for a Small Time Thief	Miguel Piñero	Ensemble Studio Theatre	Jack Gelber	Tina
1978-02-14	Curse of the Starving Class	Sam Shepard	New York Shakespeare Festival / Public Theater	Robert Woodruff	Ella
1979-04-03	I Don't Know Where You're Coming From At All	Shirley Lauro	Ensemble Studio Theatre	NA	Miss Sarah Berlin
1979-05-02	Welfare	Marcia Haufrecht	Ensemble Studio Theatre	Anthony McKay	Written by
1981	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	NA	New York Shakespeare Festival / Public Theater	NA	Mme. Muniere
1981-04-21	On Bliss Street in Sunnyside	Marcia Haufrecht	The Actors Studio	NA	Alegra Katz
1981-10-28	Accumulated Baggage	Marcia Haufrecht	American Theatre of Actors	Sharon Chatten	NA
1982-07-08	The House of Blue Leaves	John Guare	Adelphi Festival Theater		Bunny
1982-1983	On Bliss Street in Sunnyside	Marcia Haufrecht	Siesta Keys Actors Theatre	NA	Written by
1984-03-09	Bliss Street	Marcia Haufrecht	The Open Stage	William Shroder	Alegra Katz
1988-09-27	Full Moon & High Tide in the Ladies Room	Marcia Haufrecht	Company of Angels / West End Stage	Carol Ries	Written by
1989-05-__	Welfare	Marcia Haufrecht	Minority Actors Guild / South Dallas Cultural Center	NA	Written by
1989-11-__	An Exchange	Marcia Haufrecht	La Mama (Melbourne) / La Mama Theatre	Marcia Haufrecht	Written by & Directed by
1993-09-16	Full Moon & High Tide in the Ladies Room	Marcia Haufrecht	Creative Voices Theatre Company / Creative Place Theatre	Diane Cossa	Written by
1994-03-__	Promethea Bound and Sisyphus Too	Marcia Haufrecht	La Mama / Napier Street Theatre	Marcia Haufrecht	Written by & Directed by
1996-03-14	The House of Nancy Dunn	Music - Steve Weisberg / Andy Craft / Howard Pflanzer	La MaMa	John James Hickey	Gloria Doria
2000-10-26	Full Moon & High Tide in the Ladies Room	Marcia Haufrecht	Common Basis Theatre	Marcia Haufrecht	Written by & Directed by
2001-03-15	Pinecrest Rest Haven	Grace Cavalieri	Common Basis Theatre	Amy Coleman	Mrs. P
2001-04-12	Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?	Tennessee Williams	Common Basis Theatre	Dan Isaac	Louise McBride
2009-01-20	The Daughters of Eve	Mark Borkowski	Barrow Street Theatre	Marcia Haufrecht	Directed by
2009-12-__	The Daughters of Eve	Mark Borkowski	Cherry Lane Studio Theatre	Marcia Haufrecht	Directed by