Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman in ?Assisted Living? at Odyssey Theatre
When the premiere of Assisted Living opens Friday at the Odyssey Theatre, Winnie Holzman and Paul Dooley will bring a long-germinating joint project to fruition.
The married team? ? each of them an accomplished showbiz veteran ? co-wrote and star in this two-hander. They first envisioned the seriocomic vehicle more than 25 years ago, when they penned about 30 pages. The final working draft was completed only a few months ago, and it?s being refined during rehearsals. They agree that seeing this project come together has been worth the wait. ?Every decade or so we?ve picked it up again and said we were going to finish it,? says Holzman, ?but it hadn?t happened.?
Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman
Wed since 1984, Holzman and Dooley share passions for writing and acting. Both have enjoyed separate careers that have occasionally dovetailed, when Dooley appeared in some of the television series scripted by Holzman. She created, co-executive produced and wrote most of the episodes of the series My So-Called Life, and she has written for other notable programs, including thirtysomething and more recently, Once and Again.
Yet she is perhaps most widely known for her Tony-nominated book for Stephen Schwartz?s 2003 musical blockbuster Wicked. Referring to this property?s benefits to herself and her family, she remarks, ?Wicked has been an incredible blessing in our lives for many reasons. Stephen is very intuitive and had an instinct he and I would work well together. We enjoyed a great collaboration and had a lot of fun. It?s such a great feeling to step out of your comfort zone, work very hard, and then see the show connect.?? Holzman adds that she is thrilled to have been tapped to adapt her Wicked libretto into a screenplay for the long-planned film version of the Broadway show, currently in development. The production and release schedules are still to be announced by Universal Pictures, which also produced the Broadway musical.
Holzman, who was born in New York and raised in Long Island, recalls her career path: ?I started out wanting to do both writing and acting, though at first I was just writing poetry and stories.? ?She said that the big turning point occurred when she and some college friends formed a comedy group, writing their own material. ?That?s when it all sort of came together,? she adds.
Winnie Holzman and Paul Dooley
When she was studying theater at New York University, Holzman was mentored by noted writer-director Arthur Laurents, and she worked with such formidable talents as Stephen Sondheim. While studying there, she co-wrote a musical called Birds of Paradise, creating the book and lyrics with David Evans, who composed the music. ?Laurents? connections led to a 1987 Off-Broadway run that Laurents directed.
Holzman admits ?it wasn?t a hit, but it certainly taught me a lot about life and about writing. You know how you hear that life sort of speaks to you. The message I received was that my writing was going to take center stage for me.? Yet Holzman has enjoyed acting ?between writing jobs over the years, in films such as Jerry Maguire and TV?s Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as in some episodes of the series for which she served as writer.
Dooley?s diverse career includes work as a clown and standup comic (including gigs on Jack Paar?s Tonight Show), as well as many stage appearances. He was in the 1954 New York revival of Threepenny Opera along with Charlotte Rae, Beatrice Arthur, Lotte Lenya, and John Astin, and the original Broadway ?production of The Odd Couple, directed by Mike Nichols (Dooley first played one of the poker cronies, and eventually replaced Art Carney as Felix). ?He wrote for the first season of the popular PBS children?s series The Electric Company.
Paul Dooley with Robin Williams in ?Popeye.? Photo courtesy Paramount
Yet he is perhaps most widely known for his roles in Robert Altman films such as Popeye and A Wedding, and cult-movie hits such as Breaking Away and Sixteen Candles, as well as TV?s Curb Your Enthusiasm. He frequently has played blustery but lovable fathers, but the breadth of his acting accomplishments is much broader. He earned Emmy nominations for his regular roles on Dream On and The Practice.
The West Virginia-born Dooley met Holzman in an improv workshop in New York in the early 1980s; they became friends and then married in 1984. Shortly after that, Holzman made her professional debut as a writer for the stage with Birds in 1987, and Dooley subsequently landed a lead role in the television sitcom Coming Of Age. So the couple and their young daughter, Savannah, moved to LA, along with Dooley?s three children from a previous marriage.
Dooley has balanced writing and acting throughout much of his career. ??The beginning of writing for me was really my work with Second City in New York,? he says. ?I worked with all of the originals ? Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris ? people like that. When you are in Second City, you are all writers. You just don?t have a pen.? He subsequently did a lot of writing in commercials, a field that he says had been lucrative for him as a performer while he waited for his major career break, which he attributes to Altman seeing him in a play and beginning to cast him in his films.
Family Ties
Family collaborations have long seemed second nature in the Dooley household. Dooley?s son Adam (Holzman?s stepson) co-writes screenplays with his father, including a recently completed untitled piece, an autobiographical coming-of-age story inspired by Dooley?s West Virginia upbringing. Dooley is currently shopping this piece around. Holzman worked with their daughter, screenwriter Savannah Dooley, on ABC Family?s recent series Huge, which included a part for Paul. (?How did I get in that?? he quips.) He also appeared in episodes of Holzman?s My So-Called Life and thirtysomething.? Holzman observes, ?It?s kind of fun working with family. And I like to think there?s a kind of shorthand in our communications. We have the same sensibilities by growing up together.?
Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman
Assisted Living is the first full-length Holzman-Dooley script, but the couple had a previous? taste of co-writing a vehicle for themselves in 2001 ? the 10-minute novelty piece Post-Its (Notes on a Marriage), which they describe as similar to the readers-theater favorite, Love Letters. The playlet spins its romantic tale in the form of a series of post-it notes that the two characters leave for one another. It has been published in anthologies and separately and has become a popular vehicle in evenings of short works.
Rogue Machine Theatre asked the couple to perform it for a benefit evening last year, and they loved the experience, Holzman reports. It whetted their appetite for finally completing and performing the more ambitious, two-act play in their trunk, Assisted Living. According to Holzman, ?The benefit performances were so much fun, and people seemed to really enjoy the play. So we sort of looked at each other, and said, ?We need something longer than 10 minutes in our trunk.??
Another twist of fate appears to have intervened. Dooley explains, ?We were in New York when Hurricane Sandy hit, and we found ourselves stuck in a hotel room. There was no subway, no theater, no movies, and our meetings were cancelled. We were kind of stuck together there for 48 hours. ?What to do? So that was a big turning point. We got most of the script completed that week.?
Putting It Together
Holzman is extremely protective about revealing the script?s surprises, but it?s clear from press materials that there are four characters in the two-actor vehicle. We also know that Dooley initially plays a veteran soap opera actor facing an uncertain future, and Holzman plays his former makeup artist and longtime girlfriend.? The play is described as a look at the way we change each other?s lives ? sometimes without even knowing it.
Paul Dooley
So how did this piece make it from a New York hotel suite last October to the Odyssey stage in early April? Explains Dooley, ?Director Larry Biederman is a good friend of ours, so we called to ask him to help us get the play produced here.? Biederman called the Odyssey, and a slot was available.
Holzman elaborates. ?It was sooner than we had pictured. But it was one of those things when you kind of realize, it?s either now or never. It was like being on a diving board, but we asked ourselves when else would we be able to do it. Other things were going on in our lives.? ?So the project went forward, full speed ahead.
Dooley adds, ?We have been fine-tuning the script all along. We didn?t just write it in a minute. It has had draft after draft.? We change it every day in rehearsal. We don?t agree about everything, but I guess Rodgers and Hammerstein didn?t either.?
Biederman, who has worked in the local theater scene for many years, quickly lined up a production team for the show, which is relatively simple technically. Rehearsals commenced March 21. They have to be scheduled around Biederman?s acting classes, so there are a greater number of half-day rehearsals compared to the more typical full days. ?Dooley notes, ?And of course, instead of going to the movies, we run lines at home. We?re like little goldfish in a bowl, so to speak.?
As these excited but anxious collaborators find opening night approaching rather quickly, Holzman breaks the tension with an anecdote from a trip to New York, from which they had just returned a day earlier. ?We were in a limo going to the hotel, and we were running lines in the back seat while the driver made no sound. He seemed oblivious.? But at the end, when we got to the hotel, we had stopped in the middle of the first scene. He turned and said, ?What was that? What happened? He was involved. That was sort of fun to me because I had no inkling he had been listening. At first, he must have thought we were having a conversation. So we said to him, ?That?s something that we wrote.? It made me laugh, because he was like our first forced audience.? And perhaps he was a good omen from the theater gods.
***All photos by Michael Lamont.
Assisted Living, Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. 90069. Opens Friday. Fri-Sat 8 pm., Sun 2 pm, through May 12. Tickets: $25-30. www.assistedlivingtheplay.com. 310-477-2055.
Source: http://www.lastagetimes.com/2013/04/dooley-and-holzman-open-assisted-living-at-odyssey/
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