Posts Tagged Carolyn Pool

Calendar Girls: Featuring Carolyn Pool

As part of our ongoing Meet the Cast of Calendar Girls Blog Series, let us introduce you to Carolyn Pool:

pool-carolyn

ROLE:  Celia, 40s

AS DESCRIBED IN PLAYWRIGHT TIM FIRTH’S SCRIPT:

The fact that Celia is in the WI is the greatest justification of its existence.  A woman more at home in a department store than a church hall, . . . she always feels like she’s drifted in from another world.  Which she has.  She is particularly enamored of Jessie [see blog featuring Linda Kelsey], and despite the fact Jessie has very little time for most Celias of this world, there is a rebelliousness in Celia to which Jessie responds.  It’s what sets Celia apart from the vapid materialism of her peer group and made her defect.  Ideal car—Porsche, which she has.  Ideal holiday—Maldives, where she often goes.

DIRECTOR MARY FINNERTY’S COMMENT: 

Carolyn Pool had a deep feeling for Celia as a human being but also for the physicality of an upper class English society woman who is ready to live among middle class women as an equal.  Carolyn also has a great comedic sense and incredible sense of space.  Carolyn always seems to instinctually move where and how Celia would.  She also has a very deep understanding of the play as a whole and I love that about working with her.

QUESTION FOR CAROLYN:

Celia, more than the others, must move in a circle of upper-crust society with its unspoken but strict mores.  What did you learn from playing her?

When it comes to issues of class within this play, Celia is sort of on her own.  She is called a “trophy wife” by her friends, her husband is older and retired, and probably doesn’t pay enough attention to her.  She is considered beautiful by all and probably has been considered so her entire life.  This is probably why she doesn’t seem to have many female friends in her own “class” (the golf club girls).  But, the women of the WI hold her affection I think because they treat her as one of their own.  True, they don’t always know what to make of her, but I do believe she has, for the most part, become one of them, and is especially close to Jesse and Cora.

As for what I have learned playing Celia, it’s been interesting playing a woman who is used to being primarily valued for her beauty, but who does not let it define, limit or shame her.  She has a quiet and dry sense of humor, and, while she may be considered a bit “cool” and superficial on the outside, she does care deeply about issues affecting the women of the WI and shows her affection in subtle ways.

CAST BACKGROUND:

Park Square 2 Sugars, Room for Cream; August: Osage County; Dead Man’s Cell Phone; The Sisters Rosensweig; Proof; The Last Night of Ballyhoo; Born Yesterday
Representative Theatre Hippodrome Theatre: Women in Jeopardy; Old Log Theater: Almost, Maine; Illusion Theater: Three Viewings; Gremlin Theatre: Orson’s Shadow; Jungle Theater: Honour
Training B.A., Augsburg College
Awards/Other Artist/Mentor for The Chicago Avenue Project; Ivey Award winner 2008 (Ensemble, Orson’s Shadow) and 2013 (Ensemble, 2 Sugars, Room for Cream); Best Actress 2011 SoCal Film Festival (Rotations of the Earth)  Upcoming Projects 2016 MN Fringe Festival: Sometimes There’s Wine

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