What’s your name?
Ingrid Smith.
Who are you playing in the show?
Violet.
What town are you from?
I’m from Torrington.
Is this your first time at Hole in the Wall Theater?
It is. This is my first time.
How did you get into theater and what is your background in theater?
I always knew that I was going to be in theater, even when I was very little. There was never a question of there ever being anything else. I went to UConn for theater, studied there, went out to California afterwards, and went to New York. I have been doing this since I was about six. So that’s fifty-odd years.
Describe your character.
Violet is, she is so messed up. She is stuck in a life that she did not want to have, and had always hoped that it would be better than it is. She had thought that Beverly would lift her out of it, but he failed to do that, so a lot of resentment built up on her part, but they never really dealt with it. So she turns to pills and, and she smokes a lot, which a lot of people do. They clash a lot. Even though they have separated multiple times, they still come back together. Mostly for the girls. The girls’ lives have not benefited, really, from the parents being together.
If you could give your character advice, what would it be?
Stop looking for somebody else to make it better, and make it better yourself.
Why do you think the show got a Pulitzer Prize for Drama?
There isn’t a moment in the show that’s not some kind of something that somebody in the audience is going to have a piece of in their own life. It’s so, so much dysfunction all put together and so well crafted in its entanglements.
Do you have a favorite book?
Yes. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Do you have a favorite poem?
I can’t remember off the top of my head. E. E. Cummings. It was the poem that was used in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Do you have a favorite drink, alcoholic or otherwise?
Coffee.
Any particular way?
Any way that it will come, but if I’m making it myself, it’s gonna have cream and sugar.
What’s a fun fact about yourself?
If you turn the lights off on me, and I’m standing in the middle of the room, I’ll fall.
Oh no, why?
Because my brain can’t, I have a weird brain thing. In the dark, unless I can feel something to tell me which way is up, I lose sense of up and down, and I’ll just fall over.
Okay, well, we’ll make sure not to turn the light off on you. Last question. Is there anything else you’d like to say? Other ventures? Shoutouts?
Shoutouts to all the people who have had patience with me this time, going through all of it. To my kids, and to my close friends who believe in me.
Appended: “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond,” by E.E. Cummings
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands