A Tradition Plays On
Local actresses Constance Macy and Jen Johansen take center stage in the Indiana Repertory Theatre’s long-running fan favorite A Christmas Carol
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Constance Macy stands in the bustling lobby of the Indiana Repertory Theatre dressed in the floor-skimming costume of Mrs. Cratchit. That night’s showing of A Christmas Carolhad just ended, and audience members were filing out.
As Macy and other cast members chat with guests and collect money for charity, a woman approaches Macy and gives her a hug.
“She said, ‘We’ve enjoyed your work for so many years,’” Macy recalls. “That really lifted me up. That was really special.”
Positive feedback like that is one reason Macy loves performing in A Christmas Carol, the IRT’s long-running holiday classic, which recently kicked off its 16th season.
“I love the response it gets from people,” she says. “I love to hear from people what the show means to them.”
Local actresses Macy and Jen Johansen are two veteran cast members, familiar faces in a show that has a firm place in Indianapolis’ holiday traditions and that each year brings to life Charles Dickens’ timeless message.
“It is a story about compassion and forgiveness, both of which are current themes in my own journey, as they are, I imagine, for many of us,” Johansen says.
Life on stage
Jen Johansen and Constance Macy
Growing up in Fishers, Macy always loved the arts. She took ballet and dance lessons and attended high school plays.
“I was fascinated by the actors,” she says.
After graduating from Hamilton Southeastern High School, Macy enrolled at Indiana University-Bloomington with the intention of earning a journalism degree. Instead, she took several theater classes and declared it her major. Macy was cast in several plays, namely Ah, Wilderness!, Oresteia and Top Girls.
“I got a very well-rounded education in the theater,” Macy says. “I stage managed, worked in the scene shop and swept the floors.”
After earning her degree, Macy watched as a lot of her friends moved to New York City or Los Angeles to start their careers. But this native Hoosier knew that wasn’t for her.
“I never felt I wanted to do that,” she says. “I used to think I should have done that. Thank god, because I never would have found what I have here.”
Her first post-graduation role was in A Dickens of a Christmas Carol at the IRT. It was part of a three-play series the Junior Works company put on that also included Young Abe Lincoln and Tales of Olympus.
“Then I went through a period where I didn’t have a lot of work,” she says. She left Actors’ Equity Association and worked in the development office at the Civic Theatre before the acting bug bit again and she started auditioning at the IRT.
Since 1997, theater-goers have watched Macy evolve in her roles on the mainstage, including Clara Einsford Hill in Pygmalion, Kate Keller in The Miracle Worker, Tytania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Miss Stephanie in To Kill a Mockingbird, Becky Foster in Becky’s New Car, which she calls her IRT “gold watch,” and, most recently, Lost, a solo show in which she played Cathy, a woman looking for her brother lost at sea.
A Christmas Carol director and longtime IRT Dramaturg Richard J. Roberts, who met Macy at IU, lauds her for her work in Lost.
“It was funny but always very sad and emotional,” Roberts says. “Constance took the audience on that journey with her.”
Constance Macy
Macy’s love of theater extends beyond the traditional shows. In 1998, after a night of talking about theater with friends –– “a lot of red wine was involved as well,” she says –– the ShadowApe Theatre Company was born. The small group, which includes Macy’s husband Rob Koharchik, Johansen, and Johansen’s husband Rob, has put on shows like Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope; Welcome to the Monkey House, based on short stories by Kurt Vonnegut; and Life is a Dream, a 17th-century play by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca.
The group also produced a show, Not A Peep, for the 2010 IndyFringe Festival.
The shows were fairly unconventional, Macy admits, and they didn’t attract huge crowds.
“There was a small group of patrons that loved what we did,” she says. “It never really took off. But it was certainly satisfying.”
In her 20-plus year career, Macy has experienced her share of ups and downs, namely not getting parts for which she’s auditioned. But she knows that acting is what she’s supposed to be doing with her life.
“Beyond retail and serving coffee, I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t doing this,” she says. “I do doubt myself. I do beat myself up a lot. But then I buck up and keep trying. My glass has always been half full.”
IRT Artistic Director Janet Allen calls Macy one of the city’s “top-flight” actors.
“She’s really committed herself to working in this community,” Allen says. “Connie is a real treasure. She’s an excellent actor.”
Macy and Rob, who met while working together at the Civic, live in Fishers with their son Mike. In her spare time, Macy enjoys volunteering at Mike’s school, gardening, riding her bike and spending time with her parents.
Back to her roots
Like Macy, Jen Johansen grew up in the area, attending Park Tudor School from second to 12th grade. After graduation, she went to Hollins University in Virginia for one year before transferring to Hanover College. Although she had been in productions at Park Tudor, it was at Hanover where she really grew to love acting.
“I wasn’t the strongest student, I have to admit,” she says with a laugh. “Theater was the place I felt competent and comfortable, and it helped give me confidence for the rest of my life. Something about the environment and creating stories I loved.”
Hanover had a small but fiercely devoted group of theater students, who inspired Johansen. Former department chair Tom Evans also had a strong influence on the budding actress. She recalls him telling her, “You’ve got it, but if you could do anything else, do it. The only reason to do it is if you can’t not do it.”
Jen Johansen
Johansen followed her dream to Kentucky where she completed an apprenticeship at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. She then moved to New York City and went to a few “cattle call” auditions. The results were somewhat disheartening.
“I didn’t have the discipline to really hit the streets every day,” Johansen says. “I found it disconcerting. I thought, This feels like crap.”
She moved back to Indiana and enrolled at IUPUI to earn a communications degree. Johansen admits she never really planned to go into the communications field. For her, it’s always been about acting.
She started auditioning again and landed a role in Lunching at the Phoenix Theatre. It was at that audition where she met her husband Rob.
At the IRT, Johansen has played a wide variety of roles, including Helena in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Viola in Twelfth Night, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Mother and Chief Elder in The Giver and Portia in Julius Caesar, which closed last month.
When Johansen joined ShadowApe Theatre Company in 2004, it was the start of a close friendship with Macy.
“Constance is like a sister to me,” Johansen says. “She is my good, good friend, she’s a confidante and a cheerleader. We are childish together, we cry together, we laugh till we cry together.
“We’ve weathered projects together when we didn’t particularly like each other, but like family, there was always a deeper love that saw our friendship through.”
They’re not sure how or why –– maybe it’s the number of times they’ve shared the IRT and ShadowApe stages, but Macy and Johansen often are confused for one another. Macy has wavy red hair while Johansen is a brunette, and there’s a 2-inch height difference. Johansen recalls an instance during Lost’s run when a guest said he loved her performance the previous night.
“I said, ‘Thanks, I’ll pass it along to her!’” Johansen says with a laugh.
Allen says she’s enjoyed watching Johansen grow up through the roles she’s played.
“She’s becoming more of a lead woman,” Allen says. “I love watching actresses grow up through roles.”
This past summer, thanks to a grant through the Arts Council of Indianapolis, Johansen studied everything from period dance to stage combat acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
“It was really life-changing,” she says. “There’s so much to be said for being older and going back and being a student. It was an incredibly rich experience.”
Roberts says he loves working with Johansen because of her penchant for uncovering her characters’ quirks, which makes them more meaningful to audiences.
“She never gives up that process,” he says.
Johansen and her husband, who live in Indianapolis, recently started teaching themselves the guitar. The couple enjoys entertaining at home, playing with their dogs and spending time with family.
In this year’s A Christmas Carol, she shares the stage with Rob, who plays Bob Cratchit. Johansen admits it’s tough for them to leave work behind when they come home. Theatre is just one of the many interests they share.
“We definitely like to bring it home,” she says. “There are so many times where I think, I can’t believe people pay me to do this.”
Carrying on a tradition
Being part of A Christmas Carol is a labor of love for Macy and Johansen. Both have appeared in a variety of roles –– Macy has played every female character except the laundress.
This year, Macy plays Mrs. Cratchit, Mrs. Fezziwig and the Plump Sister, while Johansen takes on the roles of Sister of Mercy, Roses Sister and the Charwoman.
“I feel lucky to have such juicy characters,” Johansen says. “The Charwoman is so different from me. She’s a nasty, growling woman.”
It’s not difficult to play several different characters in the same show, Macy says. She loves it.
“It’s fun and fabulous. You develop each character, and when you put that costume on, that’s who you’re playing. When you step off stage, change your clothes and then come on as someone else, it’s magical, and I love that.”
Roberts, who is in his second year of directing the show, equates inheriting A Christmas Carol to taking over the reins of a giant ship in the middle of the ocean.
“It’s been going along for 20 years and now all of a sudden I’m the captain,” he says.
He’s made a few changes to keep it fresh, namely trimming the script to fit the show’s 90 minutes, but his belief is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“This year, I’m a little more open to experiment,” he says. “I said, ‘Let’s go wild and see what we find out.’ We won’t use all those new ideas. Lots of times the reason we’ve done it for years is that it works.
“It’s the most effective way to tell the story.”
The show has had various Scrooges, but the majority of the actors return year after year, often in different roles. This year, in fact, there’s only one new cast member, Allen says.
“It is part of the audience’s expectation of the tradition that they see some of the same actors,” she says. “And I love giving the opportunity to local actors so they’re home for the holidays.”
Despite those small changes, the show’s timeless message endures. Those involved say its rich tradition is another big reason crowds return year after year.
“The holidays are about tradition and creating family traditions,” Allen says. “The challenge is to have some meaningful aspect of the holidays. It’s not about how we spend our money.
“Things like A Christmas Carol really fit that bill. It’s both entertaining and enlightening.”
It’s a powerful story, Roberts says, and one with which he’s intimately familiar. Growing up, he read A Christmas Carol every year.
“It’s easy to find ourselves in the story,” he says.
Most people can relate to Nephew Fred with a grouchy relative, Bob Cratchit who doesn’t get along very well with his boss, or even Ebenezer Scrooge, he says.
“We’ve gone through hard situations and turned away from the world and gone to those dark places in our soul. It’s a very compelling story to see what the spirits do to try and pull him out of that.
“That’s a beautiful story to see. It gives us hope.”
The choices Scrooge makes –– those that shut him off from the world –– serve as a reminder that we do have a choice to open up to others, Johansen says.
“It’s good to be reminded about the connectedness of all of us and how important it is to reach out to help people,” she says. “There’s a lot of sweetness watching a man in so much pain and solitude being able to transform to the other side and open his heart again. Maybe we all need to be reminded to open our hearts.”
Part of the show’s success can also be attributed to the camaraderie of the cast and the respect they have for each other.
“We have so much fun together,” Macy says. “There are no bad apples. I love working with these people.”
Performing in three shows a day can definitely wear on you, Macy says. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It is hard and it’s tiring for sure, but I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing for the holidays.”
Girl Power
Though the Indiana Repertory Theatre is celebrating its 16th year of A Christmas Carol, this year also marks a first: The parts of Tiny Tim and Boy Scrooge are shared by two girls –– Muncie resident Gracie Evans, 9, and Indianapolis resident Kalea Spurlock, also 9.
Evans, a fourth-grader at St. Lawrence School, first experienced theater when she auditioned for Sleeping Beauty at the Indianapolis Civic Theatre about two years ago. Since then, she’s also appeared in Schoolhouse Rock. This is her first year in A Christmas Carol.
Gracie Evans
Evans is unfazed about playing a male character.
“In my school productions, I played Tiny Tim, so I’m not too concerned about playing a boy,” she says.
She’s excited to be on stage and have fun with her fellow actors. In her spare time, she likes to read and play with her sister and two brothers, one of whom was in Sleeping Beauty with her.
“He really likes doing plays with me,” Evans says.
Spurlock is a third-grader at Eagle Creek Elementary School. She’s been in The Wizard of Oz, The Velveteen Rabbit and Willy Wonka at the Civic. This is her second year in A Christmas Carol.
Her favorite part of the show is the Fezziwig dance.
“It’s really fun, it’s really exotic and it’s very energized,” she says.
Kaela Spurlock
Spurlock, who also plays Baby Fred, likes to draw or play with her friends when she’s not on stage.
Artistic Director Janet Allen says it’s not unusual for the IRT to cast girls in boys’ roles.
“It just depends on who auditions and how strong they are as performers,” she says.
Director Richard J. Roberts says Spurlock, whom he worked with last year, is “bubbly and fun” and describes Evans as “adorable and thoughtful.”
In casting children’s roles this year, Roberts says, “we’re really looking for that sparkle and the ability to show vulnerability, but also liveliness and heart.”
“I picked a smart bunch of kids,” he says with a laugh. “I’m really happy about that.”
