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April 10, 2009
Rosy Frier-Dryden as Rose
Actress plays role of Holocaust heroine in benefit performance.
OLGA LIVSHIN
It is no surprise that during Chutzpah! 2008, Rosy Frier-Dryden was a success in her role of Rose, the heroine of Martin Sherman's one-woman play Rose. The actress and her character not only share the same name, there is personal affinity between the two women: both are Jewish and both are in love with books. They even express that love the same way.
"I fell in love with words," says Sherman's Rose. "I'm in love with words," confessed Rosy Frier-Dryden, echoing her character's sentiment.
Sherman's play is Rose's rambling monologue. As the 80-year-old woman recounts her life story from the stage, the public is travelling in a time machine with her – from a shtetl in Ukraine in the 1920s to Florida on the verge of the 21st century. The tragedies Rose shared with millions of European Jews – a pogrom in her hometown, the Warsaw Ghetto, the deaths of her husband and daughter, Exodus 1947 sailing into disaster and Rose's ensuing emigration to America – stand in sharp contrast against her quiet words, filled with bittersweet, typically Jewish humor. Then there are the countless shivahs she sits for the dead.
Sometimes, the play invokes hilarity and tears in the same sentence, which is a challenge for any actress. Frier-Dryden seems to thrive on such challenges, especially because her life path couldn't have been more different than Rose's.
Instead of a poor shtetl, the actress grew up in a well-off family in Scotland, with a Scottish father and a Jewish mother. She received an international education. She speaks seven languages: English, Swedish, Norwegian, German, French, Yiddish and Hungarian. "Just a little Hungarian," she said apologetically.
The Holocaust did not touch her personally, but it wasn't a foreign word to her either. Although she was only 10 when the war ended, her maternal grandfather, a Hungarian-Jewish businessman, deemed her mature enough to learn the terrible truth about the Nazis' genocide of the Jews. From him, she inherited her deep-rooted Jewish identity and her desire to spread the word.
"We have to know," she said passionately. "It's like lighting a spiritual candle to all those who died in the Holocaust. I could've been one of them if I weren't so lucky. We must never forget." Fascinated by history, especially Jewish history, she reads a lot about shtetl life and the Holocaust. "If we have the knowledge, we can prevent this horror from happening again," she insisted.
The actress's road to Rose was a long and bumpy one. Although she always wanted to act – even as a child – her parents disapproved of such a profession. Fortunately, life interfered on her behalf. When she was a history student in Oslo, her friends from a German-speaking student society asked her to play a small role in their amateur production. "There was no turning back after that," she recalled with her infectious laugh.
Disregarding her parents' displeasure, Frier-Dryden enrolled in the Drama Centre in London to study acting. After finishing her studies, she worked as an actress in England and Scotland, playing multiple roles in theatre, radio, TV and movies. "Small roles," she clarified honestly, "but I loved it." Unfortunately, when she and her family moved to Canada in the mid-1970s, her acting career stumbled.
"I didn't have any connections, didn't know anyone and, in the theatre, connections are everything," she admitted. While her husband worked in a bank, she found employment as a receptionist. "It was the best acting job of my life," she joked. "I had never done anything like that before. I definitely played that role well."
She worked in a variety of jobs after that, baked pies, served lunches and edited TV Guide for a living. She thought her acting days were over – until her daughter Sasha, then 14, started working as a stagehand at the Metro Theatre in Vancouver. It was Sasha who pushed her mother to audition for the Christmas pantomime at the Metro.
"I played the front half of a donkey in that pantomime," Frier-Dryden said with a straight face. "It was such fun, although sometimes I thought I would die of claustrophobia inside that huge donkey head. But it was a great adventure."
After the donkey part, she started acting again, earning bigger parts and, later, became involved with the Fringe Festival. By her own admission, she suffers terribly from stage fright, but acting is her life. In 1993, along with the other cast members of Beggars in the House of Plenty by John Patrick Shanley, she received a Jessie Award for outstanding ensemble performance. In 1998, Frier-Dryden received the Vancouver Sun's award as the best actress for her role in Bed Among the Lentils by Alan Bennett.
Frier-Dryden wanted to play Sherman's Rose since 2000, after she first read the play, but the opportunity only arose much later, and she premièred it at Chutzpah! 2008, to great acclaim. On April 17 and 18, she will have a chance to rehash her beloved role of Rose once again, as a benefit performance for the Performing Arts Lodge (PAL), where she lives. It will take place at the PAL Theatre, 581 Cardero St. For reservations, e-mail [email protected].
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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