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Holland Taylor on Ann Richards, Part 1
Emmy Award-winning actress Holland Taylor has been soaking up Ann Richards for more than a year now.
Visiting Austin last week for an Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders fundraiser, Taylor took time out for a soft drink and unhurried ruminations about Richards inside the Hotel St. Cecilia courtyard.
“I started writing with a vengeance last March,” Holland says of the stage script. “It wasn’t that I felt ready. I’d been fitting the research into a fairly busy life already, and a job, and I’m not a kid. I could have gone on and on with the research, but I thought, with my years left, I better get this done. I’m going to be too old to remember anything.”
A classy, lively 66, Holland jokes about old age and end-of-life legacies. It’s hard to believe she’s serious. After all, she’s taking on an artistic challenge that would daunt the most eager, earnest greenhorn.
“It demands absolutely everything I’ve got,” she says. “Early on, I had an idea for the mis en scene (stage setting). I told it to a few people with real acumen. ‘That’s good,’ they said, ‘but don’t tell anybody.’ I kept it pretty close to my vest. Told a few of the Ann Richards bigwig people, who love the idea. I’m confident in it.”
A workshop production without full scenery or projections will be announced before Christmas, when the script is expected to be completed. If all goes well, a commercial production would follow. After all that study and writing, she’ll take weeks to memorize virtually every line (there are some offstage voices).
“It’s very exciting,” she says, “but then at moments I think: ‘What in the world have I done?’”
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