The Spirit of Vivien Leigh Comes to Long Beach

When Jen Danby takes the stage at the Long Beach Public Library this Saturday, it will be in a role well researched.

The Long Beach resident will step in front of flash bulbs and play the legendary actress Vivien Leigh speaking to a room full of reporters.

The one-woman act, “Vivien Leigh: The Last Press Conference,” comes to the library March 19, just one of two pieces Danby will portray as the Hollywood star and wife of Sir Laurence Olivier.

The show is part of Women’s History Month at the library. Programmer Edie Kalickstein put together a diverse line-up to honor women in March, but Danby’s performance gives Long Beach residents a chance at a different experience.

“There’s nothing like live theater for bringing an era to life,” Kalickstein said. “When someone is face to face with you there are very intimate emotions that come across, and you don’t get that very much.”

For Danby, stepping into Leigh’s life is a fascinating ordeal, because Leigh’s story is fraught with all the things that make human experience simultaneously unbearable and beautiful.

“These people that survive the borderlines and keep going in their art and have such a talent and gift, … that’s interesting to me as an actress,” Danby said.  “Someone who has all those challenges. Even the challenges of wanting to be alive and beautiful. That’ s fascinating to work on.”

Indeed Leigh, who died at 53, struggled with manic depression, and had strained relationships throughout her life because of it. Her marriage to Sir Laurence was borne out of mutual adultery, and she had limited contact with her daughter. She was also prone to violent outbursts of which she would later have no recollection.

Danby is director of Mississippi Mud Productions, the theater company producing “The Last Press Conference”— a company whose very name is partly inspired by Tennessee Williams’ character, Blanche Dubois, a role that earned Leigh an Oscar.

Her journey is a rich one, starting out where she grew up in Wading River, and making it to the Big Apple by way of Austin and San Diego. She’s a teacher and a director, and she has a Ph.D in Theater from the City University of New York, and treats theater as a scientist would treat a laboratory.

“I was a journeywoman,” Danby said. “I never said ‘I have to be a big star.’ I said, I’m going to make a life that is in art.”

Her list of influences is a murderer’s row of the craft.

Jessica Lange. “She’s got such an available vulnerability on film.”

James Dean. “He had a type of rawness; a lot of hunger in him.”

Meryll Streep. “She works so hard on her roles and she’s really available.”

And of course: Leigh, whose performance as Blanche Dubois almost seemed to mimic the actress’ loosening grip on her own reality. Blanche is tossed aside, beautiful, but used. In “The Last Press Conference,” Leigh comes face to face with her choices.

“What comes in this piece is that love had to happen,” Danby said. “And both [Leigh and Olivier] had to come to terms with the fact that they really hurt other people. And then as it goes on it becomes almost a gift, the gift of what it’s like to be human and fallible.”

Famed literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote a collection of essays called “The Wound and The Bow,” an analysis of how dynamic people will use the injuries of their life to fuel and arm their work. According to Danby, Leigh was one of them: a complicated soul, wounded in love, plagued by vanity, haunted by manic depression. Yet her wounds informed her work. Became her bow.

“She made an effort to be responsible for her actions,” Danby added. “What makes this play different is she didn’t get this press conference to do that. She probably never had that opportunity.”

She gets that opportunity this Saturday at 2 p.m. And Danby is slated to play Leigh again in Austin Pendleton’s drama “Orson’s Shadow” later this year.