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Monica Bishop Steele directs her eye toward one woman's battle with her own mortality in Margaret Edson's Wit.
By CAMILLE REYES
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 2000
TAMPA -- Artists are often passionate about what they do, but seldom are they humble. Local actor, director and playwright Monica Bishop Steele is one such rare artist. She admits a strong need to control everything in her artistic environment, but Steele possesses a quiet center of grace. She could certainly give a firm note to an actor if required, but for Steele the storytelling process is less about dictating and more about exploring.
The Tampa resident's current artistic vision, "Women's Work," a series of plays dedicated to "promoting personal growth and social change," continues this week with Thursday's opening of Wit, Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, at the Off Center Theater.
Steele has shaved off her shoulder-length hair to play 50-year-old Vivian Bearing, an English professor and John Donne scholar diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This is no sentimental TV movie treatment of cancer: As Vivian rages against her mortality -- often using the words of the poet she knows so well -- the play in turns challenges the emotions and intellect, amuses and even shocks.
Monica Steele's husband, Christopher Steele, directs her in the role. Does this collaboration cause tension at the dinner table?
"No, but we do have electricity," says Monica Steele, 47. "We're both very demanding, but we let home be home."
Can you really leave work outside the front door?
No, she admits with a laugh.
The Steele household is accustomed to creative and romantic entanglements. The couple met while in graduate school at Southern Methodist University, where he directed her in Sean O'Casey's Bedtime Story. She felt an instant attraction to him, and he's still her favorite director.
"He knows me so well," she says. "He brings out the best in me and challenges me in a way that no one else can."
Monica Bishop Steele's own approach as a director is luxurious at a time when cash-strapped theaters generally impose tight time constraints on directors. But Steele demands more time and won't take on an assignment unless she gets it. She describes her rehearsal experience as "much deeper, much more about bringing yourself to the material, the material to you and hopefully to the audience."
For instance, she had the cast of an original play produced last spring, In the Name of the Mother, take an entire day to write about their mothers: the similarities between mother and child, the differences, the emotions surrounding loss.
Steele has had a number of her other original works produced locally. Girls Thinking Out Loud and Who Do I Think I Am?, both staged last year at the Off Center, focus on young women ages 12 to 17 and draw from the real life experiences of the young actors. Almost a Judy Blume of the Tampa theater scene, Steele has provided an outlet for teens to express themselves. She doesn't have children of her own but, with eight siblings, she does have 48 nieces and nephews.
"Although many girls participate in sports, girls still tend to find more relief and value in talking. They find such joy in the ensemble work with other girls," Steele says. "I still have parents writing to let me know the positive impact the work has made on the lives of their children." Steele's next teen-driven project is Shakespeare Had a Sister, opening in February at the Off Center Theater. As a writer, she is influenced by the plays of Sam Shepard and Lee Blessing and the work of Alice Walker and Anna Quindlen. Steele adds, "Writers are like children. I hate to single anyone out."
Behind the soft-spoken exterior, Steele has a tough-broad side. She's addicted to hockey, particularly the old Minnesota North Stars. Not that she's a fight fan -- indeed, when she talks about the North Stars, she becomes almost poetic.
A native of Duluth, Minn., Steele grew up in a big Roman Catholic family. She says she has always wanted to be an actor, and from the start was snagging the prime role. "I put on Christmas pageants in the living room, casting myself as the Virgin Mary, of course, while my siblings assumed various supporting roles: Jesus, Joseph, even the sheep."
As an adult, she has changed her material, but not her desire to take center stage. Her upcoming role in Wit is particularly personal.
In 1991, Steele found a lump in her breast, which surgery proved benign. She found something of her own emotional experience in Vivian, who at one point in the play says: "I thought being extremely smart would take care of everything, but I see that I've been found out."
Another personal experience that makes Wit resonate all the more for Steele: a close friend and theater colleague of hers is fighting a recurrence of cancer.
"She was my poster woman for recovery," Steele says of her friend. "Then she went and had a recurrence after the first of the year." Steele is tenderly devoted to her friend, saying, "We've laughed ourselves silly, cried to the point of utter fatigue and experienced anger and disbelief." Steele is running workshops at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, sharing Wit with patients.
Steele set about creating the Women's Work series to fill what she saw as a void in local theater. Although women are in her spotlight, Steele presents themes so universal, both men and women come to her productions. Steele is a storyteller doing a special kind of women's work, theater that matters.
Monica Bishop Steele stars in Wit, opening Thursday and continuing through Nov. 19 at the Off Center Theater at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $15.50-$21.50. Call (813) 229-7827.