Sunday, August 17, 2008
A+E, In this Issue..., Theater

The Spotlight Awards

SP's annual roundup of the very best of local theater

LEAD ACTRESS: LALA COCHRAN in “The Little Dog Laughed” (Theatre in the Square)

Photo: Jason Mallory

It can’t be easy for an “old gal” to upstage two handsome young actors who, in the most highly touted scene from the Hollywood satire “The Little Dog Laughed,” get naked to simulate a bit of gay sex. LaLa Cochran only made it look easy. As Diane, the ferocious agent to a closeted heartthrob, her caustic commentaries about fame and the movie industry fueled the comedy. Not much of a role model, perhaps, but she is a daunting acting exercise. In the wrong hands, it could come across as scenery chewing. In the right hands, Cochran’s performance was simply delicious.

 “I saw it in New York and, I swear, 10 seconds into her first monologue, I knew this was a part I had to do,” Cochran says. “I got it. I got the character. I got the play. I just got it.” Given her prolific track record over the years with Horizon (“Time Flies,” “Almost, Maine,” etc.), she dropped some “not-so-subtle hints” to artistic director Lisa Adler, who didn’t pick up on the idea. Later, when she heard that Theatre in the Square was originally planning a non-Equity production of it, Cochran quips, “I thought, so shoot me, I’ll quit the union!” Such drastic measures were averted when the company unionized the show, after all—and in the true, never-say-die spirit of Diane, everything came to pass: Cochran auditioned for director Alan Kilpatrick, and eventually she really did get it.

“The whole experience was such a treat, a dream come true,” she enthuses. “I’m incredibly proud of my work in it, and I can’t say enough great things about Alan, as a person and as a director. He was very actor-friendly. I think we all felt that. I mean, all of us were really proud of the work we did. Let me tell you, when a director can get two straight guys [co-stars Chad Martin and Ben Reed] to do what they did—and to love it, you know, to love the acting of it—what else can I say?” She pauses, as if to come up with anything she didn’t like about the show. “It’s the first time I was far and away the old gal in the cast,” laughs the actress, 44.

Cochran acknowledges that everyone was mindful of working at the same theater where, 15 years earlier, overblown reactions to “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” (which merely referred to unseen gay characters) led to the loss of its government funding for a time. More recently, the nudity in Kilpatrick’s gay baseball drama “Take Me Out” generated its own, less extreme controversy. “We were ready and prepared for something, and we might’ve had a few walk-outs here and there, but that was about it,” she notes. “The community didn’t go nuts in any bad way, and I think that shows how far we have come, as theatergoers and just as people.”

After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1987, the Nashville native settled in Atlanta—“where I could actually find work,” she says. “It’s not like I had the training or the resume to go straight to New York or Chicago. Things started happening for me here sort of quickly, and I’d look around at my friends in New York and Chicago who weren’t working, so it’s been home ever since.”—Bert Osborne

UP NEXT: Reuniting with director Kilpatrick on "The New Century" at Actor's Express.

HONORABLE MENTION:

JILL JANE CLEMENTS in “Southern Comforts” (Theatrical Outfit)
JOANNA DANIEL in “Lettice and Lovage” (Atlanta Shakespeare)
VICKI ELLIS GRAY in “When Something Wonderful Ends” (Actor’s Express)
JUDY LEAVELL in “The Lady With All the Answers” (ART Station)
COURTNEY PATTERSON in “My Name is Rachel Corrie” (Synchronicity)