Cover Girl Marsha Mason (Part II) with Melissa A. Bartell
In part one of our interview with Marsha Mason, we talked about the play Impressionism, which closed May 10th, and about her career in general. In part two, we shift offstage, and discuss herb farming and race car driving. (Paul Newman made her do it.)
In addition to acting, you have also directed. What’s your approach, and do you think being an actor makes you a better director?
Yes. Yes, I have. And actually, I think every actor should direct once, and every director should act once, and every actor and director should write once, and every writer should do all three, if they want to be in this form of artistic endeavor. Because what you gain by doing it once – and I don’t mean in a full-fledged production, it can be in a workshop – but you’ve got to have the experience of having directed.
You gain an appreciation and a respect for the discipline of that particular element of the creative process in a way that you can’t appreciate until you try to do it yourself. And a lot of actors think, “Oh, I know what I’m doing,” and then, when you go to direct and actually have to deal with it and try to realize the full picture of the material, and orchestrate the arc of the story, and deal with the personalities of the individual actors, because you can’t just ask actors to do it the way you would do it. You have to allow them to build that character the way they want to do it, as long as it’s truthful and it fits your vision.
And you have to be the father. You’ve got to be the mother. You have to be the patriarch and the captain of the ship. You have to make a million and one decisions. You have to make compromises all the time. You have to know how to design a set in a way that is actor-friendly, and you have to know your shots, know your discipline.
You mentioned writers should attempt acting and directing, and that actors should try writing. You’ve written a memoir. Were you a reader before you became a writer?
Oh, yes. Yes! I’m an avid reader. I do like reading. I was never heavy into novels, per se, but I like really, really good mysteries. I think that was how I got hooked on reading – with Nancy Drew! – and it just kind of went on from there. And then I got fascinated with biographies, and then I wound up finding myself going back to novels, and I realized something about novel reading, which was, I think you can read a novel for style. Like, if you like John Updike’s writing – I remember when I read Rabbit, Run - but I tended to lean toward a story that captured me or a character that captured me, probably because of my own passion for acting.
So one of the things, when I sat down to write a memoir that sort of concerned me was, how do I capture the audience that might want to read it, in terms of trying to find a context and a way of telling the story. And now, just recently, I’ve been thinking about doing the thing I just said, which is to see if I can write some stories through a screenplay or even a play, although a play is a bit intimidating – the idea of trying to write a play, but maybe that’s a good thing, that it’s intimidating, and I should try it. So, I’m going to do that.
While I haven’t read your memoir yet, when I was prepping for this conversation, I came across something about you being a racecar driver. What led you to do that, and what did you get out of the experience?
Well, I had an experience when I was in high school in St. Louis. One of my best girlfriends’ father was a car dealer - or had a car dealership – and he bought a closed old track out in St. Louis. So one Sunday after Mass, we all climbed in a car together and we went out there and I handed out pit passes. At that time they were just using the straightaway for funny cars, and rails and stuff, and I just became fascinated with the machinery and the smell and the sounds, and the whole thing. It just was quite a trip – I loved it!
So I did it several times, and then I just kind of forgot about it, and then I was on a plane one time going from New York to L.A., and Paul Newman was on the plane. We were chatting because we knew each other socially, and he was going out to a track that was going to close, out in L.A., called Riverside, and I went, “Oh, you know…” and we just were talking about it, and he said, “Well, why don’t you come on out?”
So I did. I kind of became a groupie for a while, and I would follow the team around, and then he suggested one day that maybe I would like to go to a racing school (and I had no idea they even had them), so I wound up going to about four different schools over the year, and then, in order to get a license to be able to race, you have to go to still another school that was out in Palmdale in L.A. (This is when I was living in L.A.), and through a friend of mine, Marc Staenberg - he’s a lawyer in L.A. – he said, “What do you think – ” because he had gone – we had both taken classes at some of the same schools, he said, “We could put a little kind of mom-and-pop weekend team together.”
So we did, and we had a great time doing it for a couple of seasons. During that time I met Mike Lewis, who is out of San Diego and is an SSCA championship driver, and he said, “Why don’t you come and join our team, and we’ll build you a car, and you know, you’ll have a larger number of races to do.” So I would do about – I don’t know – about twelve to fourteen races a year, and we had a full-fledged team, and the big truck, and cars and a crew chief, and a volunteer crew every weekend. We raced practically every weekend from, I would say, January into September, and I made the Valvoline run-offs three times, and it was great. I drove a Mazda RX7 in the GT3 class and I had a phenomenal experience.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve also been a farmer in New Mexico. Tell us a bit about that, please?
Well, I still live there, and I have a full-fledged working farm. It’s certified organic, and I grow certified organic medicinal herbs, and I’m appointed by the governor to the New Mexico Organic Commodities Commission. I’ve been involved in organic growing for fifteen years.
When I made the move to New Mexico, I just bought raw land, and one thing led to another. I didn’t intend to be a farmer at all, but I really became interested in it and I began to learn about permaculture and bio-dynamic farming, as well, which is a slightly different approach to farming that started in Europe – in Germany – around 1900, and it’s quite established and very commonplace in Europe, but it’s a little bit more rarified here.
So I just began to, you know, really work with that and then what followed was a line of products – wellness products – for the throat and the immune system, and then I developed a bath and body line utilizing the same herbs that we grew, and worked on the formulas with a master herbalist in Albuquerque - Mitch Coven - who owns a company called Vitality Works. We were selling him wholesale herbs and he was very supportive of the farm. He thought we were doing a really great job, and he was telling me how difficult it is to get high-quality certified organic herbs, so I just kept experimenting with what we could possibly grow, and we’ve had a wonderful working relationship now for ten years or so.
So that’s what I’ve been doing whenever I’m not working, and then when I’m working, I have a great crew at the farm and I make all the decisions, and we have weekly farm meetings via, you know, like this [Skype], and faxes, and even when I was in Europe doing - in London, doing the play - the time difference worked out great so I was able to come home from the theater at three o’clock in the morning and I could then make contact with the farm and find out what was happening and what decisions needed to be made and suggestions, and stuff like that.
So that’s what I’ve been doing whenever I don’t work in the theatre. Or in television, for that matter.
When you’re at home on the farm, do you maintain the same level of workout, or do you ease off a little bit?
Well, I don’t have to, because being a farmer is so physically demanding. First of all, I’m up really early – usually around 5:30 or so - and I meet with the men and the team and everything – the grower and the property manager – and there’s a full day. I’ve got a lot of dogs and I rescue animals. And, we have a lot going on at the farm. You’re constantly planning and planting and harvesting and ploughing and cutting and hover-cropping, and all kinds of stuff that by the time you get to December you kind of feel like, “Wow, it’s great, I get to put the farm - as I call it – put the farm to sleep.” And it does give us a little bit of a breather.
But my day is physically very demanding because I’m all over the place and I’m - sometimes I’m riding a piece of machinery, but more often than not I’m walking, and I’m lifting – and when you’re planting, you have to do good things for your body, because you’re leaning over…and either harvesting or planting is very tough on your back. So you have to take good care of yourself, but I don’t have to necessarily go and work out as much because lifting twenty-five pounds of something is equal to going and working with a trainer in a gym.
When you’re not actively working on the farm, and not on stage, how do you relax? Do you meditate, go soak in a bubble bath? What do you do?
Oh, I’m a heavy duty meditate-r. I learned Siddha meditation from Swami Muktananda in the seventies and eighties. He’s passed on, and his successor is Gurumayi, who is a wonderful teacher, so I’ve studied Kashmir Shaivism and Vedanta.
I also like to read a lot of spiritual material. The Advaita readings, as well as some Buddhist readings, and I find that world very satisfying, and that philosophy very… It answered a lot of questions for me when I was younger, so it really works for me very well.
What advice would you give to young – or not-so-young – women looking for a creative outlet?
First, writing is a creative outlet. And the second thing is - to find what interests you – use the practice of giving yourself an artist’s day. Look at your schedule and carve out time, just for yourself with nobody else, and no distractions, and go and do something, whether it’s to look at a button shop, or go to a museum, or read a book, or go and buy some art supplies and doodle, or take a camera out and just take pictures of things, so that you will find what it is of a creative impulse that makes you feel good. But you’ve got to give yourself that uninterrupted time.
I started doing that years ago, and it’s very, very helpful to do, and it’s a great way to de-stress. Especially – look, even if you have kids or whatever, get somebody in for a few hours in the afternoon or even of an evening, and then you take that time just for yourself, and you go.
The most important thing is not for it to be social, but for it to be purely your time, to see what it is that you would like to do. But just…do that. Go to a button shop or a bookstore. I like wandering through bookstores. You don’t have to buy anything. You can spend the whole day in a bookstore.
The other thing is that everyone should write. It doesn’t have to be for publication…but everyone has their story. Everyone should write.
Marsha Mason will be appearing in Happy Days at the California Shakespeare Festival, from August 12th-September 6th, in Orinda, California.
Melissa A. Bartell likes strong coffee, red wine, and dark chocolate. She earns her living writing web-copy for an Internet marketing firm & dabbles in fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Managing Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page, or check out her blog at MissMeliss.com
