Married and Acting Together: A Love Story

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Humphry Bogart and Lauren Bacall… Joel Leffert and Nancy Nichols, married 41 years have acted together on 28 occasions. After some time, the couple will appear together again at 59E59 Theaters January 2024. How does familiarity and intimacy affect a thespian couple on stage and off?

Backgrounds

Nancy Nichols got the acting bug at six years old when taken to a performance of Aladdin and His Magic Lamp at community theater in Midland, Texas. “I couldn’t get enough of it, so they (her parents) enrolled me in a class, then the University of Montana’s Summer Rep Theatre.” At 16, she was “so knocked out by the Olivier/Maggie Smith Othello” (film), the burgeoning performer learned all Desdemona’s speeches and songs. Though her mom would’ve preferred she became a doctor, her dad was a frustrated thespian. Favorite high school role: Jo in Little Women.

The young woman attended Trinity University in San Antonio, then the University of Montana graduating with a BFA. Three years of non theater jobs bankrolled moving to San Antonio to act. Stage work with a Houston Repertory Company followed. (Here she was also assistant costumer, a skill she continues to ply as designer and sometimes seamstress.)

Mrs. De Winter and Max De Winter in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca – River Rep at the Ivoryton Playhouse

Joel Leffert’s parents took him into Manhattan once a week to see shows starting at nine years old. He played the 5th grade  lead in The Pied Piper. “Twenty-nine typed pages. I knew everybody’s lines…Such care you take. What’s that you make? A wooden cat? Why do that?” Dad recited Donne and Wordsworth. Mom “jumped on chairs” acting Shakespeare to the English classes she taught. Playing the lead in a high school production of Inherit the Wind, Joel sneezed causing the white powder of his wig to fly. The audience roared. He lit up.

A major of Theatre Arts at Brown offered the opportunity to appear in diverse plays. The young man graduated, took a year to travel, then moved into a tiny apartment in the city with two college friends determined to act.  He registered at Herbert Berghof and did whatever was needed to pay the rent. (Joel also became a respected fight choreographer and competed competitively.) He worked with the Obie winning Theatre of the Open Eye and The Biracial Arts Theater – where “the cast of four outnumbered the audience” – summer sock, and dinner theater.

Kismet

The company in Texas folded. Nancy was asked by Adrian Hall to become a member of Trinity Repertory in Providence, Rhode Island. She’d been there four years when Joel was jobbed in to play Orlando in As You Like It. The actress immediately noted him as her type, “tall, skinny and dark in tight jeans.” As the heroine’s best friend, Celia, “I wasn’t watching my friend play Rosalind. I knew she could act. I was checking out Mr. Hotstuff here. I just did anything I could to make him notice me.”

Michael Frayn’s Noises Off at River Rep

“Nancy held her own with Rosalind. I saw her practicing guitar for the show, sun streaming through her long blonde hair and thought it an angelic vision. Later that summer, her singing in A Little Night Music made my toes curl,” Joel says. By the third week, they were an item. One day Hall ripped into the entire company. Nancy felt protective of “the new guy.” “That night I ask her out for beer. We go to some little bar, talk till it closes, then continue in her car,” Joel says. At the end of the run, he suggested Nancy move into his Manhattan Towers studio here, where there were more opportunities.  

“You can stay with me till you find your own place,” Joel told her. Nancy immediately got regional work and disappeared for the summer. “This is the actor’s dilemma,” Joel says recalling. “She goes off three months there, I go off elsewhere. By the time we get back together, it’s Christmas and it’s like, she’s lovely, a good friend.” He asks how the apartment search is going. And helps her move.

Both actors took classes at The Corner Loft with Frank Corsaro, throwing them together. Working on scenes rekindled the relationship. Joel became jealous of a man Nancy was dating. He told her he’d made a terrible mistake. Wise and patient, she held him off a couple of months. They moved into a new apartment together. In 1980, he asked what she wanted for her birthday. She said a ring. The couple married in 1983 and honeymooned abroad. Upon return, she got work and headed off again.

Stephen and Eileen in O’Neill’s The Straw – Salamander Rep at the Walker Street Theater Tandem

At Woodstock Playhouse, the pair acted in Bell, Book and Candle, Fallen Angels and The Mousetrap. Joel notes that some directors won’t hire couples for fear of being faced with a united front. “We’ve been enormously lucky,” Nancy adds. “We’ve worked with a number of really grounded, self aware human beings who’ve taken what we bring to the table. We have our own shorthand…”

“We trust each other implicitly on stage and to give each other honest notes,” Joel says. What happens at home after you’ve been through upheaval onstage? I ask. “Most of the time we keep a distance and then address it. In the show we’re working on now, we have this enormous rapport onstage. We’re very relaxed and trying physical things. The intimacy director was surprised at how quickly this fell into place. We’re three steps ahead of the process. It would take another two weeks with a stranger.”

Terence McNally’s Lips Together Teeth Apart at River Rep

What happens if one of you blows it in front of an audience? I ask. “I think you have a good laugh, you have to,” Joel responds. “I’ll tell you, some of the best moments I’ve had onstage are the result of my forgetting a line, dropping a prop, having a thought I never had before invading the reality of the show,” Nancy says thoughtfully. “Something comes in and feeds you new emotion. That’s art. Nothing is finite.”

Neither actor can think of an instance of watching the other act intimately as a source of jealousy. In fact, they literally can’t remember a professionally based argument. Have you told each other things you weren’t aware of? I inquire. “Absolutely,” Joel responds. “I have this habit of shifting from foot to foot if I’m nervous and he does a couple of things. I’ll just say, ‘honey, stop’ whatever it is. Who else is going to watch out for you with the kind of loving attention of a spouse?” Nancy comments.

The Woman and Shovery in Ferenc Molnar’s Still Life – CUNY Graduate Center

Have you ever pulled something on one another? I ask.”Oh yes, all the time. He hit me in the ass today in rehearsal,” Nancy recalls. “It was a good bit. It fit the part,” Joel interjects. “From my point of view it stays unless the director objects. Her ass looked great to the character. It lead up to a moment. Would I have felt free to try that with someone who wasn’t my wife, I doubt it.”

“At a dress rehearsal of Hamlet – I was Gertrude, he, Claudius – Joel goosed me during an entrance when I looked all regal. Jason Marr, the actor playing Hamlet, saw it, though the audience might not have. It was so wonderful and powerful. First of all, Gertrude and Claudius have this hot relationship, but also there’s this power struggle going on. The humiliation of knowing your son had seen you being like a sex toy…It really affected my performance and it stung. Just that once was all I needed,” says Nancy.

“We’re old fashioned professionals. We don’t want to be surprised in performance. During rehearsals, yes, that’s our job, “Joel remarks. In Richard III – with Nancy as Elizabeth and Joel as Richard – the couple had a long fight with broadsword and dagger. Joel choreographed it. Needless to say, they worked out the kinks at home. Equanimity, respect and admiration – both professional and private – is enviable.

Now, there’s Sweet Spot: Jerry and Vita are an independent, passionate couple with 50 years of marriage under their belts. The type of couple who knows each other so well they can finish each other’s complaints. An opportunity to move to an assisted living community arrives sooner than expected and they must quickly make a life-changing decision. The play examines how people grow together, how our sense of identity shifts over time, and how love conquers all if we’re brave enough to let it.

Joel: “I was attracted to the script by the delicate balance of humor and sentiment it has. It mustn’t be maudlin or morbid. It’s about two people facing their mortality. But they still have their friendship and we love to see them through whatever comes next. Nancy and I have so much history we can build on as we create these two different characters. It’s a gift!”

Nancy: “Playing a married couple (Jerry and Vita) lets us explore how different the roles are from our own personalities, and dig into those differences. I’m less spiky than Vita, more contemplative, but both the role and I are fun-loving with an earthy streak. Vita’s very outspoken and I’m not. We both love the arts, language and our families.”

Sounds like a bespoke fit, doesn’t it?

The Sweet Spot
59E59 Theaters
January 11-27 2024