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A happy life in theater

By John Orr

Daily News Arts and Entertainment Editor

Posted: 01/11/2011 12:24:41 AM PST

Rebecca Dines is a TheatreWorks stalwart, about to appear in her 17th featured role for the

revered troupe, and it's all because her mother was afraid her daughter would be too shy to appear

in something called an eisteddfod. Eisteddfods began almost a thousand years ago in Wales --

eisteddfod is a Welsh word that means "to be sitting together," which makes almost no sense in

terms of what actually happens at an eisteddfod.

What happens at modern eisteddfods in Australia, anyway, which is where Dines was born and

raised, in the little town of Maryborough, in Queensland. In Australia, eisteddfods are competitions

that involve testing individuals for singing, dancing, acting and musicianship.

Dines was up against heavy competition from nearby Catholic schools, where, she remembers, "the

nuns would be very good about teaching the kids." Including her cousins, who went to those

schools. But Dines herself was "painfully shy. Mother was worried about me being horrifically shy,

and wanted me to be able to walk on a stage and deliver a poem.

"And lo and behold," Dines said, "I took to it. And a great part of it was her ability to communicate

her love of it. She taught me Shakespeare and more complicated stuff, and filled me with the love

of language. "She had no formal training, but her instincts were quite brilliant."

The eisteddfods were judged by "adjudicators," each of whom would file reports about each

individual. "One adjudicator said, 'Very nice use of the caesura.' We were giggling our heads off

because we had no idea what it meant." Dines knows now: A caesura is a pause, used in

"maintaining the rhythm of a poem, to keep tension, to keep suspense," she explained. Dines'

mother, Delma, now gets to occasionally fly from the Land Down Under to California to see her

daughter perform on stage.

Dines was last seen at TheatreWorks in "Distracted," in which she was brilliant as the neurotic

American mother of a boy who might have some kind of attention deficit disorder. The play is a

fairly powerful indictment of how parenting works in some families, with drugs being used all too

often to control children. "Filling children with pharmaceuticals!" Dines said, adding that she did

quite a bit of research for that role, and now avoids medical professionals as much as possible. "I

make sure I go to the gym and eat my spinach," she said.

Dines also appeared in "Twentieth Century," "As Bees In Honey Drown," "Shakespeare in

Hollywood," "The Elephant Man" and several other productions for TheatreWorks, starting in 1994.

She's also done a lot of Shakespeare, in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and elsewhere, did a one-

woman show for Kansas City Repertory, and has performed for Berkeley, San Jose, and South

Coast Repertory theatres, Magic and B Street theatres, and the Laguna Playhouse.

Most of her stage career takes place in the Bay Area, but her home is in the Mar Vista area of Los

Angeles, not too far from Venice Beach, Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey. "I've been there 10

years," she said. "To this day, I don't know why I live there. Well, I do. My sweetheart is there, and

I cannot budge him. I moved there for love." Her sweetheart is Michael DeGood, an actor,

independent filmmaker, professional personal trainer and boxer.

Dines has made some Hollywood money, doing commercials mainly, the income from which she

uses to sustain her theater habit in the Bay Area. She has had success in televison -- she was

part of the cast for the last year of "Prisoner: Cell Block H," a series about women behind bars that

Dines said was "sometimes campy and bad," but that achieved cult status in the United Kingdom.

(Look for it on YouTube; you won't be glad you did, probably, but will find the occasional love

letter from longtime fans to members of its cast.)

In Los Angeles, though, Dines has no interest in living the life of someone who is desperately

hoping to become a TV or movie star. "I really would sacrifice a lot to be able to do theater. Life is

short. I see friends in L.A. who are determined to hold on there. I'll get e-mail, 'Hey watch this

sitcom, I'm on for 30 seconds.' How can that be a fulfilling life as an actor? I guess they think it's

leading to something. "I look at my resume, the roles I've gotten to play, by brilliant writers, the

satisfaction I've gotten from it -- getting to do it over and over again -- I just want to be able to

look back and say there's a body of work. "I don't have the patience to wait for the pie in the sky,

by and by. I'd rather be doing it. Life goes by."

Dines is clearly delighted to be doing "The 39 Steps." "Oh!" she said by phone, "Oh my gosh! I

always loved the period, the '30s, the '40s. This show started in the UK (West Yorkshire Playhouse

in Leeds), and snowballed into this incredible international success." True, that.

"The 39 Steps" started as a 1915 novel by John Buchan, then became one of Alfred Hitchcock's

successful thrillers in 1935. A couple of fellows had the idea of making it into a two-hander play,

then British actor and playwright Patrick Barlow turned it into a farce for four actors.

One actor plays the hero, Richard Hannay -- the dashing pipe-smoker of the ads -- and one

actress and two other actors play all the other parts, which include villains, heros, lovers, children

and the occasional inanimate object.

Dines hadn't seen the play, but happened to be planning a trip to New York with her mother when

Leslie Martinson, casting director at TheatreWorks, called and asked her about taking the part.

"The 39 Steps" had not been on Dines' list of shows she and her mother were to see, but she

quickly added it. She found the play "utterly charming, goofy, zany and stylish. I hoped they would

cast me."Which they did. "I get to play three roles in the play" -- which for her is catnip -- "and a

couple of others without lines."

Dines says the actors in the cast -- Mark Anderson Phillips, Cassidy Brown and Dan Hiatt -- are

"fantastic actors, "We're all on the ball, all the time, sharing the weight of the play on all our

shoulders.

"For each play it's a new situation. A basically intimate situation with strangers -- they become

family. I love that. You're suddenly in a room with brothers and sisters. That's a very appealing

part of theater, as opposed to TV or film, where you stand around all day, then work for a minute

and a half with strangers."

E-mail John Orr at ****@**************.***.

Theater preview

What: "The 39 Steps"

By Patrick Barlow. Produced by TheatreWorks, directed by Robert Kelley

Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View

When: Opens Saturday, Jan. 22. Closes Feb. 13.

Tickets: $24-$79; 650-***-**** or theatreworks.org

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