Cynde Liffick’s last day at the Richmond Shakespeare Co. on June 30 finishes her 17-year association with the organization that she transformed with colleague Grant Mudge into the region’s primary interpreter of the Bard. Richmond magazine recognized Liffick and Mudge for their efforts in 2007 with the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts.
Cynde Liffick
What evolved into Richmond Shakespeare started in 1984 as a project of University of Richmond post-graduates, called the Encore! Theatre.
Liffick had been active in the Richmond theater community before a fateful meeting with Mudge around 1995 at a Dogwood Dell production of Shakespeare’s "Twelfth Night," directed by Stacy Trowbridge. “Grant was Orsino and I was Feste the Clown,” Liffick recalls. “I basically did a Groucho Marx imitation.” She chuckles, “He was very young and full of himself as Orsino. Hard to say where acting stopped and Grant began.”
As Encore!’s artistic director, Mudge started the fall 1996 season with "Miss Julie." “I was the servant girl, Christine, who is Jean’s lover but not the one he aspires to, who is Miss Julie. We did that, then we commissioned a four-person Christmas Carol from Bo Wilson, and David Bridgewater played Scrooge. We did 'Faulkner’s Bicycle' with the late great Del Driver at the University of Richmond.” The season ended with the challenging Ariel Dorfman examination of political decisions, guilt and revenge, "Death and the Maiden." It’s also the concluding offering of the 2014 season of the united Shakespeare and Henley Street Theatre companies.
Grant Mudge and Cynde Liffick as Beatrice and Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing," directed by Mudge, Agecroft, 2003
Liffick came from Medway, Ohio, an hour north of Cincinnati, and in 1975 received her first degree, in biology, from Transylvania University. That was followed by a graduate degree in animal behavior from Illinois State, at Normal. “I was interested in why do creatures do what they do while, all along, I was doing theater in the background.” Not just theater, but the musical variety. Shakespeare wasn’t her thing, then.
She taught in Illinois during “The Blizzard Years,” as she refers to the period. She wanted to get away from tough Midwest winters. Liffick scouted the South for a place possessing a relatively warm intellectual climate and not stuporous heat.
She decided to take a position at the Steward School. She’d married an acting colleague and enrolled in Randy Strawderman’s Studio Theatre. Then, in 1986, she went on an 18-month tour with Strawderman’s version of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
She was among “the women,” including the female entourage of Potiphar, the wealthy Egyptian whose wife has a thing for Joseph. “It was an amazing experience with a group of hugely talented people ― rather than teach, I went on tour.”
Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Agecroft, 2005
Back in Richmond, taking odd jobs such as pet sitting, she participated in her second Shakespeare piece, playing Tatiana in a Richmond Art Theatre production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" staged at the University of Richmond Greek Theater. After that, there was a memorable "Romeo and Juliet" in which Liffick played Mercutio ― complete with a fake mustache. In the program, she billed herself as Alexander Cusack. “You set something in a play which you know is not true then see how far can you take it. Mercutio is an odd boy anyway. And most of the audience bought it.”
This was filmed and broadcast on WCVE.
Then came "Twelfth Night" at Dogwood Dell. “And there it starts,” she says. “That show revived our mutual passion for Shakespeare. If we did Shakespeare, we wouldn’t need a space. We could tour and do an open-air festival.”
In 1997 the company performed a five character "As You Like It." They landed a contract to tour it through Virginia state parks. And off they went.
“I thank Grant because he taught me a lot about playing Shakespeare,” Liffick says. “This turned into a long 16-year apprenticeship in Shakespeare. Even if I’d gone to school and studied this, I’d never have gotten into the shows I did. It’s one of those things you have to get on its feet and can’t sit around a table and talking about it.”
Most of her recent vacations have been work related. In one case, Sam Walton’s son John lived outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where there was a private school. “For three years, they flew us out to do workshops and perform and then over the mountain to Driggs, Idaho,” where many of the Jackson Hole resort employees live and where RSC performed in a public park. “At the time, it was the richest county in the country,” she says. “I think it was the goal that the school would take over the program, but with the logistics, that didn’t happen. But we had a grand time doing what we did.”
Another event she cherishes was a 2006 collaborative version of "A Midsummer’s Night Dream" with the Richmond Symphony, Richmond Ballet and opera soloists. “I’ll never forget that as I long as I’ll live ― the dancers, the symphony chorus ― we had the best seats in the house and we got to do that at the Landmark.”
Queen Elizabeth I in "Elizabeth Rex," directed by James Alexander Bond, Gottwald Playhouse at Richmond CenterStage, 2010
The summer festivals, though, remain among her favorite theatrical endeavors, despite heat (“We cancelled at least once last year,” she says), and occasional tangos with thunderstorms. There was the time when cats came upon the stage. In "Romeo and Juliet," during a scene of weeping and wailing, a feline emotional supporter ambled up, “Just like my cats would do if I was upset,” Liffick says. She played the scene, but picked up the cat and squeezed a little tight to make the furry interloper dash off stage. There was also a plopping tree frog. “Thump! And you had to really watch it not to step on one.”
The plays are now done, the company merged and Mudge directing the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival.
Liffick decided it was a good time to move on to the next act of her life. She is considering Shakespeare education, in part a role she undertook through various outreach programs during RSC’s run. The next stage may entail returning to the road as she did in the beginning. She may partner with another group or go out on her own or some combination. For her, the main thing is to find a structure with little management involved.
Liffick prefers her Shakespeare uncluttered by sets and stage lighting. “It makes me crazy,” she says. “I don’t enjoy it as much.” Theater of Shakespeare’s time used an open roof for illumination and in his plays, only kings sat.
“When you can see them, there is a communion with the audience that is embedded in the text and story. Shakespeare wrote those plays knowing the actors and audiences could see each other. And I love working like that.”
