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Actresses revisit the 'Hot L'

Reprising roles gives actresses second chance to bring experiences to lobby stage

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 16, 2008 at 6 p.m.

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Judy Phelan Hill and Patty Mintz Figel first performed in "The Hot L Baltimore" at the Barth Hotel in lower downtown in 1991.

Michael Ensminger

Judy Phelan Hill and Patty Mintz Figel first performed in "The Hot L Baltimore" at the Barth Hotel in lower downtown in 1991.

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The lives of The Hot L Baltimore are not often told. Playwright Lanford Wilson describes those with nowhere to go but the inner-city hotel that provides them a home.

"Homeless people, the chronically mentally ill, the fringe people in our culture, are our ghosts," says Judy Phelan Hill. "We don't look at them, we push them aside."

Hill and fellow actress Patty Mintz Figel are reprising the roles they first played 17 years ago at the Barth Hotel. Like the first time, this production takes place at the Barth, an environmental setting where the play is staged in the lobby. The first time, the production paid for air conditioning to be installed. This summer, the play is being staged as a fundraiser to pay for improved security at the nonprofit hotel run by Senior Housing Options.

For Hill and Figel, the play is a reunion of sorts, although they've worked together a number of times over the years. Both women of a certain (undisclosed) age, the actors have their own unseen - and unheard - stories.

Attractive and vibrant, the women are almost always cast as aged, in the dowdy, gray-haired way that most older women are portrayed. So where is the portrait of a real woman in her 50s, 60s, or 70s, one who looks good and still has her act together?

"I've been looking for that for a while," Figel says. "There's a certain age you get to and they say, 'Let's get Patty or Judy to play the old lady.' "

Both women say they're happy for the roles they've gotten, and Figel is lusting after the matriarchal role in this year's Pulitzer-winner, August: Osage County.

"I salivate for that role," she says.

Hill has spent a career getting cast beyond her years.

"At one point I asked (a director), 'How old do you think I am?' I played a 90-year-old," she says. She was in her 40s at the time. "I play quirky old women and Patty plays the ladies."

It's not necessarily an age issue, Figel says: "I just don't know many plays that are written for intelligent women of any age."

Both women had full careers before turning to acting. Figel worked in her husband's business before running a series of tennis centers.

"I was getting so hopelessly bored, and so tired of being nice to people," she recalls.

So at age 50, she started taking acting classes at Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Her first role was in a production of Inherit the Wind at the Aurora Fox.

"I had I think three hallelujahs and 12 amens and I was exhausted," Figel says.

Hill spent her first career as a deeply shy psychiatric nurse. "I had to be hypnotized when I was 30 to talk in front of people, and I haven't shut up since," she says.

She took some acting classes, and her first professional job was the 1991 production of The Hot L Baltimore. Tough on the outside, she has a sentimental core.

"This is just" - she pats her chest as if to contain the emotion - "This is great to be doing this again."

Rehearsing at the Barth, Hill and Figel have reconnected with two men who lived there during the first production. Other residents may wander through a rehearsal, or run into actors outside.

"One night, one of the women who was monitoring the door said, 'Oh, you actors would fit in beautifully,' " Figel says.

"The Barth is Hot L Baltimore," adds Hill. "It's an older place in the heart of lower downtown, it's by the train station. Once in a while, the trains from Union Station hit it right on cue."

Of course, the show also disrupts the residents' routine. It's entirely possible that a resident may walk across the set in the middle of a performance. Sometimes they talk to the actors during breaks; some residents are silent.

"That's very dependent on them," Hill says. "I mean, we're in their living room. They have to change how they get from their rooms to have a cigarette outside, how they get their medications."

In 1991, a fire alarm went off during the middle of a performance, and actors, audience, residents and staff found themselves mingling on the curb. It was set off by a resident who smoked in his room because the play was happening in the lobby.

Both find their compassion and their skill colored by the lives they lived before reaching the theater.

"Coming into acting late was a blessing for me," Figel says. "I had another life, and with that, I bring a lot of life experiences. I think (acting) is a wonderful life, but it can be a very narrow life.

"I wouldn't change anything.

"Well, one or two."

The Hot L Baltimore

* When and where: 8:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays (through Aug. 23), Barth Hotel, 1514 17th St.

* Cost: $50 to $100

* Information: 303-595-4464, ext. 10, or seniorhousingoptions.org

Where you've seen them

Patty Mintz Figel and Judy Phelan Hill keep running into each other onstage. Their collaborations:

* 1991: The Hot L Baltimore

* 1996: Stanton's Garage

* 2005: A Place at Forest Lawn

* 2008: The Hot L Baltimore

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