» A wandering life for retired actress, social worker

By Geneva Miller
Staff Writer
Thursday, July 02, 2009 | No comments posted. In the western boroughs of Ireland in 1965, 50 cents would buy the service of the town crier, who’d ring his bell and cry the play about to start in the parish house at the Catholic church. The price of a pack of cigarettes, 35 cents, would buy a seat to the two-person show featuring Vivian Connolly, “Man v. Woman: The Epic Battle.”

“I always thought, ‘Isn’t it great to get to be another person,’” Connolly said about acting. “I’m interested in character, preferably the further away from my experience the better, like some one who’s going through a lot of trouble.”

So Connolly played characters from across the ages, across the country, across the Atlantic. She’s made her living as a psychiatric nurse and a writer, her home in a VW bus or French Quarter apartment. But wherever she pitches her tent, even in Bandon, she shares her passion for theater with the community.

Connolly says the Bandon playhouse was her welcome to the Oregon Coast. She moved to Bandon in 2005, the same week the Playhouse held auditions for “Still Life” by Noel Coward. Connolly joined the cast. Since arthritis makes rehearsing and performing a challenge, Connolly now organizes monthly play readings at the Barn. The purpose is to read a play aloud with a bunch of people, just for fun.

According to Barbara Eakley, Connolly’s generosity is part of what makes the Bandon Play Readers worthwhile.

“It’s fun to get to know someone who has such a varied background and education,” said Eakley. “She’s a wonderful font of information; she’s exposed us to so many plays.” Connolly describes herself as a gypsy and says it was never her goal to focus on career. She wanted to travel, meet people and accumulate life experiences. Her lust for life translated into practical education as well.

Connolly first traveled to Ireland in the early 1950s where she trained in psychiatric nursing, a field she would pursue until retirement. The mid 20th-century was a time of both pharmaceutical and social change in health care. Connolly worked in Ireland and the United States with mental health pioneers like Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who brought an humane and holistic attitude to medicine. Connolly worked in some of the first day-treatment centers which aimed to integrate mental health patients into the community and formed therapeutic teams which utilized input from nurses and skilled assistants as well as medical doctors.

“The idea of a therapeutic community was very attractive to me because of the democratic process,” Connolly said.

Connolly punctuated her time in urban settings like New York City and San Francisco with forays into rural life. She toured western Ireland in her VW actor’s caravan for a season, took a race horse freighter across the English Channel and wound her way to Spain, drew water from a spring outside her adobe farmhouses in Taos, N.M., or simply pitched a tent in the wilderness.

“I’ve hit some of the modern bohemias,” Connolly remarked.

A meandering road trip in the ’80s took Connolly to New Orleans where she settled in the French Quarter. There she put her mental catalogue of travels and friends to work as fodder for a series of romantic suspense novels. Fiction writing would keep her busy for nearly a decade, until she was ready to retire. Back in New Mexico, Connolly enrolled in theater classes at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. An impromptu visit to Santa Cruz, and Connolly “fell back in love” with the coast. She came to Bandon with two suitcases and a cat. Lounging with one foot on the sofa, Connolly said, “It’s been a kind of wandering life.”

Another member of the Bandon Play Readers, Claire McLaughlin, says she joined the group because she wanted theatrical experience without the actual stage. Now she helps post flyers and looks forward to each month’s session.

“Vivian can read anything,” said McLaughlin. “If there’s an English maid (in the script), suddenly she has the right accent, the right cadence, posture. The group is really her baby, and she’s made an atmosphere where everyone is welcome.”

Bandon Play Readers meet the third Tuesday of each month, 12:30 p.m., at the Bandon Community Center.