In 2017, actor and director Elizabeth Price was riding her bicycle on FAU’s Boca Raton campus, where she taught advanced acting, when a car blew through a crosswalk and collided into her bike. Price flew into the air, landed on the hood of the car and fell onto the street. The diagnosis was grim: She had broken a leg in four places as well as her back. It would take six surgeries and two years of recovery for Price to fully regain her mobility.
Yet remarkably, she never really stopped acting. In 2018, she played a gangster in Outré Theatre’s “Reservoir Dolls,” a role in which a limp could be justified. A few months later, in an eerie coincidence of art imitating life, she played the victim of a car crash in “An Accident,” in which she was bed-bound for the duration, and which earned her a Carbonell nomination. Keith Garsson of Boca’s Primal Forces had scheduled the show before Price’s own run-in with a rogue automobile. “[Keith] came to visit me when I was in the hospital, and he was like, ‘you didn’t have to do this much research,’” Price recalls.
These parts speak to Price’s determination to persevere. A Texas native who hasn’t quite shed her southern drawl, Price has lived in Boca for the past 11 years, where she’s kept herself busy at the front of, and behind, stages throughout the tri-county area. She made her professional regional debut at the Theatre at Arts Garage in 2014, and has excelled playing Shakespeare (“Twelfth Night,” New City Players), mystery (“Villainous Company,” Boca Stage) and horror (“Misery,” Empire Stage).
She is closing her supporting role in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple (Female Version)” April 2 at Boca Stage, and is rolling right into her assistant-directing work on New City Players’ “Cry, Old Kingdom,” a historical drama about art and resistance set in Haiti during the regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier.
You’ve performed regionally in several states. Is there something special about the South Florida theatre community?
I feel like there is. … When I was hit by a car and I was disabled for a couple of years, I hadn’t been in the community for that long. But … I received a tremendous amount of support. And I think that was a real turning point for me with this community, because I felt like I was known and cared about, and we really were more than just potential collaborators with each other. I’ve been really happy to stick around, because the more I get to know it, the more I enjoy it.
You’re just finishing work on “The Odd Couple (Female Version)” at Boca Stage. What’s the secret to making comedy land onstage?
It’s the million-dollar question. For me, at least in part, it absolutely has to do with allowing the unexpected to happen. [Let] whatever unique and odd and quirky reactions or perspectives on a line come out; then there’s a chance it will take the audience by surprise, and humor can come out of it. Because nothing can be predicted in comedy.
While watching you in “Misery” last year, I quickly lost the image of Kathy Bates from the movie. When you were preparing to play Annie Wilkes, did you have to shed that iconic performance?
I love scary movies … and I had been waiting to play someone like Annie Wilkes. And absolutely—I thought, I’ll never be Kathy Bates. I have to reinvent this. When I re-read the play in order to audition for it … I had a new connection to her and a new perspective on her. I saw her as incredibly vulnerable—incredibly joyful when things are going her way. I felt I understood her. It’s like that thing we’re taught in acting class. You can never judge your characters, but instead you have to identify with them and understand why they do what they do. And that was what I brought to Annie Wilkes.
You’re assistant-directing New City Players’ “Cry, Old Kingdom” in April. Do you hope the piece resonates with the rise of authoritarian leaders we’re seeing around the world?
I think it will touch on what we’re all afraid could happen. It also touches on the fact that we all have to make choices, and that you can’t save everybody with your choice. There are always sacrifices with your choices when you’re in some sort of totalitarian regime, or in the midst of a war.
You taught acting here in Boca for nine years. Do great actors have something innate that can’t be taught—call it charisma?
Another million-dollar question. I’m going to stay humble here, and I’m going to say, I don’t know. But this is what I’ll tell you I’ve seen. Somebody comes in, and they’ve got that thing—the charisma. And all I have to do is nurture it. … But sometimes actors come into my class, and I know they have the desire. And that usually means there’s a spark. But what I see is that they have covered their own spark, and in so doing covered their own potential to really light up a stage.
And so what sometimes happens in the course of just a semester is I challenge them and … something begins to uncover, and that light begins to shine. A lot of it is them giving themselves permission to play—to try things and not have to be perfect.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Cry, Old Kingdom”
WHERE: New City Players, 1204 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors
WHEN: April 13-30
COST: $20-$35
CONTACT: 954/376-6114, newcityplayers.org
For more with Elizabeth Price, check out this web extra from the April issue of Boca magazine.
