“August: Osage Country”
Where: Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater
When: Through Dec. 20
Info: $25 to $80; kennedy-center.org
Shannon Cochran basks in her latest role as Barbara Fordham in “August: Osage County.” The show was the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, as well as awards from Drama Desk, Drama League, New York Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle.
Her character is one of three daughters to Violet Weston, the prescription-drug-addicted family matriarch played by Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons.
“Estelle is a formidable presence on stage, very demanding, and she has extracted from me a fiercer embodiment of Barbara than in the original version,” Cochran said. “I was drawn to Estelle’s Violet, Barbara’s feelings toward her absent father and the dynamics between the three sisters because I don’t have a sister of my own and it made me wish for that kind of relationship. Along the way, I’ve tweaked the character to conform with what is happening between the others on stage.
“You meet Barbara when everything she knew about love has changed. She had the feeling she was her father’s favorite child and later believed she was her mother’s favorite. She finds this wasn’t true. At the same time, her marriage is unraveling. I felt so sorry for her, how flawed she is, and I looked for the warts.”
A true journeyman actor, Cochran graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and made her mark early in musical theater, but when she arrived in Chicago, which she calls her spiritual home, the Steppenwolf Theater Company gave her opportunities to cross over to drama. There she won the 1988 Joseph Jefferson Award for her role as Gladys Bump in the musical “Pal Joey,” along with eight succeeding Joseph Jefferson nominations in both musicals and dramas, the latest in 2008 for a principal role in “The Lion in Winter.”
When not on tour, she is a faculty member of the School at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and the branch in Los Angeles. Her dozens of television and film credits include guest appearances on such major shows as “Star Trek,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” “The Office,” “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “Numb3rs,” and as the mysterious Anna Morgan in the 2002 DreamWorks thriller “The Ring.”
