6 Questions: Marietta Hedges

Actress Marietta Hedges plays both Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights activist shot dead after the Selma Voting March, and Tommy Rowe, an informant for the FBI who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Catherine Filloux’s one-woman play SELMA ‘65.  Marietta answered our 6 Questions recently and here is what show had to say:

1. What is the most challenging aspect of your roles in SELMA 65?
Right now it’s memorizing the lines more than anything.

2. Why is this topic relevant to audiences today?
There has been a big backlash against women’s rights, civil rights and voting rights in particular. The voting rights act, which is what Viola Liuzzo died for, had sections of it voted down last year by the Supreme Court. These very important rights that many people died for are being systematically rolled back. Politicians are consciously putting policies in place which make it extremely difficult for African-Americans, students and poor people to vote. These politicians claim that there is enough voter fraud to justify these new laws however numerous studies reveal that virtually no fraud exists. This deliberate disenfranchisement of select group of people-people who have a tendency to vote for so called democrats and liberals, is reminiscent of what was done in the Jim Crow south.

3.  When did you know you wanted a career in the arts?
When I was 16 after I played the part of Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of our Teeth.

4.  What is the last good book your read?
New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.

5.  Who or what inspires you?
All the people who went down to Selma to march and volunteer. People who protested the war in Iraq and torture. Theater and theater artists.

6.  What does working at La MaMa mean to you?
I first worked at La MaMa when I was in grad school at Columbia. I did a few shows there and love the time I spent at the theater. It feels like an artistic home I’m returning to.

La MaMa presents

SELMA '65

A New Play by Catherine Filloux
Starring Marietta Hedges 
Director by Eleanor Holdridge 

September 26, 2014 - October 12, 2014 

Thursday & Friday at 7:30pm
Saturday at 2 & 7:30pm
Sunday at 2pm 

First Floor Theatre @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE