The Real Thing 

For an actor, creating a character is always a challenge. When that character is a real-life person, you get a brand-new set of challenges.

Local actor Tamara Johnson Howell gets that challenge in Bella Bella, based on the life of pioneering feminist activist and U.S. Representative from New York Bella Abzug, first staged in 2019 by playwright Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy). Set on the primary election night of her campaign to be New York's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1976, it draws from many of Abzug's speeches and published writing, providing a firm foundation in the real-life Bella Abzug.

That kind of connection can be a double-edged sword for someone playing such a character, however. Howell acknowledges that before beginning work on Bella Bella, "I knew very little [about Bella Abzug]. I'd heard of her, but I was 9 years old when this play is set, so she was kind of before my time. So I've done a lot of research, which has been very cool. I've played a couple of real people before—Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton—but with Bella Abzug, there's footage of her speeches and interviews."

And while having all of that material available could be seen as a benefit in helping to build a character, it also requires an actor to avoid a trap that's common in performances based on an actual person: reducing the performance to an impression of that person. "This character, I don't think I could do an impression of her, and I wouldn't attempt one," Howell says. "I am adopting her Bronx accent, for sure, a few Yiddish words and phrases she used are in the script, and I'm trying to use some of those inflections and cadences. But I think doing an impression would be a mistake. For some folks, Bella Abzug is sort of sacred, and I wouldn't want it to come off as flippant, or disrespectful to who she was. ... Her persona was larger than life, so it would be a mistake to go from character to caricature."

That challenge is certainly different for a script based on a real-life person who lived more prominently in the age of film, video and audio, unlike the aforementioned examples of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, where a specific image of the person might not be as readily fixed in the popular consciousness. In such latter cases, Howell notes, there's a more fictionalized and speculative form of writing involved, rather than something like Bella Bella with a script taken from the subject's own words.

Yet even then, it's not as simple a matter as learning Bella Abzug's speeches, and using the right accent to say them. "When you do something that's a real person, the challenge is to make it yours and make it theirs [the real-life subject's] at the same time," Howell says. "You have to bring a little bit of yourself, a little bit of the writer, a little bit of the real person."

What you're trying not to bring, she adds, are previous interpretations of the same person. Just as an actor knows that there have been innumerable earlier performances of, for example, a Shakespeare character, there can be other takes on this character out in the world—as there was most recently in the case of actor Margo Martindale playing Bella Abzug in the 2020 miniseries Mrs. America, about the push in the 1970s for the Equal Rights Amendment. While Howell acknowledges that she watched Mrs. America, she had to do the same thing actors always do when a role is one they aren't originating: "I've tried to throw it out the window, because that's another actor's interpretation."

In case all of those components weren't enough, Bella Bella throws Howell the unique logistics of being a one-person show. She says that the structure of the show—with Abzug speaking directly to the audience as though sharing stories with them casually—gives it a different vibe than something where the character is speaking, in her words, "a woo-woo, out-there internal monologue." But there is a certain pressure involved in carrying the whole show, especially since Howell is a schoolteacher and the reality of COVID makes staying healthy a necessity to make sure the show can go on.

"I brought this huge air purifier that I keep by my desk," she says with a laugh. "I feel like I'm COVID-testing every other minute: 'My foot fell asleep, is that COVID?'"

Even with all these challenges, Howell says that learning about Bella Abzug has been an inspiring experience, especially in a time where it feels like many of the same feminist battles are being fought all over again.

"I've become such a huge fan of this woman," Howell says. "She was so cool, and did so much. She just bucked the system and fought her way through the patriarchy, and as women, we owe so much to her."