Rudinoff's cocktail preference is not a contradiction, regardless of the possible misconceptions of fans who've experienced only her hairier, sweatier, more crotch-sniffing, ass-scratching moments onstage. Her current role as the title character of Ki Gottberg's adaptation of Ubu running at Empty Space Theatre is a perfect example.
Ubu Roi--upon which Empty Space's Ubu is based--is a notorious, seldom-produced classic, penned by an angry French teenager named Alfred Jarry in 1896 as a missal against a hated teacher, and credited as the first absurdist satire. As a character, Ubu personifies filth, gluttony, and despotism--corpulent, corrupt, a consummate bully, reeking of his own shit (metaphoric, literal), and with insatiable stupidity.
"I initially read the role of Ma Ubu--Ubu's wife--at an Empty Space workshop," Rudinoff explains. "But Ki called me back a few days later and asked me to read for Ubu himself."
"I was curious," explains Ki Gottberg about her decision to audition Sarah for the part. "I wanted an Ubu that had an 'everyman' quality. I was deep into my adaptation, and I had a few actors in mind. When I called Sarah in to read, she rolled in braless, fierce, light on her feet, with that dark caramel voice.... I saw and heard a kind of giant dancing baby; sexless the way babies are, terrorized and terrorizing, full of appetite, totally self-involved. I felt titillated, horrified, and thrilled watching her. She reveals a ferocious kind of appetite in her acting--a breathtaking honesty combined with a kind of yearning vulnerability. It was liberating to see Ubu as more (and less) than 'just a man.'"
As for the woman who would be king: "I was surrounded by designers arguing that a woman as Ubu wasn't going to work," says Sarah. "Now I'm raging around in a filthy man-diaper wondering if I'm ever going to get laid again." But she loves playing the difficult role, and it's obvious.
Sarah began her long and twisty journey as an artiste in the relatively isolated and much-leid town of Lihue on the island of Kauai, Hawaii--her hometown, where her father, a philanthropic Episcopal priest and Vietnam vet, and her stepmom, a well-known painter, still live. "I began taking ballet when I was 5 years old," Sarah remembers. "There was this woman, Marion Wallmar, who had moved to Kauai to retire, I suppose. She was in her early 60s and the kind of teacher who sat down with a stick and pointed and whacked at you. I danced for her until I hit pre-puberty. I stopped because she basically told me I would never be a serious dancer, my body was wrong for it. My limbs weren't long enough, I had too-wide hips... you know the rest."
Sarah began rehearsing Ubu fresh from a slow-starting, six-week run as the singing stage manager in Empty Space's production (L)imitations of Life, a show that received frigid reviews. "Did I think the play didn't get to where I thought we were going? Yes. Did I want my role to be more clearly defined? Yes. I thought the show got much clearer as we ran, and we got about three standing ovations a week throughout the run, so it spoke to a lot of people--not critics, and maybe not even me, and that was a good surprise to know that my opinion is not everyone's."
Even better, Ubu marks Sarah's first performance as a member of Actors Equity. She was official as of April 15. This is a milestone in any actor's life, and Sarah (who worked as the classic actor/waiter for 13 years) says that the change has allowed her to relax a little. "[Food service] was good to me, but I had to get out--I had a vision of myself at 45, next to the coffee station, chatting it up about STDs with a bunch of twentysomethings who look up to me because I have a 'big girl' apartment."
As for making the leap to the union structure: "There is something more alive and intimate and scary when I can relax into something," says Rudinoff. "Especially something that takes a lot of energy, like a song or an intense role, like Ubu. And I am Union YES to my bones. My great uncle was the head of the Teamsters, my aunt was the head of her teachers' union, my grandfather was the liaison between union state workers in Hawaii and the mayor's office, my college roommate who I am still close with is a lead organizer for SEIU in the Northwest. But, being in an acting union that has no work guarantees is weird. I am looking forward to getting more involved, seeing what it is, and doing my solo shows under a contract, while keeping my control."
"I always knew that I had to do my own thing," Rudinoff says. "I worked on a lot of more avant-garde type fringe theater because there was a place for me. The great canon of plays doesn't have a lot of stories that concern a person who looks like me."
