Sunday, May 31, 2009
A+E, Theater, Atlanta

The end—for now

Maia Knispel leaves Atlanta for new horizons

BY BERT OSBORNE

Maia Knispel’s new Horizon show isn’t called "End Days" for nothing. After eight years on the local theater scene—most passionately as one of three co-founders/co-artistic directors of Out of Hand ("Meds"), and occasionally as an actress for hire ("Far Away")—this fall, Knispel and her husband, actor-director Tyler Owens, are packing up to study abroad for two years at the University of Exeter in England. He received a Fulbright scholarship to focus on Shakespearean staging, while she’ll be specializing in "intercultural actor training," very much in keeping with Out of Hand’s well-researched, company-developed work ethic.
 
"We’re in for a crazy ride and it’s really exciting, but it’s given us a lot to think about, in terms of reconciling that with how hard it’s going to be to leave," Knispel maintains during a recent interview. In her heart, weaning herself from Out of Hand seems unimaginable—"It’s felt like my baby for so long now"—but, in her head, Knispel says she knows better, citing last year’s leave of absence by OOH cohort Adam Fristoe (who has since returned). "We survived without him, just as Adam and Ariel [de Man] will survive without me," she notes. "I’m looking on the bright side, about coming back richer and fuller of new ideas and possibilities for the group."
 
Meantime, Knispel is dwelling on the darker side in "End Days," a seriocomic dysfunctional family play by Deborah Zoe Laufer, set in the aftermath of 9/11. Each of the Steins reacts differently to the trauma: the Jewish mother becomes an evangelical Christian; the depressed father withdraws from life; and their daughter, a Goth teen (that would be 33-year-old Knispel) rails against it all. Director Heidi Cline’s ensemble also features Stacy Melich and Robin Bloodworth as Mom and Dad, Nick Arapoglou as the affable boy next door (an Elvis nut), and none other than Fristoe as none other than Jesus—and as Stephen Hawking, too.
 
It’s hardly Knispel’s first "angry vixen type," as she describes the role. "I guess I’m called in for strong, feisty women partly because I’m somewhat that way in my own life," she says. In this case, as an actress who’s twice the age of her character, the biggest challenge is "recalling what it was like to know less about life, to believe and have faith in a lot more things, before experience inevitably changes how people view the world as we get older. I can see a lot of myself in her when I was that age. Sometimes, being a teenager sucks. Doesn’t everyone go through that sort of dark period in their youth? You read ‘The Stranger,’ or you listen to the Cure, right?"
 
As hands-on as she tends to be during the evolution of a typical Out of Hand project, Knispel admits, "I often forget how fabulous it is to just be an actor, what a real treat it can be not to think about any of those other writing, directing or producing aspects." Since relocating here (from Wisconsin) to earn a theater degree from Emory, forming and working with her own company "definitely trumps all else," she says. Press Knispel about her favorite freelance acting gigs over the years, and the combination may surprise you—a toss-up between Edward Albee’s dire "A Delicate Balance" (at 7 Stages) and Dad’s Garage’s zany "Action Movie II!"
 
Two years sounds like a long time, but Knispel insists we haven’t seen the end of her days here. SP