Jane Alexander is an actress, writer, and conservationist. She chaired the National Endowment for the Art from 1993-1997. A Tony Award winner and member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, Alexander has performed in more than a hundred plays. Her long film career includes four Academy Award nominations, for The Great White Hope, All The President’s Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Testament. She has been honored with two Emmys, for Playing for Time and Warm Springs. Alexander was a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a board member of the American Bird Conservancy, the American Birding Association, and a Commissioner of New York State Parks. She sits on the board of the National Audubon Society, the Global Advisory Group of Bird Life International, and the Conservation Council of Panthera. In 2012 the Indianapolis Prize inaugurated the Jane Alexander Global Wildlife Ambassador Award, with Alexander as its first recipient.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Jane Alexander, welcome to The Creative Process.
JANE ALEXANDER
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
So before we set up this conversation, we had a bit of a back-and-forth. And you were writing that you spend much of your time in Nova Scotia. And that you spend much of your time, although you're acting in many roles, tell us a little bit about what brought you to conservation and what you've been reflecting on in recent days.
ALEXANDER
Well, I came to conservation as a lover of nature, as a young girl growing up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. We just had a tiny backyard. But I was enthralled by whatever lived there from a very early age. So I kept up with my love of nature all through life by the same path that I was also going on in theater for the most part. And later film. And conservation came out of my love for animals because it became clear in the 70s, about fifty years ago, that there were many species that were beginning their decline and continue to do so today. So then I became friends with a lot of biologists and ecologists and went on many trips globally with them and locally. I became an ardent protector of wildlife. You brought up early on how the link really for me between all of us and the health of all of us and COVID-19 certainly represents the pandemic that we were all fearful of, and here it is. And it probably begun in an animal in Asia. For many people, this is an issue of poverty. It's clearly they don't have the means either to eat anything else or to sell anything else to make a living. So what coronavirus is doing for us today is bringing all of these issues, social issues to the forefront and economical issues. So it's fascinating. It's a time, once we get over the initial wave that we're going through right now, which is so severe. I think we have to begin to address all of these social issues because that's what's causing pandemics in the world, the very health of everything in the world.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And speaking about social issues, I mean, from the very beginning and The Great White Hope and so many of your roles on stage and on-screen–there's been a social or political conscience underpinning them.
ALEXANDER
I grew up in a family of Republicans, a medical family. And I swear I came out of my mother's womb as a Democrat. I was liberal from a very early age. And I just remember arguing with them at ten years old and saying, "No, no, but you have to think about this!" The truth was, I don't know whether there was something in me that translated that I was politically and socially conscious when I was a young actress because these roles came to me. I didn't go out begging for them. And I was so grateful to have them because I thought they had a depth to them. It was the height of the Black Power movement. There was a wonderful black leader named Stokely Carmichael who was promulgating Black is Beautiful and Black Power and the play The Great White Hope was about a black boxer, true, that James Earl Jones played. And who won the heavyweight championship in 1910. And James Earl played an amalgam of this man, and I played...he had many, many white mistresses and lovers. I just felt deeply grateful to be part of this play that was ringing some kinds of bells for all the people who came to see it. Part of the first year that we played it on Broadway, the audience were predominantly white, and towards the end of that year, they were predominantly, a little bit more than 50 percent black. So it was extraordinary to feel the emotion coming across the footlights to us on stage. Of both white and black during that year. I felt very grateful to be part of that.
The Great White Hope, well that was just a remarkable piece of history and theater and film to be involved with for so many years. 1968 was a year of amazing political tension and movement in the United States. It was the height of the Black Power Movement. There was a wonderful black leader named Stokely Carmichael who was promulgating Black is Beautiful and Black Power. For our careers, it was seminal. Both James Earl Jones and I received Tony Awards and then we went on to do the film. We both received Academy Award nominations. That kind of set us up for our careers because both James Earl and myself went on to do not only film, television, but continued to be prominent in the theater as well. We felt extremely fortunate that happened.
And I did not seek out these roles, but All the President's Men…I know that I was very interested in social and political issues from childhood. I grew up in a family of Republicans. A medical family. And I swear I came out of my mother's womb as a Democrat. I was liberal from a very early age! And I just remember arguing with them at 10 years old and saying, "No, no, but you have to think about this! And that!" But the truth was I don't know whether there was something in me that translated that I was politically and socially conscious when I was a young actress because these roles came to me. I didn't go out begging for them. And I was so grateful to have them because I thought they had a depth to them.
And I never thought for a minute that I would become the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts because I didn't have any background for that kind of political position, but I met with four people who were very influential in New York that the administration had asked to vet me, besides the FBI just talked to me about what I could do culturally for the agency. And they made it clear they just wanted the First Amendment — Freedom of Expression upheld. ... So, I said, well, yes, of course. I'm an actress, and nothing human is alien to me.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
So now it's interesting when you can work, again with Dustin Hoffman, when you can work again with a person, you develop these shorthands and ways of reading each other's and taking each other's emotional temperatures. I can't imagine what that's like because I'm a little bit collaborative with this project, but I'm also a painter and I write. So it's more like me reading my own temperature.
ALEXANDER
The thing that I do love the most about the profession that I chose at an early age to become a part of—I was about nine when I decided I wanted to be on the stage—is the collegiality. The fact that you are in a collaborative, creative effort together. And sometimes you make magic together. And what I love most, Mia, was, as I say, the sense of collegiality. Because when you get to a point where you and the director really have a meeting of minds, and you know each other so well that you can laugh and joke on the set and then get right back to work, it doesn't take anything away.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
That's real artistry. And I think there are people who are thinking about costumes, are thinking about lighting or the actors or the directors. They, of course, you have a great appreciation for the behind the scenes players. But I think that other people might just feel like it's almost done by magic. That the illusion that's created so strong.
ALEXANDER
We may be doing this in a different way now that we're all in lockdown for one night on television. And so you can't keep a good creative spirit down. These things will transmogrify. They will become something new. Some of them will be, probably rightly so, enormous failures and other ones will succeed in ways we have no way of even estimating right now. And that's very exciting. I've been around long enough to know that when television came in everybody said, "That's the end of theater!" And no, it wasn't the end of theater. In fact, they all are proliferating at the same time in the population. And the cultural aspects of our global population are such that they can take it all.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And I don't want to forget also all the championing you've done celebrating your work as former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. What was your mission as you came to that and your understanding of the organization? And what your aims were?
ALEXANDER
Those of us who are on different sides, we need to understand each other today more than ever. There is such a divide, and I know that we have more in common than we don't have. The right of wildlife and wild things is something that we all share because it means our own health. We know so little about all the creatures of the world and the complexity of how we're connected that we have to save it if we're going to save mother earth and save ourselves.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Isabel Sumardi. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.
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Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer, and founder of The Creative Process. This is an excerpt of a 7,000 word interview which will be published and podcasted across a network of participating university and arts literary magazines.
