Actor Returns To Direct TheaterWorks’ Family Drama ‘The Call’

Jenn Thompson has plenty of reasons to feel good about directing “The Call” at TheaterWorks.

It’s about family issues that are close to her heart. It brings her back to Connecticut, where she was popular as an actor and director in Ivoryton from the late 1980s into the mid-2000s. And it brings her to TheaterWorks in particular, where she gets to do a contemporary play, starring some frequent collaborators from New York, at a theater run by an old pal.

“The Call,” a drama of impending-parenthood, began previews May 12, has its opening night Friday, May 20, and runs through June 19.

Tanya Barfield’s play had a successful New York production in 2013, and has since been staged at regional theaters throughout the country. (The Profile Theatre in the playwright’s native Portland, Ore., has devoted its entire 2016 season to Barfield’s works.)

Thompson was active in Connecticut as an actress for 20 years, when her family ran the River Rep summer season at the Ivoryton Playhouse. With her father Evan Thompson, her mother Joan Shepard and brother Owen Thompson, she appeared in dozens of shows, from musicals (including “The Robber Bridgegroom”) to dramas (“A Few Good Men”) and quirky comedies (“Sylvia”).

When not running its own summer stock company, the family was very active in New York theater. Jenn was in the Broadway production of “Annie” in the late 1970s and played Belle in a 1998 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” Her childhood TV and movie credits include “Harper Valley PTA” and “Little Darlings.” She has had dozens of regional theater acting credits, and now has dozens of directing credits as well.

“I don’t act anymore,” Thompson said in a phone interview earlier this week. “I tried to do both, but it was harder for people to take me seriously as a director when they knew me as an actor.”

It was at Ivoryton that Thompson first began to direct, starting with a well-received production of the musical “Damn Yankees.” She served as the River Rep’s producing director and ran the theater’s intern program.

Thompson was in Connecticut a couple of seasons ago, directing Beth Henley’s “Abundance” at Hartford Stage in the spring of 2013. As soon as “The Call” opens at TheaterWorks, she’s on to another Connecticut gig, helming “Bye Bye Birdie” at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam.

“The Call” came about, Thompson says, “because I’ve been friends with [TheaterWorks Producing Artistic Director] Rob Ruggiero for a long time.”

Due to her background as an actor who worked in a lot of established shows, she tends to be asked to direct older works. “I have not done as many new plays,” she says. “I’ve generally fallen into the revival track.”

The typing doesn’t really faze her: “I treat revivals like new plays.” She’s happy to be doing “The Call” now at a theater that has an appreciation for new and challenging works. “I love the TheaterWorks space. The staff is wonderful.”

The director feels a special connection to “The Call,” a family drama about a middle-aged couple who decides to adopt a baby from Africa and gets caught up in some cross-cultural complications. Thompson and her husband, the stage and TV actor Stephen Kunken (currently seen in the series “Billions” and the new Woody Allen film “Café Society”), adopted their 6-year-old daughter Naomi from Ethiopia. Kunken had been part of the original workshop process for “The Call.”

“He worked on it for two years,” Thompson says, “then had to do another job.”

The TheaterWorks production of “The Call” stars Todd Gearhart and Mary Bacon, whom Thompson says, “I have worked with separately and together” at New York’s The Actors Company Theatre (TACT). Thompson served as artistic director of TACT from 2011-15 and all three are still active company members.

Bacon and her husband Andrew Leynse also have a child they adopted from Ethiopia. Leynse (the artistic director of the New York company Primary Stages) was one of the original producers of “The Call” in New York.

In the play, the hopeful mother Annie laments: “We didn’t ask to solve the world’s problems. We asked for a baby.” If that sounds dark and anxiety-ridden, Thompson is happy to dispel that assumption. “I don’t think it’s dark. It’s certainly got a lot of emotion in it, but also a lot of humor. It’s relatable. This is a play about finding a family, about how to build a relationship.”

After “The Call,” Thompson takes what she calls a “180-degree turn” from TheaterWorks to the Goodspeed and “Bye Bye Birdie.”

The musical will reunite her with a frequent co-star from her old Ivoryton days, Warren Kelley, who’ll play the peeved parent Mr. McAfee. Then Thompson gets more shots at scripts from the 21^st century, directing Nina Raine’s 2012 drama “Tribes” for Barrington Stage in the Berkshires. Then she’ll do another new play, “The Gravedigger’s Lullabye” by Jeff Talbott, in New York. Next spring she’s scheduled to do the musical “The Secret Garden” in Denver.

This month, though, it’s all about Connecticut.

“It’s cool to be spending so much time here again,” she said. “I will always be a Connecticut person.”

“THE CALL” by Tanya Barfield, directed by Jenn Thompson, is performed through June 19 at TheaterWorks, 233 Pearl St., Hartford.. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $65, $15 for student rush. Information: 860-527-7838, theaterworkshartford.com.