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Living
Legacy
By
Shawn Stone
Lilia!
Written
and performed by Libby Skala, directed by Gabriel Barre
The
Arts Center of the Capital Region, March 16
 Libby
Skala’s one-woman show, a tribute to her grandmother, actress
Lilia Skala, arrived in town at a fortuitous moment. It’s
Academy Awards season, and Lilia Skala earned her footnote
in film history by winning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting
Actress for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, in which she
played a nun opposite Sidney Poitier. To put both her life
and the Oscars in proper perspective, Skala was working in
the lost-and-found department of New York’s City Center at
the time of her nomination. In the 1963 audio clip that began
this engaging evening, an announcer from radio station WOR
wondered if this wasn’t a comment on our culture. It was then,
and is now—as the details of Lilia’s journey illustrated.
Moving back and forth in time, and shifting from first-person
monologues in which Lilia reminisces about her life to scenes
between grandmother and granddaughter through the years, Libby
crafts a portrait both of a fascinating person and of a poignant
connection between two kindred spirits.
Lilia led a remarkable life. She was the first woman architect
to graduate from the University of Dresden, Germany, but promptly
abandoned architecture for acting. As her granddaughter tells
us, Lilia initially chose architecture because she thought
it a bit like acting, having to get inside the mind of the
client to perfectly create the building they desired. A few
institutional building projects removed the romance from the
profession. Lilia married, but continued to act on the stage
in Austria and Germany. She and her family fled the Nazis
for America. Struggles followed, but she was eventually able
to reestablish herself as an actress on the stage, and in
TV and movies. Imagine a career arc that ranged from appearing
in a George Bernard Shaw play on the Munich stage in 1934
to appearing in the pilot for Raymond Burr’s Ironside.
Libby Skala became her grandmother to relate this narrative:
the Viennese accent, the formal Old World comportment, the
manner of the great actress with an only slightly exaggerated
sense of her own greatness. She also had to be this Grand
Dame imitating herself as a young women, and Libby managed
the shadings of these layers of character seemingly without
effort. All this was accomplished through voice and expression;
in a 70-minute, one-act show, there’s no opportunity for a
costume change.
Libby also played herself as very young girl, eager acting
student, and as a struggling young professional actor, charting
the course of her relationship with Lilia. Her perfectly composed
performance as Lilia, however, almost made it difficult to
accept her as herself, but she did alternate between the two
characters convincingly.
Gabriel Barre’s straightforward staging made the most of the
simple, two-chair set. There were subtle light changes to
support the mood, and one lone prop, a sweater that provided
two of the evening’s most dramatic moments.
As playwright, Libby Skala did a deft job of placing her grandmother
in the context of historical incident while keeping the focus
on the personal drama, and the unique qualities of Lilia’s
personality. Lilia Skala was a person who had to believe in
herself. While this may sound facile, the play persuasively
sets forth that this was the key to her ability to survive,
and her greatest strength.
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