A new role: Tony winner tries her hand at directing

When the invitation came, Phylicia Rashad says she was so surprised, "I couldn't even speak."

What amazed the seasoned stage and screen actress was a request last year from Constanza Romero, widow of the late Seattle playwright August Wilson, to direct Wilson's play "Gem of the Ocean" at Seattle Repertory Theatre this spring.

"Constanza gave me some time to think about it, and it took me about two days," Rashad recalled last week, during a pre-rehearsal chat in the sun-splashed Rep lobby. "My hesitation was just about wanting to respect August's work. Then I said yes." "I have gotten to know her as a very intelligent woman, and very passionate about her work," stated Romero, who expresses full confidence in Rashad, by phone.

Yet in a distinguished acting career that has brought her a Tony Award, two Emmy nominations, an NAACP "Image" award and other honors, Rashad had never staged so much as a one-act play. Nor had she ever wanted to direct.

So isn't it a little scary making her directing debut at a large regional theater, with a challenging Wilson script? "No," Rashad answered firmly.

Such no-frills directness, go-with-the-flow spirit and focused discipline led Rashad to take artistic risks many fans of her long-running TV sitcom, "The Cosby Show," could not have imagined.

So convincing was Rashad as her alter-ego Clair Huxtable , many of the millions watching assumed she simply was Clair â€" successful attorney, gorgeous wife (to Bill Cosby's Cliff Huxtable) and marvelous mom to five adorable kids.

But while the simply dressed but still elegant Rashad voiced no regrets about her "Cosby" run ("Are you kidding? It was fabulous!"), she has always sought out creative chances — primarily in the theater.

In fact, during one hectic stretch she boarded two shuttle flights a day to commute between the "Cosby" set in New York City and rehearsals for a play in Washington, D.C. "It was crazy and dangerous," she reported. "After a while I had a brick in my stomach."

Ever since "The Cosby Show" wrapped in 1992 after eight seasons, and a second Cosby-centered sitcom ("Cosby") ran its course in 2000, Rashad has concentrated on acting with distinction in New York and regional theater. And she's won respect for tackling a vanity-free array of roles, several under the command of Kenny Leon, who directed her in "Gem of the Ocean" on Broadway.

A favorite part was Aunt Ester, the sage nearly 300-year-old matriarch in "Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904 in a black Pittsburgh household during the rugged aftermath of slavery.

Rashad's transformation as Ester obscured her own recognizable features with heavy old-age makeup and won her a second Tony Award nomination. (Her first, and her win, was for playing another unglamorous matriarch in a revival of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," opposite rap star Sean Combs.)

Today Rashad describes Aunt Ester with near-mystical devotion, as "a woman of great understanding, a woman of great faith, a woman who embodies spiritual experience. Let me put it this way. In the whole of theater there is nobody like Aunt Ester â€" nooo-body."

"What wasn't right about her performance as Aunt Ester?" asked Leon by phone from New York, where he is now remounting his Seattle Rep version of Wilson's final play, "Radio Golf," on Broadway. "Phylicia represented the essence of 300 years of African-American history in that part. She found the soul of that woman."

These days, Rashad seems content to be offstage directing Michele Shay, another veteran of Wilson dramas, as Aunt Ester. With Rep artistic head David Esbjornson's "total support," Rashad's "Gem of the Ocean" completes the theater's production of all 10 plays in Wilson's much-honored African-American drama cycle.

What tips did Rashad share with Shay about bringing Aunt Ester to life? "I observed elderly black women, the ones who had a zest, an energy, a sparkle, a twinkle in their eyes. With acting, you have to understand who the human being is. If you enter into the life of that understanding, you don't have to worry. That, I learned from Mr. Cosby."

Much earlier though, the Houston-bred Rashad (whose sister is the performer-director Debbie Allen) was learning as she toiled in theater. After she studied acting at Howard University, she quickly found work in New York in plays and on TV soap operas ("One Life to Live").

A capable singer, Rashad was also in the ensemble and an understudy for the hit Broadway musicals "The Wiz," "Dreamgirls" and "Jelly's Last Jam."

And she describes her long "Cosby Show" tenure as a "master class." "That was what it was like working with Bill Cosby. His understanding of human behavior is phenomenal. Bill observes everything in the room. With one sweep of the eye, nothing escapes his vision."

As for being a have-it-all, modern wonder woman like Clair Huxtable, Rashad noted wryly: "It's easy when you're scripted â€" and when the children are scripted, too."

Rashad's personal life has been more complicated: three marriages and three divorces, raising two now-adult children and several stepchildren with her third husband, ex-football star and sports announcer Ahmad Rashad. (They divorced in 2001.)

But Rashad, who exudes both unshakeable dignity and earthy warmth, has always made her career a high priority. And while some of her 50-something peers struggle to look eternally young, she stated flatly, "I don't think that way."

Rashad recently revived her compelling, Tony-winning "Raisin in the Sun" portrayal of a care-worn urban grandmother, in a new TV film of the play made for ABC. She also has an upcoming role in a new movie starring Kate Hudson.

For now she's enmeshed in "Gem of the Ocean," directing a hand-picked cast that includes Seattle actors William Hall Jr. and Todd Jefferson Moore, and New York colleagues like Crystal Fox and Allie Woods.

Leon lends moral support by phone. "We've talked at least weekly about the challenges of directing," he reported. "I told her, the most important thing to remember is that you're not in this position by any fluke or mistake. You know the play through and through."

As for future directing gigs, if this goes well, Rashad has a typically unruffled que sera, sera attitude. "I really don't know," she said. "I don't think about it. Right now, this is what I'm doing. I'm just in the moment, working on this."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com