Karen Ziemba is one of those constants in the theater world. She’s currently playing The Wife in the “Did You Move?” segment of Contact, an original musical which has proven to be a huge hit this season. Two days after our interview, Contact received seven Tony Nominations, including Best Musical, and Karen herself received a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Contact is Karen’s seventh Broadway show, after A Chorus Line, 42nd Street, Teddy & Alice, Crazy For You, Steel Pier, and Chicago. She has also performed Off Broadway, in several PBS Great Performances, and at the White House.

Karen grew up in Michigan and studied voice and dance as a young child. Her grandmother was famed mezzo-soprano Winifred Heidt, one of the stars of the City Center Opera, where Karen performed years later after it was renamed the New York City Opera. She met her husband, actor Bill Tatum, when the two of them worked together in a production of Seesaw.

I met with Karen in her dressing room at Lincoln Center. I had to wait a few minutes though, because Karen, Boyd Gaines and Deborah Yates were entertaining a very important guest who had just seen the matinee performance - Shirley MacLaine. I asked Karen later if she had known that Ms. MacLaine would be in the audience and she said, “No. I never want to know who’s out there. I always find out later.”

Nancy Rosati:  From everything I’ve read about you, it sounds as if you’ve always known you wanted to be a performer. You took dance lessons when you were a very little kid.

Karen Ziemba:  It’s not so much that I wanted to be a performer, as much as it was introduced to me. Music was always there. We used to watch a lot of movies. My mother loved dance. They put me into ballet class when I was six, so it was something that was always available to me. It wasn’t like, “You gotta, you gotta, you gotta” - it was just something that I happened to excel at, and it made me very happy. I think the fact that I wasn’t pushed probably was a good thing. I didn’t resent it in any way. It just made me love it. The fact that I could also equate it with watching Ginger Rogers or Shirley MacLaine or Gwen Verdon or Chita, Rita, whoever, made me realize that you can do this for a living. Not that I was thinking about that at six years old, but I did realize that this was a real thing. It’s not just hard work, but there’s something at the end of the rainbow. The hard work pays off and I truly believe that.

NR:  Your grandmother was an opera singer?

KZ:  Yes. There’s a painting of her right behind you. It’s a painting that a friend did of her when she was doing The Madwoman of Shaillot. She started acting after she sang opera. (She was always acting when she was doing opera, but then she did a lot straight acting.) Because the music was always playing in the house, and my grandmother was a professional singer, I’m sure my mother was very influenced. My mother took ballet and tap, and things like that back in the 40's. When my mother had her family, my three brothers and myself, she gave it to me. She never did it as a profession.

NR:  Did your grandmother give you any advice about this career?

KZ:  One thing she did say that I remember is that the people who work with you on stage, your Ensemble, are the most important people to you, because they’re the people that make you look good. I remember my first Equity show. I was in the chorus of My Fair Lady and the man who played Colonel Pickering (his name was James Hawthorne - he’s not with us anymore), was the Juvenile in The Song of Norway for City Center Opera with my grandmother as the Duchess. He had worked with her. My second Equity show was a production of Carousel and the woman who played Nettie was the ingenue in that same production. They were very young people when they worked with my grandmother but they remembered her. Then of course I’ve worked at City Opera myself many times and there were people who were soloists in those companies who had worked with her when they were young. Even Beverly Sills remembered her. They all remembered her very fondly and said she was a lively, bawdy, wonderful, very funny woman, and a very good actress. I have great old black and white photographs of her with her chorus boys hugging her. The circle continues. They all loved her. She was a lot of fun and had a great sense of humor.

NR:  She probably would have loved seeing you in this show.

KZ:  Yeah, well, hopefully she is in some way or another.

NR:  You have so many credits, I don’t even know where to begin ...

KZ:  (laughing) When I presented recently at the Lucille Lortel Awards last week, Sam Harris presented me and he said, “She’s done ...” I didn’t write it - somebody else wrote it. I listened to all these shows I had done and I thought, “It sounds like I’m seventy years old! Wow, I’ve been around a long time!” It’s funny because I realized that it’s really kind of piling up - not in a bad way, but I thought, “Oh, Karen, you sound like you’ve been around a LONG time.”

NR:  Aww, you just didn’t have a lot of time in between jobs.

KZ:  That’s probably it.

NR:  And how many people would kill for that opportunity?

KZ:  I know. I’m very fortunate.

NR:  Do any of them stand out in your mind, either as the most fun, or the worst experience?

KZ:  There are good things and bad things that you experience in every show. Sometimes it’s other individuals, sometimes it’s the work you’re doing - whether it’s doing the choreography of somebody great, or singing the songs of somebody great. Of course in my experience, singing the songs of George and Ira Gershwin in Crazy For You was just an incredible thing to do every night. Dancing Bob Fosse in Chicago, or Gower Champion in 42nd Street - there are just different little jewels you get along the way. Sometimes you have negative things that happen to you, like someone you don’t like playing opposite, or someone you feel doesn’t like you - it happens. As my grandmother said, your Ensemble is very important and people you play opposite are very important. So, if you have anything to say about that up front ... (laughing) that’s why stars say, “No, I’m going to work with such-and-such” or “I won’t work with such-and-such.” I feel that’s the case with directors and choreographers too. Once they get enough of a say, they say, “You know what? I’ve heard this person isn’t so great to work with. I’d really rather try that person.” Keeping your nose clean is very important.

As far as what stands out, I really loved doing 110 in the Shade that I did at New York City Opera. What a great role that was. This character in Contact, the character of The Wife in “Did You Move?” has turned out to be quite a tour de force for me, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think the longer I’ve done it, the deeper she gets and the easier she is to flesh out. She’s got so many different facets of her personality, and I think she’s a very sympathetic character too.

NR:  Yes, she is. Absolutely.

KZ:  (smiles) ... unbeknownst to me from the beginning. I read the script with these twelve or so lines and was given this classical music by Susan Stroman saying, “We’re going to dance to this” and I thought, “What are they thinking of? What is this going to be?” It’s what you make it.

NR:  What a challenge. I have to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised that it’s as much of a story as it is.

KZ:  She said, “This is the story. You’re going to do these steps, and then where you take it from there is from your soul and from your mind.” We were allowed to do that and that’s what’s so great about workshops. You get to experiment with things. If they start with a really good story ... it’s got to be a good story, that’s the bottom line. You’ve got to care about these people.

NR:  You’re telling so much of it with your face. I was really amazed when I saw it. My husband and I loved it.

KZ:  Good.

NR:  Were you nervous about doing something like this? You don’t have any big songs. You have very few lines. Were you a bit skeptical in the beginning?

KZ:  Fortunately we had a chance to perform this in a workshop downstairs in the basement, in the rehearsal room. I invited people to come see it - people that were very close to me and who I knew would talk straight. Not that I didn’t love what I was doing, and not that I would ever not trust Susan Stroman ... this is my sixth project with her. Anything she wants, I will try at least once. Not only do I respect her, but I just like to take those chances because she does, and why not jump in and try something? So I had these people come and they said, “This is really moving and we think you want to hold onto this because it’s something that you’re obviously relating to and something is coming out of you that we are getting.”

And that’s the most important thing, that you can communicate what you’re doing and people not only get it, but they appreciate it and they think about something afterwards that maybe they hadn’t thought about in awhile, or they are moved to laughter or tears. You just don’t want them to be “ho-hum.” It was something very stark, and funny but tragic - it was all of those things. The push and pull of “Did You Move?” in Contact, and the push of the entire show ... one minute you’re laughing and the next minute you’re clutching your breast because you can’t believe something is happening. That’s what makes good theater to me. It’s the emotions being tugged and pulled, tugged and pulled, and the surprise that you get from something you’re not expecting.

NR:  What struck me were the pregnant pauses in the show, where I don’t think anyone breathed. There were a few moments like that.

KZ:  Yes, those “pin-drop” moments.

NR:  You would hear everybody in the theater hold their breath and then let it out together.

KZ:  And in this theater, since we moved upstairs, there are how many more people in the Beaumont than there were down in the Mitzi? Even though the Mitzi Newhouse was very satisfying because it was so intimate that the audience was part of the scene, I was worried about moving to a larger space. I thought, “Omigosh, is it going to read?” and it’s worked out OK. And the response of course - when it’s laughter, it’s tenfold, and when it’s silence, it’s tenfold, so it’s worked in a very positive way.

NR:  The response has been incredible. You can’t get tickets, and who knows? Monday’s coming up and there could be Tony nominations. How does that feel?

KZ:  It’s wonderful - the thought of being validated in some way that people really enjoy this and are embracing it. But I’m not surprised because I remember when I first sat down in the basement when I was still doing Chicago, and was invited to see the first half that they created of this show. It was “Contact,” the second act, and I was so moved by it. I thought, “Wow. This is really good stuff.” It was good theater and something I hadn’t seen in awhile. The dancing was exemplary, so I’m not surprised.

NR:  In a few more days you’ll all know. At least you’ll know the first half - if there are nominations.

KZ:  On Monday morning we start rehearsals for a concert of South Pacific that we’re doing for Lincoln Center Theatre on the 22nd of May. We’re doing it with George Hearn, Bill Murray, Brett Barrett, Pat Suzuki and Tony Roberts - it’s going to be great! Just to hear that score again - I cannot wait. We’re doing it with a full orchestra and Jerry Zaks is directing. It’s going to be a big group so I’ll have something else to think about besides that on Monday.

NR:  Susan lost her husband (Mike Ockrent) not long ago. You were working through all this when it happened. How on earth ... it must have been so difficult.

KZ:  More so for her than the rest of us. I find because she has so much respect from her colleagues, her creative team and also those of us who work with her as her dancers, singers, and actors, that whenever we feel a pang from her, or a fatigue because there’s just so much going on in her mind, we take it on and we all get into that mode, and we still can work through it. It’s just a quieter, more intense, focused kind of thing. Then there will be a moment when she’ll just be cutting up and having a great time and we join in in force - not because we have to do this to make her feel better but because she has a way of being such a great leader that you get into that mode. She sets that tone from the first day - that we’re going to have a great time, but it’s not just fun and games. It’s about creating something really beautiful, and it’s all of us together, a real team.

NR:  It’s probably been a wonderful thing for her actually, that she had this and The Music Man, and they all look like they’re coming out so well, which is fantastic.

KZ:  Oh, yeah, because she’s put her focus so much into her work right now, which is what she always does, and always has, but I feel (and this is my opinion only), but I would love to think that she’s doing this not only because she’s a great artist, but she’s also doing it with Mike’s help and the things she’s learned from him, and to continue his legacy. He is so proud of her and she was of him, and wants to make him proud.

NR:  Thank goodness she has all of you with her.

KZ:  Oh, yeah, and as I was saying about my grandmother, he’s watching too and that means a lot to her, to know that he’s still there and he’s the angel on her shoulder.

NR:  That’s wonderful. Now, tell me about things that didn’t work out as well. I want to talk about Steel Pier.

KZ:  Ugh! Yeah.

NR:  First of all, that has to be totally heart-breaking - to throw everything into something like that and it wasn’t really given a chance. I was thinking thatThe Scarlet Pimpernel came along a year later and they were given this wonderful rescue. Can you imagine if you had had a chance like that?

KZ:  The same thing with Kiss of the Spider Woman too, the other Kander and Ebb show that turned out to be a beautiful show. Of course this is speaking in hindsight, (you learn a lot from these things) - at the time, I’ll tell you, the month after we closed was when everything kind of settled. When you lose someone or you lose something, it takes a little while for you to all of a sudden hit your head and say, “Ohmigosh.” I didn’t go into a deep depression, but I remember feeling like it was my fault, thinking “What could I have done to make it better?”, “Why didn’t I say this?”, “Why didn’t I say that?”

There are so many variables involved in why a show is a success or not and one thing I can say is that any kind of a show that is done from scratch, not a revival, no music has ever been written, no book has ever been written, no characters, it’s based on real life things that happen in a certain period of time ... (You can say, “Well, it sort of seems like this story or that story or that movie” and of course we’re all influenced by things we’ve seen before - that’s why stories are written.) But this was all original and anything like that that you’re conjuring up from nothing takes time, takes a gestation period and more than anything, a live show needs to be performed in front of a live audience. I’m not talking about fifty of your friends in the basement in the rehearsal hall, I’m talking about a real live theater full of lay people, full of “civilians” that come to the theater and find out what works and what doesn’t, and maybe why. That’s why shows go out on the road. That’s why shows go to Boston and go to Minneapolis and Chicago. We didn’t have that opportunity. I think it would have been very important to do that because when you’re acting in a very intimate situation, things work. You see what somebody’s eyes are saying. You see the tears, you see a look, a gesture. When you’re in a 1500 seat house, maybe something needs to be said instead of just a look. Maybe a song needs to be reprised to put a point across to let you know what’s going on. Maybe a story needs to be fixed. Maybe a new song needs to be written, and not two days before you open to the critics, but that’s the kind of stuff that goes on. Sometimes it really works and sometimes it doesn’t.

NR:  When you’re on Broadway, everything you do is in a goldfish bowl.

KZ:  That’s right. I don’t know if this had anything to do with it but I feel that it was also going to be compared very strongly to Kander and Ebb’s brilliant show Chicago which was running the same year and it just opened right before that. It’s kind of hard to compete with the best thing since sliced cheese that year. You couldn’t top it.

NR:  There were a lot of new musicals that opened that year.

KZ:  Yeah. Anyway, it was difficult.

NR:  I was wondering what would have happened if Steel Pier was given a chance to find its audience.

KZ:  The show has been done in amateur and other small professional theaters around the country, but nothing major was done with it as far as a national tour. In order for that to happen, somebody with a pocketbook has to say, “This is what I want to do.” With Pimpernel and Frank Wildhorn and the people that work with him, someone said, “We have the wherewithal to do it, we think it’s pretty darn good and can find an audience, let’s do it.” But everybody kind of went their own way and started working on their next project, which was probably a way of getting over it. But I still have people come up to me and say, “What a beautiful score that was” and “What a beautiful CD.” It might have a resurgence. Who knows? (laughing) Maybe they’ll do it at Encores.

NR:  Your husband’s (Bill Tatum) an actor too?

KZ:  Um hum.

NR:  Does that make it easier or harder?

KZ:  It’s a little bit of both, but I think more easy in that he understands what I’m going through. He can work on things with me, he can give me suggestions, he can come to previews and say, “Maybe you need to do a little work on this or that.” We can work on scripts together. He actually gave me a lot of nice suggestions for Steel Pier that ended up being incorporated. Unfortunately he couldn’t save it! (laughs) No - it was more like personal things, things for myself. So, it’s pretty good. In fact, today is my sixteenth wedding anniversary.

NR:  Congratulations!

KZ:  He sent me these flowers. He's doing The Odd Couple up at the Old Castle in Bennington, Vermont so we’re not together, but he sent me these beautiful flowers.

NR:  That must be hard. Sometimes one of you is out of town, or sometimes one of you is doing very well and the other one isn’t I suppose.

KZ:  Sure. When we first got together, he was doing really well. He was the spokesman for People Magazine and he was working on soaps for a long time. You go back and forth, but so far so good.

NR:  What about when you go through the craziness of an audition. Do you get each other through that? That’s so stressful.

KZ:  Well, with theater I remember that there were times when I was called back many times for something that I really wanted to do. That’s very stressful. At this point, people sort of say, “Karen Ziemba’s not somebody who we want for this. We think she’s great but she doesn’t have the kind of sense of humor that we want, or she’s not ‘charactery looking enough’ or she’s not glamorous looking enough” - whatever their criteria is. Auditions still are nerve-wracking, but what can you do? Especially if it’s something you really care about and you really want to do. At least I’ve been pretty fortunate in that they’ll tell me right from the get-go, “This isn’t going to work out” or “You did a great job but you’re just not right for this.” If it’s something we really want to pursue, we might say, “I think you’re wrong. Let’s think about this again.” But that’s only if it’s something I really feel that I’m right for and I really want to play. There have been things that I’ve been asked to do that I don’t feel that I’m right for. (laughing) I have not said that at a time I’m not working, but for example, there have been things that I feel that my voice is too low to sing. There are a lot of revivals of musicals that were originated by people who had a high soprano voice which is not what I do. I can sing some soprano notes but I don’t hit As and Cs right off the top of my head very easily. I don’t pursue those kinds of things because I think there are too many other good people that should be seen for those things and who are probably more right. Besides, you try to do something eight times a week that your body wasn’t created for. We are each given a certain kind of a voice and to break through that and start pretending you’re a coloratura just doesn’t work.

NR:  Do you have any role that you’re still dying to play?

KZ:  I’ve always wanted to do Nellie so that’s something that I’m looking forward to. Gosh - I can’t really say off the top of my head, but I’m game for anything. I’d like to do some more comedy. I always like to do something new, to start stretching some other muscles.

NR:  Do you want to sing again after this show?

KZ:  Oh, yeah, of course. I continue to do that. When I was rehearsing this, I did a Kander and Ebb tribute, and I sang for Jerry Orbach a couple weeks ago for his tribute at the Friar’s. People ask me to sing all the time but as far as doing a full show, that would be really nice. (big smile) I would like that.

NR:  What have you learned? If you had to give someone advice - what surprised you about this life? Or what impressed you that you really learned - advice to hand on to someone else? (laughing) Other than to drink water and eat apples? (Karen told me beforehand that water and apples are her number one suggestion for singers.)

KZ:  You never know everything. You never can learn it all. You never can know too much. You can learn from the person standing next to you on stage or from the person that you idolize - for me, the Elaine Stritches and the Rosemary Murphys, the Julie Harrises, the Julie Andrews, the Carol Burnetts - these people that I look up to. It’s not that you steal from them but there’s nothing wrong with emulating somebody and learning from what they do and trying to incorporate that into the way you want to live your life or the way you want to associate yourself in the business in some way. You can never actually be somebody else, but there’s always something to get from somebody. In other words, (laughing) “Never kick anybody in the ass.” Never stop learning and studying.

NR:  That’s great. Thank you, and good luck with the Tony Nominations.

KZ:  Thanks.

Karen is such a delightful mix of a seasoned performer and a wide-eyed innocent. She mentioned several legends to me and in fact she reminds me very much of those female icons - the triple threats who can sing, dance and act so well. Her versatility is obvious if you realize that she’s played roles as diverse as Roxie Hart and Peggy Sawyer. Even her character of The Wife shows a tremendous range of emotions and you can’t help but hang on her every movement, rooting for her to come out all right in the end.

As I write this, I don’t know if Karen will win that Tony but I wish her the best of luck. She’s such a class act and I hope to see her grace Broadway stages for many years to come.

Update: Congratulations to Karen on her Tony 2000 win for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical!