'Ring Cycle' brings DuPage actress full circle
Acting is an unpredictable career, full of starts and stops, sudden breakthroughs and just as sudden setbacks. That is how it has been for Mandy Walsh, who appears in "The Ring Cycle" (currently running at the Building Stage).
A fervent drama kid at Glenbard North High School in Carol Stream, Walsh went from there to one of Chicago's largest theater programs at Columbia College. And after graduating in 1999, she threw herself into Chicago's non-Equity theater scene.
But she soon discovered she hated the day jobs she was taking to pay for her life in the theater.
"I was unhappy as a receptionist," Walsh says. "I wanted to do something that I liked that made me money. So I took time off from theater. I decided to go to school to study graphic design."
She flourished as a graphic designer, but then fate stepped in. When it came time for Walsh to look for a second job, she landed one - at a venerable Chicago theater, The Second City.
"It is an awesome place to work," she says. It was also a place that encouraged Walsh to think about theater, again. "I have taken a lot of art classes and a lot of theater classes," she says. "At Second City I realized I could do both."
Looking around for an acting gig, Walsh landed a part in one of the more ambitious non-Equity undertakings in Chicago - a six-hour, dramatic version of Wagner's "Ring Cycle" opera. The brainchild of Building Stage Artistic Director Blake Montgomery and Associate Artistic Director Joanie Schultz (and a host of others), "The Ring Cycle" condenses into one evening the stories from four Wagner operas - "The Rhinegold," "The Valkyrie," "Siegfried" and "The Twilight of the Gods" - which were themselves adapted from the legends of the Norse Gods.
"My main roles are Fricka, the wife of the King of the Gods, Wotan, and I am one of the Valkyries," Walsh says. "But I also have other roles throughout the show."
At one point, she even works a shadow puppet dragon. "When they hired me, they asked me what are your puppetry skills," Walsh says. "I said, 'I don't know. I've never done puppets.' "
She does now.
"It's been wild," Walsh says. "I first got involved in July of last year. We began rehearsing in September. The first month and a half of rehearsals we would edit it as we went along."
The resulting show is a complex weaving of acting, puppetry and music, performed in two main parts with a dinner break in between. Four shorter intermissions are scattered throughout.
Walsh says the show features acrobats playing freshwater mermaids and a rock-style band - complete with drum, bass, two guitars and a glockenspiel.
The experience has dazzled Walsh, and pulled her back into theater.
"I think the last time I was on stage was about four or five years ago," she says. "But this has been wonderful. Between the props and the puppets, it's been amazing."
• "The Ring Cycle" is currently in previews at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St., Chicago. It officially opens Saturday, Feb. 13, and runs through March 14. Tickets may be purchased at www.buildingstage.com or by calling (312) 491-1369.