Know Your Neighbor: M. Lynda Robinson

Leslie Wind has more ideas than anyone should be given in a lifetime. And the astonishing thing is, she not only acts on them but creates some genuinely amazing results. Her jewelry studio is a perfect place to meet interesting people anyway. I always tell her it is the Folly Cove equivalent of the neighborhood barber shop. I have rarely been in there that there weren’t several people gathered to chat.

Some years back Leslie got the idea to create an event where people in the community could gather to listen to one of their neighbors speak about their life. She called the program Know Your Neighbor and the beautiful Ralph Waldo Emerson Inn in Rockport agreed to host the events. Over the years they have grown in popularity and now attract a sizeable group of local people who gather to enjoy coffee, tea and treats while listening to a neighbor talk.

Last night the guest was M. Lynda Robinson, an actor, director, writer, and producer who is the current program manager of the West End Theater in Gloucester. Robinson has a distinguished background in the performing arts having acted in both the theater and on screen. She is a former artistic director of the Gloucester Stage Company. In the past year she directed WET’s production of The Vagina Monologues and Women and the Sea.

I’ve never understood the urge to act. When I was in college I did a little bit of it and afterwards belonged to a community theater group for a few years but acting is too frightening to me. Consequently I have a great respect – a respect that borders on awe – for the people who do it. As a writer, I know what it is to leave yourself behind, get inside a character and re-experience a situation. But writers do that in the safety of our little rooms – not on a stage or before a camera where people will actually be watching us. That takes big courage.

Lynda Robinson has remarkable energy. It is fascinating to watch. Her humor and her grace is captivating. I suppose, like most people, I think of acting as something that is always done in a theater or in movies and television and, though Robinson has done all that, she certainly expanded my knowledge of what a professional actors career consists of. From voice-overs and trade shows to writing plays and monologues, teaching, directing and producing, she has done it all.

She talked about the variety of her experience and answered questions throughout her talk. Her most difficult acting job, she told us, involved appearing nude on stage. ‘That was hard,’ she admitted. When asked what her favorite roles were she immediately replied, ‘Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire.’ When asked role she would most like to play she admitted, ‘I think I’m going to have to write that.’

She spoke very frankly about the challenges to women who act once they pass forty. The pressure to hang onto a youthful appearance through surgery is intense and the roles that are of interest are few. But she is continually finding new venues, new challenges and new adventures.

The best part of the evening was when she performed two monologues she wrote and is developing herself. The first one, “A Cup of Tea” is a delicious reminiscence of an aging woman savoring a cup of tea while she muses over an adventurous and considerably improper life. The second one was one side of a telephone conversation between a frustrated, exasperated, and weary actress and her therapist. Both were simultaneously funny and poignant.

Leslie never fails to find interesting people to introduce in these evenings and, in Lynda Robinson, she demonstrated once again that Cape Ann harbors many treasures, chief among them the people who live here.

Thanks for reading.