{"id":495,"date":"2019-10-28T15:17:18","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T19:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/iveydana\/?p=495"},"modified":"2019-11-09T20:18:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T01:18:44","slug":"early-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/iveydana\/early-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was brought up around the idea of theatre. My Mother  had a huge influence on my life\u2019s path \u2014 she was a dramatic woman and unafraid of \u201cdrama.\u201d My Mother,
\nMary Nell Santacroce (she was Mary Nell Ivey before she divorced my Father and married my step-father), was an actress in Atlanta, Ga, where I was born and grew up. I
\nsaw her play Saint Joan in \u201cJoan of Lorraine\u201d when I wasabout 7, and was very impressed by it. There werepictures on the living room wall of her as Joan in armor,
\nlooking beautiful and inspired. She cared very much about language and voice, eventually getting a Masters in Speech therapy. My speech was often corrected and my ear trained. Living in the deep South I grew up with lots of Southern usages, and my Mother would make me repeat the proper sound, instructing me, for instance, to
\nmake the word \u201cpie\u201d a diphthong, when I asked for a second helping after dinner. I remember working with her on Invictus, a poem she loved, and her teaching me to
\nkeep the voice moving under each word and lifting the pitch and intensity at the right moment. She loved the theatre and was pretty much the queen of what was
\ntheatre in Atlanta in the 40\u2032 and 50\u2019s. It was all amateur theatre, there was no union theatre there then. I saw her <\/span>several times in plays during that time. In the late 1940\u2019s <\/span>she became the Director of the plays at Georgia Tech, a <\/span>part-time position in the English Department, and <\/span>directed 3 plays a year with the Georgia Tech students.<\/span>She did this for over 20 years, and I saw almost all the <\/span>plays she directed. She didn\u2019t let me see some of them <\/span>when I was young, because of the subject matter, but <\/span>when I became a teen-ager, I saw them all. And I played <\/span>parts in many of them. I played many maids, was Ursula in <\/span> \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing,\u201d and in the chorus of <\/span>\u201cOedipus Rex.\u201d I got a wide-ranging education of plays <\/span>while in high school and doing these plays with my <\/span>Mother. The students, all men then, called her \u201cCoach.\u201d I <\/span>eventually took over her job for several years in the 70\u2019s, <\/span>directing, like her, three plays a year, and also enjoyed <\/span>being called \u201cCoach, \u201d but there was really only one <\/span>\u201cCoach,\u201d and that was her. I inherited from my mother a <\/span>love of linguistics, of language and beautiful speech, and a <\/span>sense of presentation. I cannot say how profoundly this <\/span>has been a foundation of my life and my career. When I <\/span>was a child I was also in the Children\u2019s Civic Theatre of <\/span>Atlanta. This was one play a year, by children, for <\/span>children, and it was all put together by Edith Russell. <\/span>She would put an ad in the paper about auditions, which <\/span>were held at the main library in downtown Atlanta. Every <\/span>child who came, up to the age of 13, was given a part or <\/span>written into the script. I started when I was 7 years old, <\/span>playing a palace guard and doubling as the 7th fairy in <\/span>Sleeping Beauty. Each character had a one-sentence <\/span>speech. And there were smaller children who played <\/span>flowers or bees, or something like that. As one grew older, <\/span>the parts would be bigger. I remember being in \u201cAli Baba <\/span>and the Forty Thieves\u201d when I was 8 (playing a thief), then <\/span>playing a lady-in-waiting tossing a golden ball around <\/span>with other ladies-in-waiting in Snow White around the <\/span>age of 10, and at age 11 or 12 playing Glinda, the Good <\/span>Witch of the North in \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d I had my <\/span>starring role at 13, the last year a child could participate, <\/span>when I played in \u201cEast of the Sun, and West of the Moon.\u201d <\/span>The whole experience was full of magic for me always, <\/span>and I loved dressing up in costumes and putting on makeup.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I went to Rollins college, I majored in theatre, <\/span>then studied on a Fulbright Grant at LAMDA in London <\/span>for a year. I came back and started working, and have <\/span>been lucky to have had as much work as I have had over <\/span>the years. I appeared with my mother in a couple of plays <\/span>at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in the 70\u2019s, notably \u201cThe <\/span>Crucible\u201d and \u201cThe Miracle Worker.\u201d She was very proud <\/span>of my career, and making her proud was one of the <\/span>reasons I became an actress. Her influence \u2014 ethically, <\/span>morally, technically, emotionally, ideologically, spiritually <\/span>\u2014 has been enormous, and I cannot separate myself and <\/span>my career from all she has given me.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was brought up around the idea of theatre. My Mother  had a huge influence on my life\u2019s path \u2014 she was a dramatic woman and unafraid of \u201cdrama.\u201d My Mother, Mary Nell Santacroce (she was Mary Nell Ivey before she divorced my Father and married my step-father), was an actress in Atlanta, Ga, where I was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1574105854:155"],"_edit_last":["155"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEarly Life - Dana Ivey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/iveydana\/early-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Early Life - Dana Ivey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was brought up around the idea of theatre. 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