Carlsbad native brings back 'Maids' for summer vacation

By: PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, July 13, 2005 1:27 PM PDT ∞

Carlsbad native Kelly Eubanks, a graduate drama student at New York's Columbia University, has returned home for the summer and brought the theater with her.

Eubanks and two fellow Columbia students have opened a two-week engagement of Jean Genet's existential one-act drama "The Maids" at the Adams Avenue Studio of the Arts. Through their Columbia-based student theater company, NU Classic Theatre, they are restaging an original production that was first produced at Columbia in a festival of French plays last March.

Romanian director Ulla Wolcz helmed the original production, which Anne Bogart (a graduate professor at Columbia and head of SITI Company) called "the wonderful outcome of four fabulous women. Under Ulla Wolcz's subtle, specific and penetrating direction, the actresses turn the world of the play and themselves inside out with great virtuosity ... I love these women and can't wait to see where their talent takes them."

Eubanks stars as Madame, the authoritarian employer of two scheming housemaids in 1880s France. The maids, played by Rebecca Henderson and Laura Butler, plot to destroy their boss by first imprisoning her husband and then murdering Madame.

"The material is fantastic," Eubanks said of the play. "All the characters are trapped and alone in their own prison of their shallow lives. Each character is incredibly desperate to fill that void so they pretend their life is extraordinarily dramatic. It is over the top, but it (balances) something true and painful underneath."

Eubanks said it wasn't hard persuading her costars to come to Carlsbad this summer to stage "The Maids" (Henderson and Butler are rooming with Eubanks' fiance, Nathan, and have been rehearsing in her garage).

"They were tempted by the Southern California sunshine and artistically wanted to test the West Coast waters," Eubanks said. "We only got so far exploring the material in a limited run, so I guess we wanted to continue to develop what we started. I saw it as an opportunity to bring the piece here, since I'm from here and knew that most likely I will be living here after graduation."

Eubanks was born and raised in Carlsbad and earned her undergraduate degree at UC Davis before heading to Columbia two years ago, where she has appeared in numerous Looking Glass Theatre productions. She recently made her Off Off Broadway debut in "Charlie Moose Makes His Move." She will graduate from Columbia in spring 2006, at which time she said she hopes to return to San Diego to perform ensemble theater.