Comedy´s Labours Lost—and Found: Actress Mariko Denda Rediscovers Her Funny Side

Mariko Denda wasn´t expecting to find a mislaid piece of herself in a place she´d never been.

But when the actress went to Germany last fall to appear in a theater festival, she rediscovered her comedic self waiting in the wings.

Denda, born and raised in Tokyo, spent her earliest years as an actor doing comedy and improvisational theater sports in Japan. She found she had an affinity for comedic physical performance. Her sly wit and expressive, uninhibited physicality were a hit with audiences, and her comic talents won her recognition at Tokyo theater sports festivals.

When an influential teacher in Japan told her she needed to add drama to her repertoire, the award-winning comedic actress changed her focus. More change was to follow when she moved to L.A. to pursue her acting career.

Far from an extroverted jokester, the soft-spoken, reserved Denda rarely struck casting directors as a comedic performer. She found herself repeatedly cast in dramatic, often intense roles. She soon had a demo reel without a single comedic scene.

"I love comedy!" sighs Denda. "People never see that I can do comedy."

Her role in the award-winning Reincidente (Backslider) is typical. An official selection of the L.A. Short Film Festival and winner of the Best Short Film from Michoacan award at Mexico´s Morelia International Film Festival, Reincidente presents Denda as a mysterious, haunting Death figure who visits a young woman who has attempted suicide.

When Denda turned filmmaker, even she cast herself in a dark, dramatic role. In the surrealist film Toy, which the actress wrote and directed, she plays an abused woman who ultimately (and bloodily) gets the upper hand over her abuser.

Her work on the American stage followed suit, with credits including the likes of Agnes in Agnes of God. Her focus, intensity, and compelling presence quickly led her into Western classical theater.

A dancer role in the Jacobean tragicomedy The Two Noble Kinsmen (a play attributed in part to William Shakespeare) introduced Denda to stage director Elizabeth Huffman, who subsequently cast her as the doomed Iphigenia in the Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis.

As a non-native speaker of English, Denda says she found Iphigenia's text to be fairly manageable. "We did a modern adaptation, so the language was easy."

Things became more challenging when her success in Iphigenia led to a role in the Classical Theatre Lab´s production of The Tempest. Until then, Denda´s only direct experience with Shakespeare´s language had been confined to acting classes. Suddenly, she was saddled with a small but complex and monolog-heavy Shakespearian role, the goddess Iris.

Denda pored over the lines, English-Japanese dictionary in hand, until she understood every last word. She did her best to make Iris a fully realized character. However—like many actors tackling their first Shakespearean roles—she found that the overall meaning of her speeches eluded her. Says Denda, "I didn´t have any connection to the words."

While her performance was well received, the disconnect that she felt left her wary of future entanglements with the Bard. "After The Tempest," Denda says, "I believed I could never do Shakespeare again." When director Stuart Howard told her he wanted to re-mount the production at a later date, she opted not to reprise her role.

In 2005, Huffman founded the International Classical Acting Project (ICAP) and invited Denda to join the new company. Denda initially refused, doubting her own abilities to keep afloat in a sea of Western classical material. When she learned that she´d be under no obligation to perform Shakespeare, Denda relented.

In the spring of 2007, ICAP mounted Sexy Sassy Shakespeare, an original showcase of provocative scenes and sonnets. Huffman encouraged Denda to be a part of it. It would be Denda´s first stage appearance after a couple years´ hiatus, and it would involve overcoming her leeriness of performing Shakespeare.

Denda had good reason to rise to the challenge, however. Huffman was in the early planning phase for an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen´s A Doll´s House set in 19th-century Japan, with alternate performances in English and Japanese. She wanted Denda to star as Nora.

Denda had already begun intensive study of an English translation of the Norwegian classic, working her way painstakingly through unfamiliar idioms and confusing, century-old social mores. Sexy Sassy Shakespeare would be a good opportunity for her to take on a heavy line load in English before attempting to portray Ibsen´s heroine.

Sexy Sassy Shakespeare was more than an opportunity for Denda to work her way up to Nora. It was also her first chance to perform a comedic role since she had left Japan. She decided to overcome her trepidation and take the plunge.

For Denda, it helped that the role offered was predominantly a monolog. She felt relieved that she wasn´t running the risk of disappointing a scene partner. "At least I wouldn´t make anybody get into trouble!" she laughs.

Denda was to play the role of Julia in an excerpt from The Two Gentlemen of Verona. She did extensive table work with director Huffman to dissect, analyze, and understand the text.

In the scene, Julia disdainfully tears up a love letter in front of her maid Lucetta and dismisses her, only to scramble for the pieces and attempt to reassemble the note as soon as Lucetta leaves.

Huffman directed Denda to make Julia "extreme and completely out of herself." Denda says she was only too happy to comply. "I love extreme things! I love making fun of myself, and making a fool of myself."

Denda's hilariously over-the-top punk schoolgirl take on the character proved to be an audience favorite. In her scene, she roared, wailed, simpered, flung herself headlong onto the floor, trampled and bit her own "hateful hands," and groped fruitlessly for a treasured bit of the letter lost somewhere down her blouse.

"I wasn´t sure it was good until I did it in front of everybody," said Denda. Audience reception of her work left her more confident after the showcase. Still, she was hesitant when Huffman invited her to be a part of a spinoff project, ICAP´s Bon Ton Roulet at the Shakespeare Café, which was slated to travel to Germany in October for the Theatertage festival in Hanau.

In Bon Ton, Julia and her lover Will join well-known Shakespearean couples Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing and Rosalind and Orlando from As You Like It at blues singer Ursula's New Orleans cafe during Mardi Gras. The characters use language drawn from Shakespeare´s plays, sonnets, and songs to woo, wrangle, and ultimately reach a happy conclusion.

Bon Ton meant more lines, and more Shakespeare, for Denda. It would be her largest English-language stage role to date. She found the idea intimidating, but she chose to meet the challenge head on.

The project proved to be more fun than fearsome. In the context of the new show, her Julia evolved into a sloppy drunk trying to persuade Will to father a child with her.

"It was fun to play drunk," confides nondrinker Denda, "but if I really drink I get sick. I never enjoy it."

Denda encountered a surprising challenge as she prepared for the role. In a Ricky Ricardoesque moment, an infuriated Julia lapses mid-sonnet into her native tongue. "The two lines in Japanese were the hardest to memorize," marvels Denda.

A perfectionist, she wanted suitably heightened Japanese to match Shakespeare´s elevated tone. None of the translations she consulted met her approval, though. She wound up reading old stories, watching Japanese movies and TV shows set in the Edo period, and consulting with a teacher of traditional Japanese dance to composite multiple translations into two lines of suitably "Shakespearean" Japanese.

In October 2007, after a brief preview run of Bon Ton in L.A., Denda and the rest of the cast traveled to Europe for the Theatertage festival. It was her first time in Germany. "The town was really pretty, like a romantic movie," recalls Denda. The company´s performance venue was Reinhardskirche, a picturesque 18th-century church building.

Almost all of the other performances, the company soon learned, would be in German. (Denda also discovered that she was the festival´s only Asian performer.) The cast began to worry about how well Bon Ton´s complex Shakespearian English would play with Theatertage attendees.

Fortunately, the show´s physicality transcended the language barrier. Where the L.A. reception of the show had been warm, in Hanau it was red-hot.

"The audience was so different from L.A.," Denda says. The festivalgoers packing the house to capacity were younger, many of them in their teens, and they were clearly excited to see live theater. The cast was gratified to hear the audience´s uninhibited and enthusiastic reactions. "We could tell that they were moved by us, especially at that last moment when the three couples finally settle into a happy ending."

As for her brief rant in Japanese, says Denda, "the audience went nuts."

After an extended standing ovation and several curtain calls, the cast was mobbed by fans and autograph seekers.

Denda says she felt she had been reunited with a long-lost part of herself. Freed from the self-conscious worry that had dogged her earlier Shakespearian performances, she was able to reconnect with the comic actress she had been back in Tokyo. "This character, Julia, reminded me how fun it is," she says, "the extreme stuff of comedy."

Denda´s self-rediscovery continued after the festival ended. She paid a brief visit to London, where she had spent her nursery school years, then continued to her hometown, Tokyo, for an extended stay. It was a welcome opportunity to relax and reflect before throwing herself into her next project.

Back in L.A., Denda is looking forward to a full and rewarding year. In addition to the ICAP production of A Doll House in Japan, she has been offered a role by an independent filmmaker impressed by her stage work. Other film projects in development include a samurai movie (an excellent opportunity for Denda to showcase her martial arts skills) and a period piece set during World War II.

If Denda—and audiences—are lucky, at least one of her upcoming projects will be a comedy.

"I like drama, too," she says. "But I enjoy comedy more. Comedy is more joyful. And I think, really, that´s what I want to do—spread joy."