A LIFE-OR-DEATH TALK ON ‘MOTHER’ SET

Midway through Saturday’s suicide seminar (following the matinee of “ ‘night, Mother”) at the Taper, an audience member turned on actress Kathy Bates, who’d portrayed the suicide-obsessed Jessie.

“I couldn’t see why you had to do it,” he insisted. “To me, she felt sorry for herself. I went with you, suffered with you. But what about all the people in the world with real problems--poor crippled children? What was so serious that she couldn’t find some way of living, some enjoyment--somehow?”

Suicide. Some people, clearly, can’t forgive it or fathom it. Some avoid the issue.

“I imagined the ending a little differently,” announced another man and went on to describe his own scenario: After Jessie disappears into her bedroom with the loaded gun, a shot rings out--but when the family goes in, there’s no body. The window is open. Jessie has fled to a better life somewhere in Northern California.

It was a light moment--and entirely welcome (as was the earlier introduction of Bates and co-star Anne Pitoniak, who were momentarily upstaged by the spirited entrance of Bates’ Yorkie, Pip). The actresses were joined by moderator Corey Beth Madden and UCLA “suicidology” Professor Edwin Shneidman.

“I’m practically struck mute by a lack of blackboard, but I’ll try to do my best,” Shneidman began, attempting to balance a classroom approach (copies of his outline, “The Ten Commonalities of Suicide” were passed among the audience) with a more immediate--and personal--response to the play.

“The question is not why people kill themselves, but why should they stay alive,” he said. “Everyone has a reason in their lives that would be enough not to go on. Each of us has had a cancer, an epilepsy (Jessie’s affliction).

“However,” he added, motioning to Pitoniak, “I think you (as the mother) were impotent. Somehow you could have done more. Maybe in the kitchen, if you’d just hugged her. . . .”

In response, Pitoniak said that while she might have taken a different tack (“I’d have told her to take a bath: It’s so soothing”), her character--as conceived by author Marsha Norman--does not have the facilities to cope with the situation adequately. “So I’ve stopped myself from doing any kind of research,” she said. “I didn’t read ‘My Mother, Myself,’ because Mama wouldn’t know it, wouldn’t have investigated that.”

Shneidman stressed that it was the unique “pathology” of this particular household that had much to do with Jessie’s ultimate choice: “The fact that these characters haven’t talked for years is very important. The march through life is accompanied by talk--which you two didn’t have. So it’s the story of an emancipation not well done, basic trust not worked out, aridity, dryness. Suicide is often a two-person act, and this play shows that, crystal clear.”

After Shneidman’s speech, the audience members were quick to relate their own responses--and experiences. (Said one woman, “When my daughter commited suicide, she said in her note: ‘This is my choice.’ The doctor said it was a way of having something that was all hers.”)

Most of the interest, however, appeared to focus on Bates (who, with Pitoniak, had originated her role on Broadway).

Responding to the question, ‘How difficult is it to get rid of Jessie?,’ the actress spoke candidly.

“It’s been very difficult. I did go into therapy for a time in New York, because I found it so hard to disconnect from the character. You say the same words over and over (she’s nearing her 500th performance), and it becomes like a mantra, revealing things about you. . . . When I first started here, I was OK, but lately it’s been getting to me.”

The next day, in a private interview, Bates recalled her feelings--of helplessness, but not guilt--upon the suicide of a friend in New York (coincidentally, at the same time she was reading for “ ‘night, Mother”), and of her initial wariness in sharing her own psychic brushes with the subject.

“I did an interview in the New York Times where I said I’d had feelings about about suicide myself--and I really sweated it (the disclosure), till the article came out and people said, ‘I’m so glad you talked about it; I don’t feel so alone now.’ I think at one time, we’ve all thought about it, fantasized. But a lot of us are afraid to admit it.”