I recently had the pleasure of sitting down for a cocktail with my favorite St. Louis actor, Lavonne Byers, to ask her a few questions about theater and the local scene. Full disclosure: Byers and I have sat down for many a cocktail together over the last 17 years! She is a good friend, in part because I find her to be a most skillful actor. She has talent, but also a thorough discipline combined with a layered creative process and an instrument, both vocal and physical, that she bends easily to her will.
Byers is a St. Louis native: high school at Normandy, college at SLU, then away to Purdue for her master’s. She spent time in Chicago and New York, but St. Louis is where she chooses to make her home. “New York and Chicago are where you go to build a career,” she says. “St. Louis is where you have a life.” Like most people, Byers started her theatrical career at the community level at Webster Theater Guild in her early 20s.
“There was a time I would take any role that came along,” she reminisces over our Cosmos. “Now I’m in a place where I can pick and choose from the options offered.” Byers is in the enviable position of having directors seek her out, rather than having to audition for many of her roles in the last 10 years. “First, I have to decide if I like the play and the character I’m being asked to portray. Then, I decide if I want to invest the time and energy to create the role.” Byers leans toward strong, vivid characters that offer a high level of challenge. Her focus is the method of creation, and she prefers the rehearsal process to the final product.
Of course I had to ask about favorite roles, Big 8 in Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage (HotHouse Theatre), Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Vanity Theater) and the emcee in Cabaret (Stray Dog Theatre). Of the myriad companies in town, she enjoyed working with the now defunct Orthwein Theatre Company and HotHouse, and her current favorite is Stray Dog because of the challenging roles she has been offered. Some of her favorite theater personalities include costume designer Michelle Siler because “she uses the costume to tell us more about the character,” and directors Brooke Edwards, Marty Stanberry, Bill Whitaker, John Austermann and Carolyn Hood.
During our second round, she told me she has an Excel spreadsheet that contains every show she has done since 1978—more than 140 with role, director and company listed. “Theater is a social and creative outlet for me, the unique aspect of my life that makes it exciting and fulfilling.” The worst part of theater? The 10 minutes right before she goes on. The best? “That first glass of wine after curtain call.”
Pictured: Lavonne Byers
Photo: Zachary Stefaniak