Village People: An Actress In Harmony

February 2, 6:01 PMGreenwich Village ExaminerLaura Rohrman

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Greenwich Village Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

J.Smith-Cameron

Leading up to Valentine’s Day, I thought it might be fun to interview Villagers about their favorite “romantic” local offerings. Hopefully this will give you some inspiration for your own big day.
Who: J. Smith-Cameron
Where: Joe’s Coffee house, I41 Waverly Place
Why: I just saw J in the play Looking For The Pony at the Vital Theater and I think she’s fabulous. I’ve seen her grow over the years on the NYC stage and now television. If you’ve been around the theater scene, you’d definitely recognize her. However, J is the epitome of a New York actress; she blends in.
“I don’t need to be a big star,” she says.
On stage, she absolutely becomes her characters - whether it’s the farmer’s wife in God of Hell by Sam Shepard or a financial analyst who longs to be a writer in Looking for The Pony, J always gives 100 percent and admits that acting is “athletic.”
From my outside perspective, she’s living a dream life. Not only is she married to Kenneth Lonergan (the playwright), she’s amassed an amazing acting career that goes back to her Broadway debut as Babe in Crimes of the Heart in the eighties.  She has a seven year-old daughter who she adores and gets paid to be in plays that she cares about.
I ask her about her current project and she practically swoons. “I love this play,” she says.  She then compared the experience of acting to her many years of violin training.
 “Spending many years studying the violin was probably great training for my acting.”
“Because of the discipline?” I say.
“No, actually it’s because of my work with an orchestra, we all have to know how to hold and pass the harmony...it’s about listening.”
In Looking For The Pony, J’s character leads 99% of the action, but there is so much going on in the play that it is like a mini orchestra, - it’s very musical.
Being that Valentine’s Day is near, I thought I’d ask J about her most romantic moment in the Village.
 “It’s more of a snapshot, a picture of romance,” she says.
“When I was acting in As Bees In Honey Drown at the Lortel theater, I remember going to work on Valentine’s Day. It was so cold out and Li-Lac Chocolates was across the street (they’ve since moved to Hudson Street).  There was a line going around the corner of men waiting to buy their sweethearts chocolate. It was just such a picture of New York.”
It’s funny to me that J mentioned the Li-Lac Chocolate Company as I just walked into their new location on Bleecker and Hudson.  
“Everyone knows about Li-Lac Chocolates, ” says J.  
Not me.
See, this is why I interview people who have been living here longer than me; they give insight that is intimately Greenwich.
“So, what’s your craziest New York story?” I say, asking her one of my favorite questions.
“This is a good one,” says J.
“When I was in my twenties and I lived up in Harlem, I used to have five auditions a day sometimes. I’d come downtown for one and have to wait all day for my next audition.  This one day I got caught in a horrible rainstorm.  So before my next audition, I went to some thrift store and bought myself a whole new outfit for like $30 dollars then went to Bergdorf Goodman and got a complete makeover at the make up counter for free. I changed in the bathroom.”  
New York is the kind of town where knowing where the good bathrooms are in any given area is key. Down in the Village, Starbucks on Christopher is still your best bet.
Though we don’t have a Bergdorf Goodman counter in the Village, I have come up with some last minute cheap “beauty” remedies just in case you get caught in the Village in a rainstorm.
Read my column this week for further details.
You can still catch J on stage “being in harmony” this week. Looking For The Pony closes February 8th

Read what the New York Times has to say about Looking For The Pony.

.