FAMILY’S ‘IRON’ BONDS
ROUSTABOUTS’ SCOTTISH DRAMA TO STAR ROSINA REYNOLDS AND DAUGHTER KATE
Ten years ago, someone handed actor Kate Rose Reynolds the script for the Scottish psychological drama “Iron” and suggested it as a good project Kate could perform with her mom, longtime San Diego actordirector Rosina Reynolds. Rosina would play Fay, a hard-edged Scottish mother imprisoned for murdering her husband many years ago. Kate would play Josie, Fay’s adult daughter, who was just a child when the crime occurred. Josie goes to visit her long-estranged mother in the hope that Fay can answer questions that may fill the blank gaps in her childhood memories.
At the time Kate got the script for Rona Munro’s 2001 play, she was living in New York and there never seemed to be a right time or place to mount a production. Then in 2017, Kate moved back to San Diego after 10 years away and she and Rosina teamed up on a different project, Roustabouts Theatre’s production of “Margin of Error,” which Rosina directed and
Kate starred in. On that play’s opening night, Kate handed the “Iron” script to the Roustabouts team as a potential follow-up. Now their dream project is finally coming to fruition this weekend in a Roustabouts production at Moxie Theatre.
Rosina, who was born and raised in England and studied acting there before moving to the U.S. nearly 40 years ago, said taking on the role of Fay has been both thrilling and challenging.
“She’s Scottish and I know these women. She’s a blunt, straight-talking woman that I can recognize and sink my teeth into,” Rosina said. “Some of the things she says are outrageous because she has no filter and she switches focus on a dime. The play is also Greek in stature or Shakespearean in terms of her loss and Josie’s loss.”
Kate said she’s fascinated by her character’s quest. As frightened as Josie is to learn the truth from her mother, she can’t move forward in her life until she finds out where she came from: “It’s a psychological maze that the audience gets thrown into to figure out what this relationship is and what each one needs and wants. It’s a chess match of sorts.”
The play’s director is Jacole Kitchen, who directed Kate in “Cardboard Piano” at Diversionary Theatre in 2018. The Reynoldses described Kitchen’s direction as collaborative and energetic, and her contributions as a female director have been essential to unpacking their characters.
While Rosina said there is some subversive and politically incorrect humor in the fourcharacter play, the confrontation between Fay and Josie at the end is particularly brutal, so she’s grateful to be playing the scene opposite her daughter.
“We trust each other so completely that it’s a safe environment,” Rosina said. “There’s no time spent getting to know the other person and wondering how far you can go and be safe.”
The two women have been involved in theater together ever since Kate was carried onstage as an infant by her mom. Kate also grew up performing summers at the Chequamegon Children’s Theater, a youth musical theater program Rosina founded in Cable, Wis., in 1987 and has run ever since.
Besides working together at Chequamegon, where Rosina is artistic director and Kate produces cabarets, videos and other projects, mother and daughter have worked on multiple San Diego projects. They co-starred in San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “The Humans” in 2020, and Kate has assisted Rosina in directing plays for Roustabouts and Backyard Renaissance theaters.
Rosina said she has loved watching her daughter embody Josie’s fast-whirling emotions during rehearsals for “Iron.”
“What Katie brings to it is her internal monologue that she’s constantly got going in the way Josie has, as she’s trying to catch on to some truth so she can start to build her memory back and create a backstory of her life. You can see the wheels turning all the time,” Rosina said.
Kate said that what she likes best about her mom in the role of Fay is her ability to bring an epic, Shakespearean scope to the role while also capturing the character’s subtle nuances.
“It’s such an incredible thing to watch,” Kate said. “It’s so real and so honest and so intimate, and to also be able to encompass the scope of this woman’s emotions — I can’t imagine another actor who could do that.”