Marcia Haufrecht

Marcia Haufrecht is an American actress, playwright, director, and acting teacher. A life member of the Actors Studio and a longtime member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, she is also the founder and artistic director of the Off-Off-Broadway company and venue the Common Basis Theatre, originally known as the Common Ground Theatre.

Haufrecht was born and raised in Manhattan, the eldest of three children of Herbert and Judith Haufrecht. Her father was a pianist, composer, folklorist, and editor of note. She attended Performing Arts High School, graduating in 1954 as a dancer. Her Off-Broadway debut came that September at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where she took a small role in a Studio 12 limited-run revival of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies. Two months later she made her Broadway debut as a dancer in the musical Plain and Fancy, a credit that also marked her professional dancing debut. The show's choreographer, Helen Tamiris, who had been a colleague of Haufrecht's father, was instrumental in securing her a place in the production. The show's producers gave her the professional name Howard, which she used for at least six years. In the summer of 1955, she toured nationally with Can-Can.

Haufrecht transitioned from dance to acting before the age of twenty, later explaining to The Montreal Gazette in 1969 that she felt superfluous as a dancer and believed she had something to say. She also described a more immediate catalyst: after being cut from a Bob Fosse show's final audition round because of her height, she resolved to leave dancing behind entirely. She subsequently studied acting with New York-based teacher and director Nola Chilton for approximately four years, a period that culminated in her participation in an Off-Broadway revival of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, directed by Chilton. Village Voice critic Michael Smith praised her performance, describing her portrayal as a "spectacularly destroyed whore." Despite that recognition, Haufrecht seriously considered abandoning acting due to dissatisfaction with her own work. Encouraged by colleagues, and particularly by Ron Leibman, she went to the Actors Studio to meet director Lee Strasberg. After sitting in on sessions on an interim basis, she earned full membership through audition and has been a member since at least 1964.

Her Broadway credit includes the 1964 production of The Three Sisters. Across her broader stage career, Haufrecht performed at Lincoln Center, La MaMa, the Public Theater, Center Stage in Baltimore, the Adelphi Festival Theatre in Garden City, the Open Stage in Sarasota, Place des Arts in Montreal, and the Friends of the Opera Theatre in Berlin. Her stage roles have ranged from the femme fatale Tondeleyo in White Cargo — her final appearance under the name Marcia Howard — to Queen Elizabeth in Richard III opposite Al Pacino, in the first of Pacino's three productions of that play.

In March 2001, Haufrecht starred in the New York premiere of Tennessee Williams' Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? at her Common Basis Theatre. Daily News critic Howard Kissel singled her out for praise, and Off-Off-Broadway Review's Ken Jaworski wrote that as Louise McBride she was "exquisite: a frail woman struggling to appear strong." The previous month, at the same venue, she appeared in the premiere of Grace Cavalieri's Pinecrest Rest Haven, earning strong notice from Off-Off-Broadway Review critic Doug DeVita.

Her film appearances include The Producers, The Night Listener, Anamorph, and Win Win. On television, she has appeared in The Sopranos, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

As a playwright, Haufrecht's work has been produced in New York by the Common Basis Theatre, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Actors Studio, and in upstate New York by Performing Arts of Woodstock. Her plays have also been staged in Texas, Florida, San Francisco, and Southern California, where productions were mounted by Company of Angels and CSU Fullerton. Internationally, her work has been performed in New Zealand, at La Mama in Melbourne, Australia, and at the Kultur im Gugg in Austria. As a director, she has staged original works and revivals at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Actors Studio, the Barrow Street Theatre, the Common Basis Theatre, and in Australia, Portugal, and Austria.

A student of Lee Strasberg from the early 1960s until his death, Haufrecht taught at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute for five years and subsequently served for two years as an adjunct professor in Columbia University's graduate film program. She was also on the faculty of the Actors Studio MFA program at the New School for Social Research, remaining there when the program moved to Pace University in 2006 and continuing until her retirement in 2011. Her private students have included Ellen Barkin, Alec Baldwin, Uma Thurman, Janine Turner, John Leguizamo, Debi Mazar, Loren Dean, David Duchovny, Ian Buchanan, and Harvey Keitel. She has taught in Australia and Austria, and has taught in Lisbon, Portugal, since the mid-1990s.