Compassion, camaraderie of 'Beaux Arts' cast no act

Sometimes life imitates art. And sometimes, luckily, it doesn't.

Earlier this spring, Salt Lake actress Linda Hamilton started rehearsals for "The Beaux Arts Ball." It's an inventive play based on the premise that the wives, girlfriends and models of famous artists find themselves in the same ladies' room in turn-of-the-century Paris. The women in "The Beaux Arts Ball" are at times vindictive, jealous and catty. Sometimes they even spit on each other.In real life, though, the 15 women who act in and direct "The Beaux Arts Ball" have proved to be both support group and therapy for Hamilton, who was diagnosed with breast cancer just as rehearsals began.

The breast cancer showed up on a routine mammogram. Hamilton had an immediate biopsy, then a mastectomy. With each new thing, remembers Hamilton, "I said, 'You can re-cast.' "

She told director Teresa Sanderson, "I'm facing a black curtain. I don't know what lies ahead."

But Sanderson has spent her career raising curtains. She encouraged Hamilton, who works at the Deseret News, to stick with the play. She reblocked the action so that Hamilton's Madame Henri Matisse could spent her stage time on a chaise lounge. Luckily, Madame Matisse is portrayed as a flighty character anyway, always three steps short of fainting.

Nearly 900 Utah women develop breast cancer each year, so perhaps it's not surprising that another cast member, actress Barbara Bellows-TerraNova, is also a breast-cancer survivor. In "The Beaux Arts Ball" she plays the wife of pointillism painter Georges Seurat and spends her time on stage covered with tiny dots.

Bellows-TerraNova knew how to encourage Hamilton that the show could indeed go on. And, in fact, three days after the mastectomy, Hamilton was on stage again rehearsing. The show opened 11 days later.

Although the play features a dozen women who are constantly at each other's throats, "it's truly an ensemble piece," says Bellows-TerraNova. "Even to exist with seven or eight people on stage at the same time you have to depend on each other."

On stage and off-stage, she says, the cast members -- who range in age from mid-20s to late 50s -- have connected with each other. "We're grateful to have each other in our lives."

For Hamilton, especially, the play has been "wonderful therapy," she says. When a social worker from LDS Hospital called the other day to see how Hamilton was doing, she was surprised to learn that Hamilton was already acting again. Most people are still in their nightgowns, depressed, the social worker told her.

When she asked if Hamilton wanted to join a breast-cancer support group, Hamilton told her she already had the best support group she could imagine.

"The Beaux Arts Ball," a production of Dance Theatre Coalition and Girlfriends Productions, continues today (April 16) at 4 p.m. and April 20, 21 and 22 at 8 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. Broadway. Tickets are available through ArtTix, 355-2787.

You can reach Elaine Jarvik by e-mail at jarvik@desnews.com.