pHoto By JosH LeHrer
� FAM I LY C O R N E R
Audra’s Song triumphant in her return to Broadway in Porgy and Bess, four-time tony winner audra McDonald would be the first to say her favorite role is being a mom piano lessons in the city, she’s seen every | By Kat Harrison Broadway show that’s appropriate for a
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yellow-and-red friendship bracelet is twisted loosely around Audra McDonald’s wrist, a daily reminder of her daughter Zoe, now 11. On the same hand, her engagement ring—an opal-set family heirloom from her fiancé, Priscilla Queen of the Desert’s Will Swenson—sits proud. This is McDonald’s quiet. Now for her loud. McDonald, a fourtime Tony winner and two-time Grammy recipient, perhaps most well-known for her performances in Carousel, Master Class and four-season run as Dr. Naomi Bennett on ABC’s Private Practice, is a woman of dynamics. Just close your eyes as she takes the stage in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. With operatic grace, even when she stands completely still, McDonald’s voice cuts the air. It’s this steadily swinging balance of crescendos and decrescendos that brings McDonald into focus—no matter if she’s singing or Tweeting about her daughter’s latest one-liner. Is it true that your daughter Zoe was born on Valentine’s Day? Yes—best Valentine’s present ever! Do you two have any special traditions? Usually, the night before her birthday, she likes to hear the story of her birth— [it] was crazy, I went into pre-term labor [when I was] five and a half months pregnant with her. [Before], I was on bed rest for three and a half months. I had to cancel everything and lay on my back or left side. It was during the presidential election, the year with George Bush and Al Gore. I watched a lot of TLC’s A Baby Story. I was starting to get so emotional that my husband at the time [orchestral bassist Peter Donovan] was like, “You can’t watch this anymore. It’s making you worse.” I [also] ordered her entire nursery online and had to meet her doctor on the phone. What’s it like raising Zoe in New York even though you had a Fresno, California, childhood? We moved out of the city [to Westchester] when she was not even a year. So she has been growing up in the woods. She has a backyard but also has the added luxury of an apartment in the city. She has her
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child to see—and maybe some that are not. I want her to be a theater kid. Her dad plays in orchestras everywhere. She’s been to Carnegie Hall, The New York Philharmonic—she’s getting all this incredible culture. She’s seeing the diversity of the city but she’s also fortunate enough that she’s getting the woods, catching frogs and hearing coyotes howl at night. The best of both worlds. So she loves the arts. Yes! She plays so many damn instruments—piano, violin, mandolin, saxophone and she’s working on the guitar now. Since her dad’s a musician, she just wants to do everything her daddy does. She just got cast in her school musical as one of the orphans in Annie. I don’t force any of it on her. It’s all Zoe-generated. There will never be a time in [her] life again when [she] will have the luxury and the time to explore, because real life comes into play. Do you have any advice for parents who want to nurture creativity in their children? If dance or music lessons are a little difficult to afford because it’s a terrible economy right now, see what’s available within your community: check out community centers, the YMCA, your church and school activities. But follow the child and encourage it. Let it grow. Someone who studies music already has a different look on the world. Diversity and tolerance come along with pursuing the arts. Besides her artiness, what other qualities do you love in Zoe? She’s a really kind, sensitive soul. She’s very concerned about other people’s feelings and puts other people before herself— a bit too much. And then she’s got this fierce wit on top of it, which usually doesn’t go hand-in-hand, so the combo of the two is hysterical. We were at Disneyland and a couple of people were asking for my autograph. So she said to the person who was leading us around, “All I wanted to do was ride some rides and now my mom’s Mickey Mouse.” She’s got lots of great one-liners like that that come flying out of nowhere.
OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 15, 2012
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What’s the most hilarious thing she said or did lately? She and my soon-to-be stepsons [Bridger and Sawyer] occupied the living room. It was time to go to bed and they decided that they didn’t want to. This was right when Occupy Wall Street was starting and they were studying the Constitution in school. So they established their own Civil Rights group and they wrote out a Declaration of Independence. They went into the living room, shut the doors and said they were occupying it. And I said, “This is not a democracy. Who’s your president?” And
they said Zoe. Then they marched into the den, where I was, and had a petition with six signatures on it—but I only had three kids in the house! What were the other signatures? They put Butler, who is our dog. It cracked me up! They went on and on until finally they passed out. The Occupation was over because they fell asleep. How do you balance such a hectic career with being a parent? I think that any working parent will tell you that any time spent away from your child is frustrating. We miss each other a lot when we’re not together. It’s hard if you’re a theater performer because your child is gone at school during the day and then you perform at night. So we cherish all the time that we have together.