Sage plays: Estelle Parsons looks at her life in the spotlight and onstage in ‘August: Osage County’

By Diana Nollen

Academy Award-winning actress Estelle Parsons likes being a pioneer, but says she's “not revolutionary and not pumping for causes.”

She's spent her life in the theater, but beyond that, she was the first woman to do news reporting for a television station when NBC's “Today Show” began; was the youngest person and first woman elected to office in her hometown; and was one of two women studying law at Boston University with 290 men, because Harvard, where the men in her family went to school, didn't accept women.

At age 82, the New England native is touring the country as the star of “August: Osage County,” a psychological family drama that won a Pulitzer Prize and the 2008 Tony Award for best play. It's setting up its three-story dysfunctional dollhouse in the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines from Tuesday through Feb. 28.

Parsons - who lives in Manhattan and has a cabin in upstate New York and the family's 100-year-old summer house in New Hampshire - joined the Broadway cast before setting out on the first national tour, which ends in May.

“I've done this show for two years,” she says by phone from a recent tour stop in Chicago. “It's endlessly exciting, always new. I'm always finding something new, so it's wonderful.”

She plays drug-addicted matriarch Violet Weston, who takes the whole family on her downward spiral as three generations gather at their rural Oklahoma homestead after their alcoholic patriarch disappears. The tenuous fabric of their family unravels as hideous secrets are revealed. It's an emotional collision course where each turn becomes tighter and more dangerous.

Violet is a demanding role in a dark and difficult ride that would tax actresses much younger than Parsons. But this physical dynamo who runs, swims, bikes, canoes, lifts weights, hikes, climbs mountains and goes to the gym every day jumped at the chance.

“It seems to be the play of the decade, so I thought it was probably something I should do,” Parsons says. “I like to be in a No. 1 vehicle. I did ‘Roseanne' all those years.” She had never seen the popular television sitcom when she signed on to play Roseanne and Jackie's mother. “It was the No. 1 show, so I said ‘sure.'” And she stayed 10 years.

Her current role is a complicated one.

“Violet is a terribly smart woman who was a victim and product of growing up below poverty level,” Parsons says. “That's terribly destructive. A lot of people want to brush it off under the rug, but living below the poverty level is very destructive. We shouldn't have anyone living that way.

“She has an addictive personality - I don't have one. She couldn't rise above her frailties. She did manage to have three children and a husband who had been an alcoholic. She did manage to write fierce poetry.

“She has a lot to say about what happens in this country. You could say she's living the American nightmare instead of the American dream,” Parsons says.

“It's about relationships. Everybody has relationship whether they want them or not. She dives into it.”

She hopes audiences have “a terrific theatrical experience” with the show. “That's what theater is all about - terrific communal experiences with a lot of other people relating to the stage, relating to the people next to them, relating to audiences. It's a pure theatrical experience. That's unique in the world. It's important in terms of human nourishment.

“I'm very, very happy to be associated with this play. It's giving people something they won't get anywhere else. It's a dream come true for someone's who's spent a life in the theater.”

And after the show closes, she's going to take the summer off, then start right back again.

“I'm committed to another show if they get it onstage in New York,” says this spunky wife, mother and grandmother, whose oldest grandson, Eben Britton, just finished his rookie NFL season with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I'm also trying to produce a piece about Vietnam,” she says. “I want to be more active at the Actors Studio and I want to do a Eugene O'Neill festival. A lot of very interesting plays he wrote are about the human dilemma, choices people make for society's sake. And I'm going to go to India for a month in December. My godson is getting married there.”

That's a full slate for an actress who admits to being “very conflicted about being in the theater. I worry that I'm not doing my best for mankind.”

FAST TAKEInformation: www.augustonbroadway.com

What: Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “August: Osage County”

Where: Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, 221 Walnut St., Des Moines

When: Feb. 23 through 28; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $15 to $52.50 through the Civic Center Ticket Office, 1-(800) 745-3000, Ticketmaster locations or www.civiccenter.org