Lansing's Queen of Theater, Dead

 

On January 30^th, Lansing lost its queen of local theater. Carmen Decker died at age 97 after years of lingering bad health.

She was only 5 foot tall, painfully shy and had a high raspy voice, but when the petite blonde stepped on the stage she became a powerhouse of the theater.

Carmen Decker was hailed by both her peers and her fans as the first lady of Lansing theater.

Whether she played in a classic drama like “The Lion in Winter”, an emotional human story like “The Gin Game” or a raucous comedy like “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You”, Decker won over the audience with applause and awards.

All of us who have loved Lansing theater over the decades have reveled in Carmen’s heartfelt and brilliant performances.  Beginning with the Lansing Civic Players in the 1950s, she later became a key member of the Boarshead Theater and delighted audiences with dozens of plays that paired her with John Peakes, the theater’s founder. 

The chemistry they displayed on stage was a rare and beautiful thing to behold. 

 

Ian Peakes, John’s son, now an actor in Philadelphia said “Their relationship on the stage was incredibly special.  They acted together for over 30 years.  They knew each other inside and out.  They were like dance partners on stage.  They made each other better.  Carmen was one of the great story tellers – she was a goddess of the theater.”

 While attending the University of Iowa, she met and married Lindsey Decker, an artist. They moved to Lansing in the 1950s. They also lived in New York for a while and Decker followed Lindsey to Italy where he had a Fulbright.  Although they had two sons together, Scott and Marc, the marriage ended in divorce and Carmen did not remarry.

 Roger Rochowiak, local playwright and actor met Decker in 1959 and began a lifelong friendship.  Most people remember her for her wonderful comedy and dramatic performances, but Rochowiak reminds us, “She also did musicals while she was at Civic Players.  She did “Annie Get Your Gun”, “Gypsy”, “Mame” and others. She didn’t have an outstanding voice, but she could sell a song.  She never really had formal acting lessons, but she had raw talent.”

 Michelle Raymond, who knew her for 20 years starting in the Boarshead days, said, “She was a little spitfire – and so bright.  You were drawn to her. She was queen-like.  What a lady!”

 Lee Helder, who has been in the Lansing theater scene for many decades said, “When Carmen was on stage, she was the one you were watching.”  

 In fact, Decker had a magnetism that is difficult to describe.  She created a bond with the audience, and they loved her. Peakes said, “She had a wonderful bag of tricks on stage.  She would do something early on in her performances that would get the audience’s attention.  And they would lock into her.  Everything was uniquely Carmen Decker in a wonderful way. She’s not trained, she just does it.  She exists in every moment.”

 Decker has an undergraduate degree from Knox College and a masters from the University of Iowa.  Neither degree was in acting.

 Ian Peakes grew up at Boarshead and Decker was always there. “Watching her act was one of the great experiences in my life.  I’ll never forget one time being backstage and watching her do a scene in a play where she was on the phone with someone.  She didn’t say anything, but her responses to the person on the other end just captured the audience. Unbelievable expression and sensitivity. Everything about Carmen was watchable.  When she listened, she was worth watching.”  

 Melissa Kaplan, who now heads up the theater program at Lansing Community College and was previously marketing manager at the Boarshead, put it different way. When remembering her greatest performance, she said. “I’ll never forget when she did the comedy, “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it all for You”.  She was terrifically funny and I just couldn’t stop laughing.”

 What was interesting about her memory was that Kaplan couldn’t remember if it was a one woman show or not – all she remembered was Decker.  By the way, Sister Ignatius is a play with three men and three women.

 Ken Beachler local actor and director first met Decker when he was a student rehearsing for a play at MSU’s Arena Stage. “I’ll never forget her.  She reminded me of Elaine Stritch - very sharp, looked like a million dollars.  Frank Rutledge, the director, asked her to give notes on our play and she was razor sharp in her criticisms.”  Decades later, Beachler appeared with her on the Boarshead stage in “A Man Comes to Dinner”.

 He says, “If Carmen Decker was in a play, you wanted to see her. She was the show’s meal ticket.

 “The best shows I saw her in were ”The Gin Game” and a very dramatic play Boarshead did during their Winter Festival.  Watching her brought tears to my eyes.  I didn’t know she could go that deep”.

 The actress was born on a farm in northwest Illinois, but she loved Lansing and always lived in an apartment in the city. In addition to acting any time she could and knitting, she was also an administrator for the Michigan Senate.

 As her reputation grew from her great Boarshead performances she dipped her toe in several other theater markets. She starred in ‘Clara’s Play’ in Chicago which won her the coveted Joseph Jefferson Award. 

 In addition, she appeared in an off-Broadway show called “Palace for Amateurs” with Laura Dern and Kyle McLachlan, worked at The Peterborough Players (with co-star James Whitmore) in New Hampshire, appeared in “Lend Me a Tenor” with Lorna Luft at the Birmingham Theater and created a longtime friendship with Rita Moreno when she performed in “Steel Magnolias” in Traverse City.  She also appeared in various summer stock productions, one with Mickey Rooney in “Sugar Babies”.

 But despite her nationwide gigs, she always returned to Lansing. Peakes said, “Her career outside of Lansing was never as good as it should have been. She was modest and had some fear about places outside of her home.  In many ways, her insecurities were crippling until she was on the stage. She had the talent to have had a big acting career in New York and beyond. She was a world class actress but didn’t feel comfortable selling herself to producers.”

 Decker loved words and was revered for her ability to memorize huge amounts of dialogue – and helping John Peakes rebound after he forgot bunches of lines on the stage. But she always respected the words. Peakes said “Words really mattered to her”

 Michelle Raymond said, “She would drop words into a conversation that were so different but were always so right.  Once I really liked one of her words and used it in another conversation, a couple of weeks later.  Carmen smiled, “Good word”.  She knew I took it from her.”

 All of the people I interviewed for this article mentioned how humble and almost self-conscious she was off stage.  She had no ego and was never fully happy with her performances. In fact, she enjoyed poking fun at those theater types who flutter around, bragging about themselves.  

 When people complimented her, she was surprised that they liked the show. Raymond said, “She was very humble.  She almost didn’t realize her talent”.   Her son Marc said that she was shy to the point of almost being a recluse among people she didn’t know.

 Although she was unassuming, her theater friends found her to be an entertaining companion to be with. Rochowiak said, “People loved Carmen – they liked being with her.  She had energy with people.  She became a part of my family.”

 While audiences loved her performances, she had an acting style that many claimed she repeated in every role. Her facial expressions and vocal mannerisms were seen in many of her characters.   It is true that Carmen Decker was always Carmen Decker, but Carmen Decker was also always good.

 Decker did not have many activities outside of theater, but Rochowiak said that she was very bright, and politics ran very deep for her.  She was always attuned to world events

 Raymond remembered seeing Carmen with her transistor radio walking back and forth in the parking lot at Boarshead trying to listen to Tigers games or her beloved Wolverines – trying to get the antenna and reception right.

 The plays that people consistently speak about as her best were: “The Gin Game”, “Clara’s Play”, “The Lion in Winter”. “Mornings at Seven”, “Foxfire” and “Driving Miss Daisy”.  For “Daisy”, Raymond recounts that Decker fell off the stage when the lights were down for a scene change.  She broke a rib but completed the show despite the injury.

 Her last theatrical performance in Lansing, 2012, was a memorable one.  She starred with Hollywood star (and East Lansing grad) Tim Busfield in the play “The Vigil”.  She did not speak a word throughout the play.  She was playing Busfield’s dying mother. But the comedy and emotions she brought to the part was stunning, remembers LCC’s Kaplan.

 After “The Vigil”, Decker began to lose her eyesight and became very ill.  Amazingly she continued to live by herself in her own apartment, but her friends saw to it that she was taken care of and made it to her doctors’ appointments.

 Always self-deprecating, Carmen Decker would sometimes say “I bet I’ll be long forgotten.”

 Judging from the enthusiastic remarks from all of her friends and their volumes of scrapbooks and pictures that document her life, that fact is far from accurate.