ABSTRACT
AFS: How old were you when a career in the theater became a serious idea for you?
CUNNINGHAM: At first it was a kind of sensual awareness of the beauty of the English language. I was a freshman in high school, I think. We were taken across the Hudson River to Vassar to see Laurence Olivier’s movie of Henry V, and I was just astounded by his performance in the title role. I still remember how the St. Crispin Day speech made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I had a kind of an aural awakening to Shakespeare’s poetry…. I grew up in a family where language was important. My mother was a writer, would-be writer. My grandparents, my father all derived great pleasure from words. So, here was language at a much higher level. I’d been to a Shakespeare play or two when younger, but Henry V was really the beginning-I was beginning to think about it at fourteen or fifteen. I wasn’t really considering it as a career until I got to college, but I was being told by people off and on when I was in a play, “Oh, you ought to be an actor.” Sometimes I would think it’s because they think I can’t do anything else. I didn’t decide about the theater till I got into the Army. In college I had done both the glee club and acting. In the Army I was able to get into an acting company while I was in Europe, with the Seventh Army and that’s all I did for twelve or thirteen months, touring with three plays.
