At the same time Kate Harris was studying theatre at Webster College Conservatory of Theatre Arts, she was engaged in the delicate process of psychologically detaching herself from her body after taking a job as a figure model for visual artists.

While acting and this specialized form of modeling consumed her life, she began to experience an energizing paradox. As an actress she delved deeply into her own emotional resources to craft believable characters on stage; the latter profession took her completely outside herself to the point of moving from a multi-dimensional person to serving as a clinical anatomical study at the tip of a painter’s brush.

Both concepts merge in Landmarks/A Mass of Muscle and Bone, her original performance-theatre work being reprised at Belle Plaine Studio May 17-June 23. When this multimedia piece premiered in the summer of 2000, it paid gentle homage to Harris’ sister, who had recently died of cancer. It also addressed issues of empowerment and self-acceptance as artists sketched Harris and two other actors, who shaped their own bodies into painstaking but aesthetically pleasing configurations while they candidly shared their inhibitions and dreams of emotional fulfillment.

The actress-writer ponders how figure modeling addresses the aging process at the same time posing for a concrete work of art—whether it’s a sketch, painting or sculpture—stops the aging process because it freezes one in time and space. Landmarks then merges acting and visual art in the sense that models—like actors—can be vessels for a greater creative vision.

Today Harris—a bright fixture in Chicago’s theatre community since 1979—is re-writing parts of Landmarks to more fully address the experience of being a figure model. She also is taking the focus away from herself so that Landmarks—produced by Pyewacket, the theatre company she co-founded in 1997—can become a true ensemble piece.

"I don’t want to make Landmarks the Kate show," says Harris in her characteristically confident yet self-deprecating manner. "I feel the same way about Pyewacket. I’m looking at the bigger picture and bringing more people in. Our goals are to have five new board members by next year, be very savvy about programming, and attract larger and more diverse audiences."

Landmarks, she notes, will also serve as a springboard for a Pyewacket benefit linking theatre and visual art. And, in the various paradoxical twists that have touched Harris over the years, she is intent on marketing her company more aggressively than she has promoted herself. Yet despite her self-admitted lack of self-promotion, Harris has worked quite consistently in local and regional theatre, including an off-Broadway cabaret performance of Dressing Room Divas in which she portrayed Julie Andrews. But Chicago is where she chooses to be an artist—even if it means working a variety of unrelated day jobs. "Theatre," asserts Harris, 45, "is the reason I get up in the morning."

That statement need not be taken lightly. Despite the impending cliché-like tone, theatre really has been a redeeming force for Harris. She tends to portray "strong women that have a vulnerability to them" in productions ranging from The Belle of Amherst, Strange Snow and The Lion in Winter with Pyewacket to The Doll’s House at Playmakers Repertory Theatre in Chapel Hill, N.C., to Pygmalion at Bailiwick Repertory (of which she is a founding member).

Other credits include Court Theatre’s outdoor performances, Mary-Arrchie Theatre, Tinfish Productions, Sense of Urgency and several other off-Loop vehicles that traverse traditional and fringe theatre sensibilities.

Theatre, however, was an art form Harris initially gravitated toward but had not imagined pursuing as a career. Her parents listened to musical-theatre recordings, like Camelot, and her older brother—an aspiring thespian—first exposed Harris to live performance. Born in St. Louis, Harris lived briefly in Lebanon, Ill. While she was in the third grade, her brother landed the role of John Proctor in a high school production of The Crucible. She would hang out at rehearsals and became so absorbed in the drama that she would shout bizarrely out-of-context lines (like "God damns all liars") from the script during recess.

"Not the sort of thing that makes you popular," laughs Harris, who adds, "But the funny thing is that I was really drawn to The Crucible but have never been cast in a production of that play."

After her parents divorced when she was in the fourth grade, Harris moved with her mother to Los Angeles, where she met one of the chorus members from the original Broadway production of Camelot, and became interested in musical theatre. But, by high school, she and her mom moved back to St. Louis and, shortly after, Harris was living with her father in O’Fallon, Ill.

Acknowledging that her home life verged on the "abusive," Harris immersed herself in extracurricular activities at O’Fallon Township High School, where her passion for theatre was cultivated. She credits Mark Greenberg, her Oral Interpretation teacher and later head of the Drama Department, with encouraging her to audition for school productions and join the Speech Team.

"He must have seen something in me that I didn’t recognize in myself," shares the actress. "Mark Greenberg was casting The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail and asked me if I would like to play Lydia Emerson. I then realized how much I enjoyed theatre. It was an escape, but it also was extremely fulfilling. I admired Mark. His tastes were so fringe-ish."

Greenberg also took students on field trips to the nearby St. Louis Repertory, where a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest inspired Harris (who later performed the role of Nurse Ratchet with Mainstage Repertory Theatre in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo.). Interestingly, while Harris and her father had their share of disagreements, he encouraged her theatre dreams, too. It was her father who suggested she study at the Webster College Conservatory of Theatre Arts in St. Louis, where she received her BA in theatre.

The school, affiliated with St. Louis Rep, offered a progressive theatre program that encompassed all aspects of the form and often placed students in St. Louis Rep productions. "It was very inspiring," says Harris, "Here I was acting [at St. Louis Rep] with people I had admired. [At Webster], you had a sense of being in class and right next door, you saw real life—what you could aspire to be."

After moving to Chicago in 1979, she got cast in The Philanderer at Court Theatre’s outdoor space, was involved with the Old Town Players and the Commons Theatre, and met David Zak (Bailiwick’s artistic director) during a production of Beckett at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel. In 1981, she and a group of theatre artists—including Zak—planted the seeds for Bailiwick Repertory in Harris’ apartment on Marine Drive. She performed in Bailiwick’s earliest shows, The Country Wife and Pygmalion.

Then, from 1984-87, Harris went on to receive her MFA in theatre at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Letting go was a crucial lesson she learned in grad school.

"One of my toughest instructors/directors was David Hammond from Yale," says Harris. "He tended to single me out for criticism; for not being committed to the work. And, at the time, I think I was concerned about what people thought of me. I would get nervous; I wouldn’t embody a character.

"He made me realize that it was all about my ego and not the art – that I was so concerned about how I was appearing to people I forgot about the work itself. Once I started to relax and think about the art form, I got rid of all those [ego-based] insecurities. It really meant a lot to me when David Hammond finally told me I did a good job."

At the university’s Playmakers Repertory Theatre, she performed in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, The Matchmaker, The Dining Room and Look Homeward Angel.

After grad school, Harris continued performing in Chicago and even started a short-lived Equity troupe, Kamijo (a combination of the founders’ first names), geared toward providing an outlet for Equity actors. An active member of Actors Equity from 1985 to 1991, Harris eventually dropped her Equity status because the bulk of opportunities were in the non-Equity realm. She went on to weather a difficult period of personal challenges and took a brief hiatus from acting.

In the spring of 1997, director Linda LeVeque invited her to star as the Actress in The Rehearsal at Voltaire—a role ideally suited for Harris’ gently commanding presence. The Rehearsal served as the impetus for the founding of Pyewacket—a committed non-Equity theatre company dedicated to solid, provocative material performed with depth and integrity.

Now, Harris—who, in addition to Landmarks, will perform in Tinfish’s staging of My Sister in This House in July—has set her sights on the marketing aspects of Pyewacket. She has brought director Kenneth Lee (of Collaboraction) on board as managing director and is in the process of putting together grant proposals. She also aims to program artistically viable shows that have name recognition. For instance, Pyewacket recently produced Jeff Daniels’ Boom Town and has plans to mount a stage adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery.

"Back in 1979," says Harris, "you knew everyone at auditions. Chicago’s theatre community was very small. Then the scene really exploded, and competition became fierce. What I feel has happened is that, while so many companies have sprung up—and continue to spring up—the theatregoing audience [from a numbers perspective] has remained the same. So we have to work really hard to attract people who normally don’t go to theatre. You have to be very careful about what you select to perform and how you promote yourself."

Although she admits that Chicago tends to be a "youthful" theatre town, Harris has not encountered age discrimination. She does offer this advice: "I know there are actresses who feel like they work hard and don’t get a lot of recognition. I’ve been there. But you just can’t give up. When I was nominated for a Jeff for best actress [in Pyewacket’s 1999 production of The Turn of the Screw], I felt like I was finally getting some sort of validation in the Chicago theatre community. It meant a lot to be appreciated by my peers."

Harris recommends that more mature actors contact Equity houses even if they have non-Equity status. "If an Equity theatre is looking for someone in a certain age range," she notes, "I’ll call and inquire if they’ll let me audition. Most of the time, they say yes. Even if you don’t get cast, it’s invaluable experience and Equity theatres have a chance to see what you’re capable of."

When asked how she defines success, Harris responds with one word: tenacity. Then she expounds, "In this business, you can’t take no personally. No can mean you have the wrong color hair.

"Being a success in theatre is when you can wake up and say you are making a difference. It’s not about being right all the time. It’s about living with your choices."