Even before actress/vocalist Angela Bond had a reason to ply her trade in the Tampa Bay area, she knew she was dissatisfied with New York."I lived in New York City for 16 years," Bond tells me as we sit in a conference room at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. "And I made it to Broadway one time; I did a big European tour one time. I got to the point where the city was killing me. … When you reach a certain age, if you don't have the big credits, they're not going to let you in the door, much less hire you. And I just hadn't gotten there. I was kind of at a glass ceiling. … I don't think I would ever go back to New York City or Los Angeles." She pauses, then adds: "Unless somebody hired me." She bursts into laughter.
New York's loss is the Bay area's gain. As anyone knows who's seen Bond perform, she's one of the best actresses in the area and always turns in a solid performance. Now she's about to show her stuff again in Stageworks' The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, opening next week at the Shimberg Playhouse of TBPAC. She plays a woman who rocks the world of a conservative couple living on the Apple's Upper East Side. "She exposes them to experiences they've never had before," says Bond. "She exposes them to ideas; she really is a freedom fighter. Her whole personality is, 'Let's live life to the fullest because that's all there is. And if you don't grab it now, it's going to go away.'"
Playing this kind of role is a change for Bond, most of whose non-singing characters in the Bay area have stood out as likable and sincere, not world-rocking in the least. Not that her roles haven't demanded range. In Gorilla Theatre's American Road (1999) she was a grade-school teacher who'd settled for an unhappy marriage; in the Mahaffey Theater's Webb's City: The Musical" (2001), she was Doc Webb's sassy, self-confident wife Aretta; and in Gorilla's Side Man (2002) she was serial girlfriend and all-around nice gal, waitress Patsy. Dependable, sturdy, trustworthy — Bond usually comes across as someone to befriend, someone you can confide in.
Bond was born in Salisbury, N.C., where her father was a professor of music and her mother was a piano teacher, "so I got a lot of training very young." She graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park in 1981 with a theater and a business degree. Doubting that she could make a living as an actress, she aimed at becoming artistic director of a regional theater. But a job at the Pennsylvania Stage Company in Allentown convinced her that theater administration just meant "begging for money every time you turn around." So she moved to New York, where she snagged the first role she auditioned for, "a little children's theater tour from hell — we went through every tiny hamlet there was in Louisiana and East Texas." Better moments followed — including five weeks on Broadway and nine months on that European tour. Eventually she became involved with the American Globe Theatre, where she met actor/director Kenneth Noel Mitchell. After a time, Mitchell moved to St. Pete and took over American Stage; and when he did, he invited Bond's then-husband — a master carpenter — to work with him. So after 16 years in New York, Bond arrived back in Florida and, to her surprise, "fell in love with St. Petersburg."
But does St. Petersburg — or Tampa — love her in return? Bond thinks there are two reasons we haven't seen her on stage more often. First, because she's a member of Actor's Equity, the actor's union, "and Equity contracts are very scarce around here. Many times if a theater hires Equity, for some reason they like to go out of town, so they can tell their audiences, 'We're bringing in people from New York.'" Another reason is that Bond's specialty is musical theater, "and they don't do a lot of big musical theater around here." All that remains is dinner theater, and in fact Bond has recently performed at the Golden Apple in Sarasota and at the Show Palace in Hudson. And she couldn't turn down the title role in Evita at the Players of Sarasota, a community theater that occasionally uses guest artists.
But it's still slim pickin's for a performer who sees herself mostly as a singer of show tunes. Still, she isn't tempted to go elsewhere. "St. Petersburg is a lovely community. I live in Gulfport and it's just so cute; I love my little house, and it's very affordable." She has a couple of day jobs that pay the bills — teaching voice to children and working as assistant to the executive director of The Arts Center in St. Pete. She sees the local theater scene as a little too insular — "it would certainly be nice to mix things up a little bit," she says, but she's encouraged by the appearance of new companies like Alley Cat Players. If there's one thing she misses, it's a broad selection of places for the adult professional to study acting. Bond fears that without constant exposure to vigilant teachers, actors can get in a rut, leading them to fall back on old habits and gimmicks.
This isn't Angela Bond's problem. What she needs is more exposure, more opportunity because she's a genuine talent and one of New York's best gifts to the Tampa Bay area.
Look for her in The Allergist's Wife.
And anywhere professionals are encouraged to sing.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2003.