During his acceptance speech for Lead Actor in a Play on the night of June 16th, Jeremy Strong – best known for his Emmy-award winning portrayal of Kendall Roy on the hit HBO series “Succession” – thanked the team behind his performance in Henrik Ibsen's “An Enemy of the People."
“Molly Kerns, I couldn’t have done this without you," said Strong. "I think a lot of people in this room share that sentiment.”
Strong’s acknowledgement of a former longtime Berkshire resident and theater community member prompted WAMC to track her down for an interview.
“Well, I'm Molly. I grew up in Wisconsin in a really small town being a weirdo and loving theater. I also, oddly, did a lot of bodywork as a kid. My dad was into feet, and his feet hurt, and I used to rub his feet and he rubbed mine, and it was sort of the two things I did my whole life," Kerns told. “Life happens- I went to conservatory in New York City, then shortly after that, went to massage school. I found that there was a real overlap. Later, I got married and moved to the Berkshires, where I was right in the town where the Williamstown Theatre Festival is, and got the opportunity to really marry both those careers, of theater and arts and music and the people that perform that work and by supporting them through bodywork.”
It was there, in Northern Berkshire County, where Kerns first met and worked with Strong – a regular presence at the festival long before his ascent to theater and television stardom.
Kerns says bodywork is about more than pain relief or relaxation – it’s about priming the body to best accomplish a highly specific task.
“An example I use a lot is, you imagine an NFL football player needing to have a body that's really ready to get tackled and to run and to huddle up and to be patient," she explained. "And imagining that football player maybe going in the fourth quarter and having to be as ready then as he is when he might be put in the first quarter, that there is a way the body can be poised, and bodywork's aim is to create a body that is most robust and ready for that poise.”
For the kind of work Kerns practices, there was no conventional training.
“I learned the basics of massage, and then I supplemented that with a lot of other information," she told WAMC. "I went to an acting conservatory where I learned about movement, I took dance classes where I learned about being inside your body when you move and what gets in the way of that, I studied shiatsu and acupuncture and craniosacral and energy work, and I found that there's a disconnect between understanding what's going on inside of us and how we behave in a way that gets us to our goals.”
In “An Enemy of the People,” Kerns guided Strong through a performance that had him on stage for the overwhelming majority of the play’s over two-hour runtime – including a fight scene.
“There were definitely some parts of the show that really taxed Jeremy's body, and it was my job to make sure that they didn't carry over and become a problem that grew week after week, but that each week he could go into the show at body neutral, so that he didn't have any adhesions, there were no bones out of place, he was feeling strong, there wasn't kind of an anxiety level coming from pain or nervousness about the show not going well, because that can be a thing," she said. "You get hurt, and then there's a part of your brain that's distracted, like, am I going to get hurt again? So, all of those components we check in on all the time. Jeremy is a dream to work on, because he's very communicative, he takes direction, he's really willing to listen.”
Kerns’ reputation grew quickly among the Williamstown Theatre Festival, leading her to work with other luminaries including Michelle Williams, Laura Linney, and Jessica Hecht.
“The Berkshires is this gorgeous cultural heaven, and people, all kinds of performers and artists, come there to perform and rejuvenate themselves," said Kerns. "I mean, it is a wonderful opportunity to be creative without the New York Times breathing down your neck. And the body workers that we have in Williamstown, many of whom I've worked alongside and who are friends, do exquisite work. There is enough business year-round so that when these actors and musicians come they can get some really solid, meaningful work.”
Kerns says Strong's thanks at the Tony Awards was a rare public acknowledgement of the industry workers just offstage in the theater world.
“What was even more rewarding, I guess surprising, was so many people in the audience had been clients, and they texted me and said, oh, congratulations Molly!" she said. "So maybe the work that people do to support actors on Broadway and beyond will start getting more recognition. It really does take a tremendous team to get a show up, it's a feat! And so, I'm one component of it, and I definitely get to know a lot of very famous people, and they recognize they're just as much a part of the machine as anybody else.”
While Kerns relocated to Brooklyn in 2022 after a twenty-year career in the Berkshires, she says her time in Western Massachusetts will never leave her.
“It chokes me up a little bit to look back on my path and realize how fortunate I've been to be able to create this niche and bring it to Broadway," she told WAMC. "I would not be able to have the confidence, the breadth of understanding, or toolkit that I do had it not been for the Berkshires.”
