I spoke on the phone to Tony-award winner Victoria Clark about her work in Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman (in theaters September 12) and after we hung up something strange happened. Miss Clark called me back because she said she had some questions for me about her performance, particularly about the things I had liked and disliked about the film. It's not every day that I get asked feedback from a Broadway star, so I talked to her more about films that had reminded me of Archaeology and not only was she attentive, she was genuinely interested because she kept asking more questions. This kind of love for her craft is precisely what makes Clark such a magnetic actress; onstage she gives it all, she wants to make her audience happy. "I wanna know what works" she explained.

In Archaeology she plays Kate, a professional chef who finds herself looking after her mother (Sally Kirkland) who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The film shows us a side of Clark we have rarely seen before, she plays Kate with a voraciousness that makes us wonder if this is the same woman who won the Best Actress Tony award for playing the reserved, overprotective Margaret Johnson in The Light in the Piazza. I talked to Miss Clark about her wonderful turn in Greytak's film, about directing a new version of Piazza and about the one Sondheim character she's dying to play.

All three of your Tony nominations have been for playing maternal or quasi maternal roles either to Kelli O’Hara in Piazza, as the Fairy Godmother to Laura Osnes' Cinderella, or the Mother Superior to Patina Miller in Sister Act. In Archaeology of a Woman you also play a daughter who has to take on the maternal role. Pure chance or are you drawn to these maternal roles?

That’s such a good question. I mean I’m not sure why I keep getting cast as people who have that instinct. I haven’t just played that, I know I’ve played one character in a Craig Lucas play called A Prayer for My Enemy in which I played a woman who actually murders somebody after an incident of road rage (laughs). I’ve played a lot of crazy people and several villains. But I think every actor, when we come into the room, we bring certain qualities that we don’t have to fish around too much for and I’m a natural nurturer, I’m a natural mom - I have a son who’s about to turn 20 - so I think that those qualities are immediately apparent and when you’re thinking about casting those qualities come to mind. I am drawn not just to nurturers but to people who are complicated and are struggling through something. People who come out on the other side having learned something.

In the film you play a woman who is very comfortable with her sexuality, and she is never really being judged by the screenplay, which is something we rarely get to see onscreen with female characters. Can you talk about this?

That’s really true. I think that’s our director, Sharon was very into women being who they are and being sexual creatures and not being afraid of that. And Sally Kirkland is obviously very well known for being that way, she’s very open about playing very sensual characters, women who are very comfortable in their skin and not apologizing for what a woman’s body looks like and I think it was a good meeting of our three minds feeling that this was something that needed to be shown.

How was it to work with Sally Kirkland?

Amazing. She’s incredibly in the moment, she’s really alive, her performance knocked me out! She’s fantastic in this film and I am so happy for her. She’s a real iconoclast, she’s very hard working, she has a great sense of humor, she was very into her scenes, and the movie was difficult and challenging and I thought it was fun working with both Sharon and her in this.

You also display amazing culinary skills. Are you this good in the kitchen?

Did it look like I was a real chef, did you buy into that?

You looked so comfortable with it!

(Laughs) I do love to cook. I’m a country cook, I’m a very messy cook though. I’m not as skilled as Kate is but I enjoyed playing a chef.

You're directing a new production of The Light in the Piazza at Pace University. Does your appreciation and perspective of the show change now that you're directing it and not acting in it?

Well, it’s both a great advantage that I know this show so well and it’s also a little bit of a disadvantage because I have so much respect for the three productions that I did for it and for the creators and the directors that we had. Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas are my friends and I practically revere them, so it’s a disadvantage for me because I need to approach the work from my own standpoint and yet I have deep respect for what they did already so it’s definitely not going to be like what we were able to do on Broadway, this one is more about showcasing the students and sort of helping them on their journey as they grow as actors and singers. It’s a wonderfully complex and complicated piece and I feel like college students don’t always have the opportunity to work on pieces like this, which I happen to think is one of the greatest pieces of theater ever written. It’s really a masterpiece and I’m very humbled by this opportunity and I hope I can serve everybody well.

Would you like to play Margaret Johnson again?

Oh yeah. Totally! I would love to do it in London, I would love to do it anywhere in the United States...or internationally.

You've focused primarily on singing and acting but you continue to direct, is there any particular show other than Piazza you'd like to direct? Maybe one show you've been in that you'd like to revisit as a director, like with Piazza.

I’m not really sure. I like to focus on new works, on new musical theater work and I wanna get the word out that I’m starting to direct now, so I would love for writers to approach me with pieces that they think I might be able to have a specific take on that might help illuminate the piece. I don’t have anything that I’m dying to do right now, other than a couple of really good new works that I’m sort of itching to get to work on.

Compared to film and TV we tend to see a lot more female directors on stage, just last year both Best Director Tony Awards went to women. Any thoughts on why?

Theater has been almost exclusively male dominated in terms of leadership until very recently, but I can count on two hands the number of women who direct theater in New York, there’s not that many. We need to really increase those statistics, we need to have women feel more comfortable and support them, we have a different leadership style and it’s important to embrace that because a new perspective is very good for us. Even to have women in charge in a rehearsal room has a completely different vibe than to have a man running the show, so it’s always something I look forward to.

You gave a rousing performance of "Don't Laugh" at the Sondheim Birthday Concert and played Sally recently in Follies when it moved to L.A. Any Sondheim role you'd love to play?

Oh Mrs. Lovett, without a doubt! Definitely and one of these days I’d love to play Desiree too. I’m probably old enough now to do that. I’m also about to do Sally again and that’s a great part. But yeah, Mrs. Lovett is definitely on the bucket list.

People tend to say that sopranos are leaving Broadway and belting is taking over. As a soprano, do you have any thoughts on this?

The thing is everybody is born with a certain voice and you can develop it and train it, it’s like being born with blue eyes, you’ll always have blue eyes. If you’re a soprano that’s who you are and it’s not to say that you can’t develop other parts of your range but you should not force your voice to go someplace else it doesn’t want to go. I don’t worry too much about what roles are available or not available, I just have to make my voice as beautiful and as resilient as it can be and maintain it. That’s my job, it’s not my job to figure out why aren’t there more soprano roles. I actually think these things tend to go in cycles and trends. I think that this kind of really beautiful singing is coming back, I mean look at Gentleman’s Guide, that’s all lyrical voices across the board. I think that women need to sing the way they sing and not be afraid. Most women are sopranos, there are very few mezzos and belting is sort of a hybrid. Belting is not a sound we naturally make, you have to be highly skilled to do well in it and a lot of people who shouldn’t be belting are and it’s such a strain on the voice.

Archaeology of a Woman opens in theaters on September 12.