Rolfsrud bare bottom still a topic in Seattle

A columnist from the Seattle Times visited the Big Apple last week and among other things met up with our first cousin, Erika Rolfsrud, who has made her living acting on and off Broadway. The highlight of the writer's weekend was a brunch with our famous cousin.
Here are a few breathless excerpts from the Seattle Times story:

By Sherry Grindeland
Seattle Times staff columnist

I felt a bit like a wide-eyed country kid after nibbling at the Big Apple.

New York City was exhausting, amazing, overwhelming and great fun. Plus, I think we here in the Northwest could learn some things from those New Yorkers.

After a mere 3-½ days in New York City, I'm convinced we need more mass transit on the Eastside and in Seattle. Five friends and I went from Harlem to Greenwich Village, Lincoln Center to Ground Zero, breakfast to dinner on subways and buses.
.....
We caught the first play, "Voyage," in Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" trilogy at the Lincoln Center Theater. . .

Erika Rolfsrud is in the cast. She's a 1986 grad from Sammamish High School and a former neighbor of the Horsts when they lived in Bellevue. Rolfsrud was in several Issaquah Village Theatre productions in the 1990s.

ACT patrons may remember her from the 2004 production of another Stoppard play, "Jumpers." She was the lead female. (In one memorable scene, she was lying on a bed with her bare bottom to the audience.)

Meeting Rolfsrud after the play and having brunch with her on Sunday was a highlight for our group. At Sunday brunch we hung on every word as she described an actor's life in New York City. She's started rehearsals for the second play in the trilogy, "Shipwreck," set during the 1848 French Revolution.

"I'm a revolutionary and get to tear things apart," Rolfsrud said.

Notable fellow cast members who also will be in the second and third plays of the trilogy include Ethan Hawke, Billy Crudup, Richard Easton and Amy Irving.

Rolfsrud said rents in New York are so high she lives at the north tip of Manhattan, where a minuscule studio apartment costs more than $1,000 a month. That, Rolfsrud said, is an improvement over the former $850 walk-in closet with a bed that she sublet from someone.

"Living in New York has taught me not to accumulate things," she said. "I've become a master at packing a few things into small places, and I quickly get rid of things I don't wear."

Even with her growing successes in New York theater and some television roles, like most actors she works several jobs. Between Saturday's afternoon and evening shows she dashed off to care for someone's cats and on Monday, her only day off, she works a third job.

Is she having fun?

Absolutely, she said.

Sherry Grindeland: 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com