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''It's important not to lose this gift,'' says actress Charlayne Woodard. ''In TV, I often don't use my instrument.'' Currently a regular on Chicago Hope and a veteran of films (The Crucible) and TV series (Frasier, Roseanne), Woodard honed her acting instrument with her one-woman show Pretty Fire, a 1993 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award winner (for Best Play and Playwright) that dealt with this Albany, N.Y., native's childhood. Her new companion piece, entitled Neat, runs through Feb. 9 at New York City's Manhattan Theatre Club.
''There's only so much heart and soul you can give to The Fresh Prince, which is why I keep running back to the theater,'' she says. Audiences are already running to see her stage work, exemplary of the newfound popularity of autobiographical shows such as Kevin Meaney's Vegas Vows and Julia Sweeney's God Said Ha!. The coming year will see a tour of Rob Becker's enormously successful Defending the Caveman.
Woodard's Chicago Hope duties require flying from New York to L.A. weekly, spending her day off from the play fulfilling TV commitments. ''I haven't had a free minute in six weeks,'' she says. ''I learned about working to your very limit -- but making it look easy -- when I did Ain't Misbehavin' on Broadway for over a year and a half.''
She was fresh from Chicago's Goodman School of Drama (now the Theatre School, DePaul University) when she landed that 1978 Broadway smash, which brought her Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. She moved on to plays like Hang On to the Good Times (her second Drama Desk nomination), Twelfth Night, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Getting her story to the boards hasn't been easy: She was planning a show in the early '80s when Whoopi Goldberg's 1984 show opened, which, by coincidence, was so similar Woodard feared she'd be perceived as copying Goldberg. A decade later, Pretty Fire was created when she saw no theatrical roles she was dying to play. ''I wrote Fire for myself to keep my acting chops,'' Woodard says. ''I never want not to be a part of theater in this country. If I have to write my own parts to stay active, I'll do it.''
