Nyla McCarthy
- Actress
Nyla McCarthy, award winning stage actress, director, film actress and social justice activist, represents the best of "the Pacific Northwest alternative spirit". Nyla suffered a traumatic head injury in 1968 which landed her in a coma, followed by two neurosurgeries and extensive physical therapy while she relearned to walk and talk. In interviews, she has shared that her time being warehoused in a special education class made her deeply aware of the low expectations for the poor and disabled, and she determined to get out and "make a difference".
Nyla came of age in Eugene, Oregon during the height of hippy culture, and though she was long out of special education and by then a straight A student, she was known locally as a rebellious, "hippy chick", continually challenging the status quo and local authorities.
Her love for escaping into the alternative realities of theatre and film prevented her from dropping out of school and she instead immersed herself in co-founding the Oregon Repertory Theatre, appearing in several award winning shows there. Author Ken Kesey and his cohort of Pranksters admired the theatre and its company, so much so that they once held a giant tarp over an outdoor audience of a Commedia Nyla was appearing in (1976) at the then named Oregon Renaissance Festival (later to become the Oregon Country Fair), so that "the show could go on."
Though known for her break out role as Betty in director Gus Van Sant's first motion picture, Mala Noche (1986), Nyla had already turned down Director John Landis when he was in Eugene filming Animal House (1978) because she felt the lines her character were meant to deliver to a fellow actor were "demeaning and humiliating to him, merely because he was overweight". Her strong social justice convictions were already shaping her evolution.
During the late 1970's and the 1980's, Nyla concentrated on giving birth and mothering her two children, David McCarthy Weed (1982) and Erinna Cronin McCarthy (1986) while helping launch two more theaters, the critically acclaimed Actor's Production Company and successful Equity company, Artists Repertory Theatre. She appeared in several commercials, lent her voice to a classical Greek Theatre recording series for the blind, and played the lead in many memorable Portland, Oregon stage productions, including The Petrified Forest (1977) In the Boom Boom Room (1977), School for Clowns (1978), Female Transport (1978) The Real Inspector Hound (1983), Terra Nova (1986), Top Girls (1988) and Plenty (1986), which was where Director Gus Van Sant discovered her.
Director and artist Rose Bond, having admired her unique voice and versatility, approached Nyla and asked her to play the lead, Macha, in Mallacht Macha, or Macha's Curse, (1990) alongside narrator Fiona Ritchie. The hand painted animation went on to win numerous awards, including the Cine Golden Eagle.
Nyla took a sabbatical from film and stage in 1995, after co-founding yet one more theatre company of merit, Cygnet Theatre, in Portland Oregon (1993), where she starred in the much lauded Bertolt Brecht scripted allegory of the McCarthy congressional witch hunts which destroyed many Hollywood careers, "In Dark Times" (1994).
Nyla focused the next 22 years on working tirelessly for social justice, serving as Chair of both the Salem and Portland, Oregon Human Rights Commissions; Founding Chair, now Emeritus, of the Portland Commission on Disabilities; President Elect of the National Adult Protective Services Association; Commissioner on the Governor's Commission on Disabilities; Delegate to the International Women's Conference in Cuba; Facilitator and Mentor for Love Makes a Family, and as expert consultant to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Oregon Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the National Youth Leadership Network.
Nyla was coaxed into returning to her life as a performer when she was offered the delightful role of the eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at Pentacle Theatre (2014).