When the principal cast of ABC's Desperate Housewives leaps five years into the future next season, Susan Mayer's daughter, Julie, will make the journey only peripherally. Julie, explains her portrayer, Andrea Bowen, will be out of college and out of the home and will therefore be seen infrequently. And Bowen, who spent most of her teen years on Wisteria Lane, says the time is ripe for a personal transition.
"I'm 18, so I'm at a different point in my life," says Bowen. "Things are kind of moving in a different way. It's at a natural transition period in anyone's life, so it's kind of coming at a good time." Bowen says these words in a break room at the Elephant Theatre in Los Angeles, where the Havok Theatre Company is putting the final touches on Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. Bert V. Royal's spoof of the Peanuts comic strip imagines Charles M. Schulz's characters -- who are never named, because Royal's is an unauthorized send-up -- as teenagers. And speaking of unconventional leaps into the future, Bowen plays CB's sister -- Sally in the comics -- who has given up girlhood crushes on blanket-toting philosophers and has moved in a rather different direction.
Or directions. "She kind of changes her identity on a weekly basis," says Bowen. "The first time you see her, she's Wiccan. She's into this whole kind of goth, spiritual God kind of thing. Slowly as the play progresses, she switches it up and becomes Amish and geisha and various other things I get to take on."
Staged at the 99-seat Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood, Dog Sees God will barely earn Bowen enough to pay for gas, but the actor loved the play and shifted around various professional commitments, as well as a couple of vacations, to "join the gang."
She's the youngest cast member and the only member of director Nick DeGruccio's ensemble who was offered her role without having to audition. Other professional commitments have necessitated creative schedule juggling, but Bowen says her cast members are accommodating. They do, however, give her grief (perhaps "good grief") because of her age. "Mainly they're jokes I bring on myself," Bowen says with a laugh.
Dog Sees God is kind of a return to her roots. Bowen had roles in two Broadway musicals before she turned 10 and toured with Richard Chamberlain in the revival of The Sound of Music. In summer 2006, she came back to The Sound of Music, this time as eldest daughter Liesl, for the Hollywood Bowl's weekend semistaged engagement. Havok producing director Chad Borden worked with Bowen at the Bowl and asked if she would be interested in Dog Sees God.
She was. "I veered off and went into the wonderful world of movie and TV, which is great," she says. "But there's something about doing a play and working with a live audience and kind of having that feedback and that relationship. L.A. theatre is not a huge thing like it is in New York, but I think there's a lot to be said about when you kind of step out of Hollywood. When you're doing theatre, it's not glamorous."
Family lore has it that when Bowen learned she had booked her first Broadway show, as Young Cosette in Les Misérables, the then-6-year-old got down on her knees and said, "Thank you, God! Finally!" Performance seems to be part of the family birthright: Nearly all of her six siblings are actors or musicians; brother Graham is currently touring with Spamalot. "We all kind of share the same passion, which is a completely flukey thing," says Bowen. "I go to my family every time I read a script. It's like having a second opinion, or in my case, eight opinions. They're my go-to acting coaches."
Collectively or otherwise, Bowen has chosen well for herself. While acting on Broadway, she appeared in New York-based TV shows such as Law & Order and Third Watch. Later she was featured in the short-lived TV show That Was Then and had a three-episode arc as a 12-year-old genius on Boston Public. More recently, she won a Prism Award for playing an HIV-infected high schooler in the Lifetime TV movie Girl, Positive (sharing the honor with co-star Jennie Garth). Bowen has also done voiceover work in King of the Hill, Bambi II, and various video games.
Each character, no matter how extensive her screen or stage time, has a journey, says Bowen, even if the actor creates that journey herself. Desperate Housewives' Julie continued to grow and develop the longer Bowen stayed with her. "It's easy to just kind of become lackadaisical and rely on the fact that you know this character and then you kind of coast and put it on autopilot. I never want to do that," Bowen says. "I do kind of love that I know so much about my character, and I've kind of grown with her, but every time something new affects her, I think about the new stuff going on in her life and how she got there."
Don't ask Bowen to specify her creative medium of choice. The stage may hold a special place, but Bowen -- who is also writing music and planning an album -- wants to continue to do it all. "I was such an odd little girl in that I always did set career goals for myself," says Bowen. "At 4, I was like, 'I want to be doing this and this and this.' I definitely want to go back to New York and do more theatre. I want to go into movies more. I think at some point in my life I'll be on another series.
"I've kind of spanned every aspect of entertainment," she continues. "The plan for my career is to keep going in that direction where I take on everything I can at one time, because I like being incredibly busy."
Outtakes
- Born March 4, 1990, in Columbus, Ohio, the youngest of six
- Is a two-time SAG Award winner for ensemble cast for Desperate Housewives (2005 and 2006)
- At the time, was the youngest person to take on the role of Young Cosette in Les Misérables
- Can be heard on the soundtracks of Jane Eyre, the Musical and the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music, as well as Broadway Kids