Ullmann to dedicate new stage Actress, ex-husband gave funds to support Maskers

BELFAST – Internationally known actress Liv Ullmann this weekend will add the Belfast Maskers theater to the list of stages she has graced.

Ullmann and her partner, Donald Saunders, will be in town to dedicate the restructured Maskers theater. Ullmann and Saunders donated funds to pay for the work on the waterfront building.

The two will arrive in Belfast Saturday, and will be on hand for the Maskers’ Sunday matinee performance “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Afterwards, Saunders and Ullmann will dedicate the new stage and a plaque will be unveiled in their honor. A reception in the theater lobby will follow.

The Sunday performance is sold out.

Ullmann has appeared in more than 40 plays, including two long runs on Broadway in “Anna Christie” and “A Doll’s House.” She also starred in 47 films, and won two Oscar nominations, a Golden Globe award and three National Society of Film Critics Awards.

Ullmann was born in Japan, but grew up in Norway. At 18, she made her stage debut as Anne Frank in “The Diary of Anne Frank” in a community theater production. In 1966, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman cast her in his film “Persona,” which led to her international fame.

Ullmann went on to star in eight Bergman films, including “Scenes From a Marriage” and “Autumn Sonata.” Bergman fathered Ullmann’s daughter Linn.

Her autobiography, “Changing,” published in 1976, was edited by David Outerbridge of Belfast. The book became an international best seller. Outerbridge also wrote a biography of Ullmann. He and his wife Lillias have been longtime supporters of and active in the Maskers, the community theater group founded in the late 1980s.

Saunders is a real estate developer who owns the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. He has been a longtime patron of the arts.

The financial gift from Saunders and Ullmann allowed the Maskers to rebuild its stage in the small waterfront building as a “thrust” stage, with seating on three sides. Work began in December and was completed early this spring.

Tobin Malone, the Maskers’ artistic director, said the gift is also paying for new lights, the installation of a ventilation system, a fog machine, a hydraulic lift that will facilitate lighting changes and set construction, and a new sign outside the theater.

The Maskers is not revealing the amount of the gift, but Malone notes that with it, “we’ll have things that we never in a million years would have been able to afford.”

“Liv Ullmann started out in community theater, so for her to be involved this way is coming full circle,” Malone said. “It’s more than we ever could’ve dreamed of.”