Priscilla Barnes: Finding the Right Play

“I must say, this has been a tough week,” Priscilla Barnes says.

Barnes had been receiving “whoops, screams and hollers” from the audience for her performance as the certifiable loony would-be actress Cuddles Molotov in Richard Greenberg’s “The Maderati” at the Tiffany Theater.

“But I remember all this week it was a very quiet show,” she says.

Last Saturday, Barnes and her co-stars even had competition from the audience. “There was a talker in the audience and the audience was shushing her because she was so loud. She didn’t do it in my opening scene, but I wish she would have. I would have stayed in the Cuddles character and gone to the end of the stage and screamed, ‘What? What? Whaaaat? ‘ “

Since January, the world has been the stage for Barnes. No sooner had she completed an engagement at the La Mirada Theatre as dumb blond Billie in “Born Yesterday” than director Ron Link cast her as the screaming, nymphomaniac Cuddles.

“Needless to say, my life has been disorganized since I have been doing plays,” Barnes says.

But she’s not complaining. She appreciates the opportunity Link gave her to play Cuddles. “I knew I could do this character, but the industry didn’t know I could do this character. They didn’t know I had this voice and I could do that outrageous comedy. You are always associated with what you did last.”

And Barnes is most associated as Jack Tripper’s sunny roommate Terri on “Three’s Company.” “I got typecast. I was very surprised because I was only on that show three seasons (1981-1984). I didn’t think three seasons was long enough to get me typecast. But there are so many casting directors who are in the business who weren’t even casting until 1986. I have people telling me they grew up on the show!”