Angelica Page waited a long time to do “Turning Page,” her solo show about her actress mother. Twenty-five years, in fact.
“There’s not been one book written about her, no documentary,” she says of Geraldine Page, the eight-time Oscar nominee — and winner of one, for 1985’s “The Trip to Bountiful” — who died at 62 of a heart attack.
And so, Angelica Page — the 48-year-old actress formerly known as Angelica Torn (more about that later) — is on a one-woman crusade.
Not only has she written this show, running through Sunday at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre and directed by Wilson Milam (“The Lieutenant of Inishmore”), but she’s also working on a book and film about her mother, who died in 1987.
“I started to become haunted by the fact that my mother had asked me to write this before she died,” she says. “She wanted me to wait, so I could get perspective. Because people get canonized, she said.”
She says she began thinking about the piece 12 years ago, while she was performing “Side Man” in London’s West End. And while she’s since won warm reviews in other projects here — she memorably played the suicidal poet Sylvia Plath in off-Broadway’s “Edge” — this daughter of Geraldine Page and Rip Torn resisted acting for many years. She studied photography in college, and afterward followed the punk band the Dead Kennedys on tour, wanting to be a rock photographer.
“Then I decided to have a baby, and babies and rock concerts don’t mix,” says Angelica, now twice-divorced and the mother of two grown children. At one point, she considered becoming a chef before taking the path trod by both parents.
“Right before she died, my mother made me promise to try acting” she says.
Her first job was as an understudy to Natasha Richardson in the 1993 revival of O’Neill’s “Anna Christie,” where she says she resisted star Liam Neeson’s advances.
“I did turn him down,” she says. “I don’t know why now, but at the time it seemed like the right idea. It’s not a secret that he had quite a reputation. I just didn’t want to be one of, you know, ten thousand. I wanted to be . . . special,” she says, emphasizing the last word in a girlish voice.
“I thought he should concentrate on the actual leading lady and not on her understudy.” Apparently, he did; he and Richardson wed and were together until her death in 2009.
Her parents’ marriage, which isn’t addressed in “Turning Page,” was complicated — especially when Torn brought his then-mistress, actress Amy Wright, into the household when Angelica was barely a teenager.
“I have no memory of that,” says Page, who has two younger brothers. “People tell me that it happened and I can’t even believe it’s true. It did coincide with a time when I started wearing black exclusively, so I’m thinking there might be a connection.
“I don’t know what the arrangement was,” she continues. “We had baby sitters, housekeepers, lots of people around. Maybe I thought she was a maid or something . . .
“It was f – – king nuts, man. It was really fun and really scary. My parents had a very volatile, insanely passionate interest in each other for a long time.”
Her father, who stayed married to Page until her death, has had several brushes with the law. Two years ago, he drunkenly broke into a bank carrying a loaded gun, apparently thinking it was his house. Last year, Angelica legally changed her surname.
“I spent the first half of my life with my father’s last name and I want to spend the second half with my mother’s,” she says. “I just resonate aesthetically and artistically on a deeper level with her. That other name doesn’t fit me anymore . . . like an old shoe.”
Although she says she doesn’t see him much these days, he did go to see her in “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” when she filled in for Cybill Shepherd.
For now, though, she’s still developing “Turning Page,” in which she plays both herself and her mother in a piece that features home movies and film clips.
“I need to leave it open and fluid, because each night another memory will come out,” she says.
And what does she imagine her mother would have to say about it?
She thinks for a second and then laughs, “It’s about time!”