Anybody familiar with actress Marcia's small-screen personality may have a hard time picturing in her next role: a withdrawn Japanese woman in a stage comedy.

"I'm grateful for this role, but why me!?" asked Marcia, a third-generation Brazilian of Japanese decent who is known for her straight-talking and outgoing character.

In Ninshin Sasete! (Get me pregnant!), which opens on Feb 1, Marcia plays the lead, a woman who turns to a sperm bank to become pregnant.

"I'm used to playing foreigners or strong women, but this is my first time to play a Japanese woman who is naive, delicate and quiet. I'm struggling to figure out how I should build her character," Marcia told The Daily Yomiuri two weeks before the musical opens.

While the name of the play has a trendy sound to it, the script can be serious, harsh and sometimes depressing.

Yoshiko (Marcia) has married a benevolent civil servant through a matchmaking service and is now visiting a clinic where she receives fertility treatments using sperm from a man she's never met. She's determined to give birth but is restless as she hasn't told her husband.

At the clinic, Yoshiko--who suffered from endometriosis in the past, thereby complicating her desire to have a baby--meets many women who are desperate to have babies and undergo fertility treatments. A married woman has taken out a mortgage on her home to pay for in-vitro fertilization, while a lesbian career woman spends millions of yen buying promising sperm.

Meanwhile, a cryobank salesman solicits sperm from smart, good-looking donors who go to prestigious universities such as Tokyo, Hitotsubashi and Keio--but sorry, not Meiji. It sounds crazy, but every woman in the play is serious in pursuing their individual dreams.

Giving an unqualified yes to taking the role, Marcia says she has since encountered three key problems: How could she turn this serious problem into a comedy? How could she make herself appear naive? And how could she master this massive dialogue in Japanese?

Despite this being a comedy, the 38-year-old said the role must be performed with deliberation and an understanding for those who have similar problems.

"I've never suffered from endometriosis, but at least I've had to use a maternity clinic, so I know it takes a lot of nerve to go there," said the actress, who is also the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. "I really need to delve into Yoshiko's psychological struggles in these next few weeks."

Marcia, who used to be a pop singer, has a long stage career, which includes musicals such as Les Miserables and the opera Aida, where she impressed the audience with her powerful singing voice. But this will be the first time she has taken the stage for an original piece that deals with social issues.

"I try not to act so elaborately, but I sometimes end up singing loudly because of my nature," she says.

In order to create the anxious Yoshiko, Marcia has to be decidedly "un-Marcia."

"Unlike the roles I've taken before, I have fewer gestures...and I'm now doing the complete opposite of what I've done in the past," she said.

For example, she takes great care not to stand with her hands on her hips because that can evoke a strong image, and also to change the look in her eyes. And by not wearing high heels, she has deliberately weakened her posture and singing voice.

"It's a challenging role, but also important for my stage and show business career," Marcia said.

Why women want babies

Although it's challenging to play Yoshiko, Marcia says she can understand why many women become so eager to have a baby.

"I think many women want babies because of their maternal instinct," she says. "A woman's role used to be to stay home and raise children. But over the past few decades women have started working to lead sophisticated lives as career women, though their working prime is also the best time to have baby.

"Those women tend to find work more interesting and by the time they want a baby they are in their mid to late 30s, and suddenly become upset about the situation they face," she said.

Marcia herself didn't think of marrying and having babies.

"But I ended up experiencing the full course of events--marriage, being a mother and divorce," she laughs, adding that it turned out to be a precious experience to have children. "Children foster women. Women can become affable, strong and responsible. They give women a reason to live," she says.

Wishing to enjoy their own precious moments, women in the play struggle to become pregnant. Eventually, they find their way to happiness.

"The script is hinting at such critical concepts about people seeking self-satisfaction, such as the reason people can't live a balanced life is because they're busy seeking things they can't have and can't live the life they do have. I think that's great (to be ambitious), but doing so will
cause them trouble," Marcia says.

She says she hopes she can portray Yoshiko's complicated life on the stage.

"It's fun to 'put out' a new character on stage. The stage allows me to create one soul. The soul reaches the audience through my acting," Marcia says. She brushes off her own concerns over playing Yoshiko by saying, "By the time I stand up on the stage, I will feel her soul entering me." (By IKUKO KITAGAWA/ The Daily Yomiuri/ ANN)

Ninshin Sasete! will be staged from Feb 1-7 at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. For more information, call Kyodo Tokyo at (03) 3498-9999.