Dance Haufrecht said that
Broadway was scarcely clamoring for "a barefoot, modern dancer", much less for one of Haufrecht's diminutive stature and limited experience. She made her
Off-Broadway debut as an actress that September at the
Cherry Lane Theatre, with a small part in the Studio 12 limited-run revival of
Jean-Paul Sartre's
The Flies. Her Broadway
and her professional dancing debuts occurred two months later, when she was signed for the musical,
Plain and Fancy. The show's choreographer,
Helen Tamiris (a former colleague of Haufrecht's father) was instrumental in being included in the show. In the summer of 1955, Haufrecht toured nationally with
Can-Can, a part that she attributed to fortuitous timing: ''I think the only reason they hired me was because it was in the dead of summer, and the only people that showed up to the audition were strippers; they weren't really dancers. So they had to hire me; I was the only dancer that showed up.'' In 2012, Haufrecht said that her early career change, however rewarding in the long run, was born of necessity:
After I was done with Can-Can'', I auditioned for a lot of shows, and I couldn't get anything... One day, I auditioned - I don't know if it was
Damn Yankees - [but] it was a
Bob Fosse show. And I'm down to the last fifteen and he needed twelve, or something like that. He pulls me aside and says, "I'd love to use you, Marcia. You're a wonderful dancer, you really are. But you're too short." I said to myself, "That's it; I'm outta here. I'm not dancing anymore." ''
Village Voice critic
Michael Smith, praised both performance (including Haufrecht's "spectacularly destroyed whore") and production. However, she seriously contemplated giving up acting altogether because of dissatisfaction with her own contribution and with the quality of her work in general and her perceived lack of progress. Quickly dissuaded by her colleagues, Leibman in particular, Haufrecht followed the latter's advice and joined him at The Actors Studio to meet with studio director
Lee Strasberg. Allowed to sit in on sessions on an interim basis, Haufrecht eventually earned her full membership via audition. A member of the Studio since at least 1964, Haufrecht is a veteran of stage and screen, in roles ranging from ''White Cargo's
exotic femme fatale, Tondeleyo to Richard III's'' eloquent nemesis, Queen Elizabeth, opposite
Al Pacino (in the first of Pacino's three ''Richard's''). She has performed at
Lincoln Center,
La MaMa, with The Ensemble Studio Theatre,
Center Stage in
Baltimore, The Open Stage in
Sarasota, in
Montreal at
Place des Arts, and in
Berlin at the Friends of the Opera Theatre. Haufrecht's film appearances have, in recent years, included
The Producers,
The Night Listener,
Anamorph, and
Win Win; on TV, she has been seen in
The Sopranos, as well as
Law & Order,
Law and Order: SVU, and
Law and Order: Criminal Intent. In April 2001, more than 20 years after its first production,
Tennessee Williams'
Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? premiered in New York at Haufrecht's Common Basis Theatre, with Haufrecht starring.
Daily News critic Howard Kissel wrote, "The play's heady combination of black humor and poetry is best handled by Marcia Haufrecht, as the woman pining for her former boarder." Ken Jaworski of
Off-Off-Broadway Review added:
As Louise McBride, Marcia Haufrecht was exquisite: a frail woman struggling to appear strong, an aging southern belle masking loneliness behind false laughter. "Even in a dream one can suffer," Louise claims. Haufrecht embodied the premise, projecting a drowsy, fatigued lonesomeness with each action and word. The previous month, Haufrecht had garnered even stronger praise from ''Off-Off-Broadway Review's'' Doug DeVita as Common Basis staged another, less heralded premiere,
Grace Cavalieri's
Pinecrest Rest Haven: A frail-looking woman, her white hair tied up in a simple purple ribbon, enters a peach-and-white nursing-home waiting room and plaintively asks if anyone has seen her husband. The question, asked with a heartbreaking, bewildered innocence by the haunting Marcia Haufrecht, is a startlingly lucid depiction of the loss of clarity that can come with advanced age... the one thing this production had going for it was the presence of Haufrecht, who effortlessly rose above the obvious material and gave a luminous, moving performance of concise truth... As the late, great
Madeline Kahn once said about her own work: "I have appeared in crap, but I have never treated it as such. Never." Haufrecht obviously goes by that same standard, and her performance displayed a level of professionalism that most actors would do well to emulate.
Writing From a playwright whose initial motivation had simply been to provide – at a director/colleague's request – an interesting acting vehicle for herself, Haufrecht's plays have been produced in New York City by Common Basis Theatre, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Actors Studio, and, in upstate New York, by Performing Arts of
Woodstock. Around the country, her work has been performed in Texas, Florida, and
CSU Fullerton. Australia at
La Mama in
Melbourne, and at the
Kultur im Gugg in
Austria. The Actors Studio, The Common Basis Theatre, and in Australia, Portugal, and Austria .
Alec Baldwin,
Uma Thurman,
Loren Dean, and
Harvey Keitel. and in Austria; In New York, Haufrecht was on the faculty of
The Actors Studio MFA program at
The New School for Social Research (where Haufrecht would remain when the MFA program departed for
Pace University in 2006, ==Stage and screen credits==