FOR Jane Alexander, 2009 has been a year spent on stage. The Tony- and Emmy-winning actress has performed in plays in Pittsburgh, New York and Connecticut, collaborating with writers like David Hare and actors like Stockard Channing.

   It’s a contrast to 2008, when she worked exclusively in television and film (including a role in the latest Terminator flick). Still, she’s comfortable acting in different plays on different stages.

   ”I’ve been a regional theater actress from the very beginning,” she says before a day’s rehearsal at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. “In fact, when I first went to New York, I would say, ‘I want to do the classics, and the only place I can do the classics is in what’s called regional theater.’”

   These days she’s acting in new plays like Thom Thomas’ A Moon to Dance By, which delves into four days Frieda Lawrence spent with the son she left in order to marry the writer D.H. Lawrence. Ms. Alexander played the part in Pittsburgh earlier this year with the same creative team that has brought it to George Street through Dec. 13.

   The real-life Frieda was a German-born woman who married Ernest Weekly, a professor embedded in proper British society. In 1912, she ran off with one of her husband’s students, D.H. Lawrence. As Mr. Thomas writes in notes about the play, Victorian conventions were smothering, especially to women. But Frieda flaunted her affair and encouraged fellow unsatisfied housewives to follow her lead.

   ”Frieda was described, even at the time she was a little girl, as bold, impudent,” Ms. Alexander says before sharing a story about Frieda and Ernest’s honeymoon night. Prior to that night, physical contact between the two had been limited to a peck on the cheek.

   ”On the wedding night he went out of the room while she got herself ready,” Ms. Alexander says. “She climbed on top of the wardrobe in her camisole and panties — on top of the wardrobe like a little elf waiting for him to come in!”

   To understand Frieda, Ms. Alexander considered how she grew up in Germany in the 19th century, where a sort of free love movement was going on.

   ”Frieda kind of grew up in that atmosphere, even though she was not part of the group, it was in the air in Germany,” she says. “So when she went to a very conservative English town of Nottingham with this husband who was probably a lovely guy but very straight-laced, I think she chaffed all the time. And when she met this man... David Herbert Lawrence, she just fell for him.”

   Frieda paid a price for her choice, losing her relationship with her son, Monty, who was 12 years old when she left England to live with Lawrence in America. She maintained relationships with her two daughters, but Monty, according to the playwright’s notes, grew to despise her.

   In July of 1939, nine years after D.H.’s death, Monty visited his mother at the New Mexico ranch she lived on with her younger lover, Angelo Ravagli.

   ”Thom Thomas just came across this fact, which was that Monty Weekly had visited his mother after a long estrangement for four days,” Ms. Alexander says of the play’s creation. “He came all the way from England for four days, to New Mexico.”

   Little is known about the visit other than the fact that it happened. No record was made as to what happened during the brief reunion. But Mr. Thomas read through letters between Monty and his mother written after the visit. “In trying to sense the unspoken feelings between the lines, I feel I have resolved some of these unanswered questions,” he writes.

   Co-starring in the play with Ms. Alexander are Robert Cuccioli (whose Broadway credits include the title roles in Jekyll & Hyde) as Angelo and Gareth Saxe as Monty. Directing is Edwin Sherin, who also helmed the play in Pittsburgh.

   ”We were really astonished at the response of the audience,” she says. “We thought we had a good play, but in Pittsburgh... we were sold out by the last two weeks, totally sold out. Word of mouth was incredible, the reviews were great, and the audiences responded so emotionally. And there are a lot of laughs, so it’s a great time in the theater I think.”

   Playing Frieda offers the actress a rare opportunity to play an older woman who is passionate about life and romance. She asks her son about his sex life with his wife (the question embarrasses Monty) and her relationship with Angelo is a mix of passion and intense arguing. Angelo also left a family behind, and explains to Monty that he is with Frieda because he loves her.

   Of a character like Frieda, Ms. Alexander, 70, says, “It never comes along at my age. It’s a joy.”

   Ms. Alexander’s career began to take off with her role in the 1968 play The Great White Hope, starring opposite James Earl Jones. The play was controversial in its day — their characters were married, and Ms. Alexander says she received hate mail for appearing in bed with a black man on stage. She won a Tony for that performance, and has been honored with six additional nominations. She has won two Emmy awards and been nominated for four Academy Awards.

   One of those Oscar nods came for four minutes of screen time in All The President’s Men. Ms. Alexander played a bookkeeper who shared a key piece of information with Carl Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman) during Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s investigation into Watergate for the Washington Post.

   Considering her part was so small, she was surprised when her agent called her early one morning in 1977 with the big news. “He said, ‘Jane you are nominated for an Academy award.’ I said, ‘Oh my gosh, for what?’”

   The role may not have offered much screen time, but she had a good reason for taking it.

   ”I would only choose a role, even if it were very small, in a movie or a TV show, if I knew they couldn’t cut it,” she says with a laugh. “And I knew they couldn’t cut the bookkeeper because she gives the seminal information about John Mitchell.”

   Years after playing a character who helped bring down a president, Ms. Alexander was appointed chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts by another president — Bill Clinton. It was a difficult time for the NEA, she says, because it was a target of the Newt Gingrich-led Republican Congress.

   She spent her tenure traveling to 200 cities in all 50 states, telling people what the NEA was doing in their areas, and letting them know that it wasn’t about pricey grants and sacrilegious works of art. She spoke about the first amendment and how grants helped artists and were determined by experts from across the country.

   As tough as the job was, she’s glad she had it at that time. She knew the importance of controversial art, having broken barriers with The Great White Hope and playing a lesbian with Gena Rowlands in the 1978 TV movie A Question of Love. She also encouraged organizations to post signs noting when they were exhibiting or performing work of a sensitive nature that may not be suitable for children. That’s common now, but there was resistance to it then.

   ”It was a very rough four years,” she says. “But we did persevere, and we did win.”

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  A Moon to Dance By is at George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, through Dec. 13. Tickets cost $37.50-$71.50; 732-246-7717; www.gsponline.org