What do you do after an acclaimed, but exhausting five-week run in Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance”? You could rest on your laurels and relax or, if you are former Tony nominee Maureen Anderman, you dive back in with another huge role, in John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Doubt,” beginning performances on Tuesday at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.

Of the back-to-back assignments, first at Palm Beach Dramaworks and now at the Maltz, Anderman says, “I likened it to the old days, when there were repertory companies, like the Guthrie or the Old Globe or Stratford and you’d be given two good roles and a supporting role. And so you did it, but we were younger then.”

Both area theaters like to cast locally when they can. While Anderman, 66, has eighteen Broadway credits over the past four decades, plus an armload of films and television shows on her resume, she and her actor-husband Frank Converse are resident snow birds. They shuttle between a home in Connecticut and a West Palm Beach high-rise on the Intracoastal, where they typically live four months of the year.

In a varied stage career that has ranged from Shakespeare to Christopher Durang’s wacky “A History of the American Film” to Joan Didion’s somber one-woman play, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Anderman is best known for roles by Albee. She was the original female lizard in “Seascape,” was directed by him in the first Broadway revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” was up for a Tony for “The Lady From Dubuque” and appeared in his radio play, “Listening.”

“I always felt I understood him,” she says of Albee‘s often enigmatic work. “I would read the play and not have to question, and he liked that. If I said the lines enough and listened, it made sense to me. I could make it make sense.”

Anderman recalls a time eight years ago, soon after buying the apartment here, that she and Converse drove by Dramaworks’ earlier theater on Banyan Boulevard and noticed they were producing “Seascape.” “And I thought, ‘Isn’t that cute’,” she now says with a roar of laughter.

But they were also curious. They attended a Master Playwright Series talk on Albee at the theater and, despite her efforts to restrain herself, Anderman found herself correcting lecturer J. Barry Lewis — her current director for “Doubt” — on names and other details. Outed as veteran actors in our midst, Anderman and Converse were soon fielding offers to appear onstage at Dramaworks from artistic director Bill Hayes.

“I pushed Frank on him,” says Anderman, referring to a production of “The Weir” in which Converse appeared in 2009. “Frank went first, because he hadn’t worked for a while because of health reasons,” a heart condition, since cured.

Eventually, Anderman began itching to work here too and, after seeing Dramaworks’ new theater, she suggested playing the refined Agnes in “A Delicate Balance,” a role she had played a year and a half earlier in Stockbridge, Mass.

“It took me a good five weeks to get the lines back, but then I didn’t have to worry about that so I could worry about the other things,” she says. Looking back on the Dramaworks experience, Anderman says, “It was great. I mean, it was hard. It’s such a difficult play.”

She certainly gained a fan in Hayes. “She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s kooky. She’s adorable. She’s charming. She’s warm,” he offers. “I didn’t really know quite what to deal with, having such a high profile person coming in here. She’s truly an ensemble member, a team player. It’s all about servicing the play and she’s an absolute purist when it comes to the playwright’s intentions.”

A year ago in March, the Maltz contacted her about playing Sister Aloysius, the suspicious nun in “Doubt.” Anderman was also suspicious, of the brief time between the two productions. But as her building neighbor and friend, actress Sally Ann Howes chided her, “How much time off does an actress need?”

So last summer, Anderman put the world on hold and proceeded to learn both roles virtually at the same time.

Even before she opens in “Doubt,” she knows she is looking forward to becoming a couch potato once the play closes. “I’ve already turned down something — not in New York,” says Anderman. “The idea of trying to learn another role right now, my mind can’t fathom that. After ‘Doubt,’ I have to take a break.”

Born in Detroit, Anderman grew up in Birmingham, Mich., where she attended Catholic school, taught by nuns who serve as source material for her performance in “Doubt.” At her all-girls high school, she recalls Sister Judine casting her as colonial farmer John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” for a forensics competition, and the theatrical die was soon cast.

At various times throughout her career, Anderman has had recurring and guest roles on such daytime soaps as “Guiding Light,” “One Life to Live” and, most memorably, “Search for Tomorrow,” playing the villainous Sylvie. “I killed people with chopsticks,” she recalls with relish. “I would pull a chopstick out of my hair and stab them. It was great fun.”

Although her television bio includes such bygone series as “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” and “The Equalizer,” and she was featured in the 1979 film “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” movies have never been her focus, largely because of unimaginative casting directors.

“This is what I get, ‘She’s too thin, too young, too glamorous,’ which is nonsense, but they’re always looking for excuses not to cast you. I’m an actress. But they have 50 to 100 people my age to choose from.”

Besides, she has been spoiled by working with Albee on his rich, dense plays. Plays like “Seascape,” which she helped develop through readings in the playwright’s home. “It was thrilling to be in Edward Albee’s apartment and it was terrifying at the same time. And Edward chose me to play the part when it went to Broadway. Can you imagine?”

Anderman took years off from performing while her two daughters, Maggie and Grace, were in school. Now, while she has feelers out for stage work in New York and several regional companies in New England, she likes the idea of doing a play a season in South Florida. Dramaworks had earlier suggested she tackle morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night,” but she rejected it as being too dark a role.

Now — well, not quite yet — she is warming to the idea. “We’ll see what comes my way,’ says Anderman. “Really, there are wonderful actors here in Florida. But I think I have something to offer too.”