LUCKY ME Staged Reading with Sachi Parker Set for National Arts Club, 11/18

Sachi Parker will perform this two-act one-woman play, written by herself and playwright Frederick Stroppel, at an invitation-only reading at the National Arts Club on Monday November 18th.

Directed by Douglas Moser, LUCKY ME tells the story of the only child of actress Shirley MacLaine and businessman Steve Parker, and her life and relationship with the two of them. The play takes you through Sachi's formative years in Japan, living with her distant, mysterious father and his longtime mistress. Shirley (as played by Sachi) gives various accounts as to why she sent her child so far away, ranging from the mundane (Japan was a better environment than Hollywood) to the melodramatic (Sachi was in danger of being kidnapped by the mob). Whatever the truth, Sachi's infrequent visits back to Los Angeles were fun but all too brief, and she keenly felt the absence of her disengaged mother.

Her father was an even dicier proposition, affectionate and charming at times but also cruel and sexually provocative. Steve Parker emerges as essentially a con man who bilked his wife out of millions with a story so weird that will it amaze even the most jaded of audiences.

After she graduates from boarding school (and her mother refuses to pay for college) Sachi takes various jobs in Japan and around the world, getting involved along the way with various unscrupulous men. But the longing to connect with her mother goes deep, and ultimately she moves back to Los Angeles to be with her. It looks like there will be a happy ending for Sachi after all...but life with a New-Age movie star diva is never easy, and there are many more vertiginous and bizarre twists and turns to come.

Robin Lane-Krauss, a Lifetime Member of The Actors Studio. hosts this, her 23rd reading for the National Arts Club

Sachi Parker has appeared in theater and films throughout the world. She made her film debut on 1985 in Stick, directed by Burt Reynolds, and also appeared in Back to the Future, About Last Night, Peggy Sue Got Married, Riders to the Sea, and Scrooged.

Sachi guest-starred in numerous popular series and TV movies, including Star Trek: the Next Generation, Equal Justice, Alien Nation, Santa Barbara, Capitol, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Her theater work includes Ladies in Waiting, Pastorale, and The Lulu Plays, for which she won a Dramalogue Best Actress award. She performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and won acclaim for her performances in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, and The Three Sisters. Staying true to her Japanese roots, Sachi has served as the daytime anchor for Manhattan Express, a Japanese-language news program based in New York, and starred in daytime Japanese television. In 1990 she was recognized for her acting work bridging cultural differences between Japan and the U.S. with the prestigious Kurosawa Award. In 2008, Sachi appeared in the Japanese film The Witch of the West is Dead, playing the lead role of a 75-year-old grandmother. Sachi has lived in Japan, Hawaii, Australia, and France, and she now resides in Pelham Manor NY, with her daughter Arin.

Frederick Stroppel is a New York-based playwright who has had productions of his plays throughout the world. In New York his full-length comedy Fortune's Fools was produced off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater in 1995, and his musical Tales >From The Manhattan Woods, based on "Die Fledermaus", was staged at the Wings Theatre. Recently his dark comic thriller The Hunter's Moon premiered at the Roy Arias Theater in NYC, and Small World, a comedy about Walt Disney and Igor Stravinsky and the making of "Fantasia", had its world premiere last January in Newtown, Connecticut. Other plays include Actor!, The Christmas Spirit, A Good Man, Songs of the Night, and The Wonder Wheel. For film, he has written the screenplays for A Brooklyn State of Mind, Almost Pregnant, Dark Side of Genius, and Glacier Bay, which has won over a dozen festival awards including Best Screenplay. He is a veteran children's television writer, having served as the head writer for Oswald and Wow Wow Wubbzy!, both for Nickelodeon, and he has also worked with HBO, PBS, and Playhouse Disney. He is the co-author with Sachi Parker of the book Lucky Me, which was published in February 2013 by Gotham/Penguin Books. His newest project is a one-woman show about Lizzie Borden, titled Fall River. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America East.

Douglas Moser (Director) has worked extensively in New York and regionally. His New York productions include Wild Women of Planet Wongo (Becket Theatre, NYMF), the world premiere of the opera Patience and Sarah (Lincoln Center, '98 Summer Festival), Reborn Again Cowgirl and the Samuel French Short Play winner, The Blueberry Waltz by Liz Amberley, and the Richard Rogers winner To Paint the Earth. Regional credits include Syncopation by Allan Knee, Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter and Boy Gets Girl, Company, Sweeney Todd, and Talley's Folly and his own adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Westport Country Playhouse, which was honored with a Connecticut Critics Circle Award. He directed Frederick Stroppel's one-act plays Danger: People at Large, starring Jack Klugman and Brett Somers. The film version of one of these short plays, Glacier Bay, starring James Noble and Dorothy Bryce, won several film awards, including best screenplay, best dramatic short, and best of the festival in numerous international film festivals. As a writer, he is the author of Elegy for Ebenezer, workshopped at Long Wharf Theatre, the unpublished novel Company Business and the screenplay Reborn Again, with Pat Watkins. For more information, visit douglasmoser.com.