Broadway veterans Angela Lansbury, Victor Garber, Frances Conroy, Lisa Banes and Harriet Harris will head the cast of a staged reading of This is on Me, An Evening of Dorothy Parker to benefit The Acting Company on October 10, 7pm at the Brentwood Theatre in Los Angeles.
Four-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury (Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Mame) also headlined last year's LA benefit reading of Lettice and Lovage. Lansbury chairs the Actors Advisory Board of The Acting Company, founded by her longtime friend, John Houseman, in 1972 with current Producing Director, Margot Harley, and the first graduating class of Juilliard's Drama Division. Tom Fontana (Emmy winning writer/producer of "Oz," "Homicide" and "St. Elsewhere") has adapted this evening of plays, poems, stories, essays, songs and patter. Fontana is a Board Director of The Acting Company.Frances Conroy ("Six Feet Under," Broadway's Ride Down Mt. Morgan), Harriet Harris (Tony-winner for Thoroughly Modern Millie and with a recurring role on "Desperate Housewives") and Lisa Banes ("Boston Legal" and Broadway's Arcadia) all began their careers on tour with The Acting Company as did fellow Alums Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Jeffrey Wright, Jesse L. Martin, Stephen DeRosa, Henry Stram, David Ogden Stiers and Tom Hewitt.
Victor Garber (Sweeney Todd, Damn Yankees), also a member of the Company's Actors Advisory Board, stars on "Alias" and has appeared in more than a dozen Broadway shows, garnering 4 Tony nominations and winning a Theatre World Award for Ghosts. Broadway Producer and Acting Company Board Member Susan Dietz (Steel Magnolias, Topdog/Underdog, The Lonesome West) chairs the event.Dorothy Parker, while best known for her barbed wit and one-liners, was an accomplished writer of short stories, poems and criticism as well as a fixture at the fabled Algonquin Round Table, where she traded quips with such fellow legends as George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Alexander Woolcott. Also a playwright, lyricist (she worked on the original Candide) and screenwriter (the original version of A Star is Born, Saboteur), her Ladies of the Corridor, which was co-written with Arnaud D'Usseau, opened at the Longacre Theatre in 1953. Shoot the Works and Close Harmony were other Broadway credits.
Recipient of a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theater, Obie, Audelco and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, The Acting Company has toured 122 productions across America and to nine foreign countries. It's renowned education programs – master classes, student matinees and weeklong Literacy Through Theater artistic residencies – reach 25,000 students a year, most in schools where little or no other arts education is available. More information at 212-258-3111.A patron reception with the cast will follow the reading. Tickets are available by visiting www.ticketmaster.com or by calling (213) 365-3500.
