Barbara Meek, Trinity Rep Company Member, Passes Away

With deep sadness, Trinity Repertory Company has announced that their long-time company member of 47 years Barbara Meek passed away on Saturday, October 3, 2015.

Barbara Anita Meek was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1934 and was a graduate of Northwestern High School and Wayne State University. Barbara joined the Trinity Rep acting company in 1968 with her husband, Martin Molson (1928-1980). Up until the week before her death, she was an active performer with the Company, appearing in over 100 productions over the course of her career.

"Barbara was the proud matriarch of this company," said Trinity Rep's Richard L. Bready Artistic Director Curt Columbus. "Quite simply, she was our family, and we are shocked by her sudden passing. Barbara had a long and brilliant career and was a force to be reckoned with--a fiercely intelligent, honest and radiant actor and human being. She will be missed beyond words, but her legacy will live on at Trinity Rep."

Barbara had a number of leading roles in many plays in her long career at Trinity Rep, including Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Boseman and Lena, The Threepenny Opera, Tartuffe, The Visit, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Master Class, A Christmas Carol, Peer Gynt, A Raisin in the Sun, The Importance of Being Earnest, Blithe Spirit, and Antigone, among many others. She also appeared in the Broadway production of Wilson in the Promised Land.

On television, Barbara played the character Ellen Canby on three seasons of Archie Bunker's Place, and appeared in Brother to Dragons, The House of Mirth, Life Among the Lowly, Melba, Big Brother Jake and in the Emmy Award-winning television movie See How She Runs with Joanne Woodward.

Barbara worked at other theaters including Vienna's English Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Hilberry Repertory Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Cleveland Play House and the O'Neill Theater Center.

Barbara received an Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree from the University of Rhode Island, and was awarded the Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence, the 2004 Rhode Island Pell Award, the Wayne State University Arts Achievement Award in Theatre, the Foundation for Repertory Theatre Award, and the 2006 Edward Bannister and Christiana Bannister History Makers Award from the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.

Barbara is survived by a daughter, Leslie Molson, of New Orleans, Louisiana.

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