Angela Lansbury, Victor Garber, Frances Conroy, Lisa Banes and Harriet Harris will pay tribute to the beloved writer and wit in This is On Me, An Evening of Dorothy Parker. The show, a benefit for the Acting Company, will be held on December 5th at 7 PM at Los Angeles' Brentwood Theatre; it was originally slated to be held on October 10th.Four-time Tony Award winner 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 the evening of
plays, poems, stories, essays, songs and patter. Fontana is a Board
Director of The Acting Company.Conroy ("Six Feet Under," Broadway's Ride Down Mt. Morgan), Harris (Tony-winner for Thoroughly Modern Millie and with a recurring role on "Desperate Housewives") and 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.
For tickets to the benefit, call 213-365-3500. For more information, call 212-258-3111 or visit www.theactingcompany.org.
