VIOLET & ME Comes to Connecticut This Month

Locally-based Emmy-awarding winning artist Dorothy Lyman brings her heartfelt and honest solo play, Violent and Me: A Mama-logue, to Washington, CT as a special fundraiser for Connecticut Theatre Exchange (CTX).  Hosted at the Thomas S. Perakos Arts and Community Center on the campus of The Frederick Gunn School, the one-hour solo show will begin at 5 pm on Sunday, April 21st, 2024 with no intermission. A short casual reception will follow the performance. Tickets for this special event are $25 and can be purchased ahead of time HERE as well as available at the door. The production premiered July, 2023 in New York City, and then enjoyed a successful run this past August at the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

All proceeds of this performance will benefit CTX’s vision of garnering resources for historically under-represented or under-supported populations and actively identifying ways to remove barriers to the CTX experience. For more information about Connecticut Theatre Exchange, please visit the website at www.cttheatrex.org. 

Dorothy Lyman, long-time resident of Roxbury, played architect Gwen Parrish Frame (1976–1980, 1989) on Another World and played Ralphie's mother in Jean Shepherd's Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss from 1988. She appeared in the Tales from the Darkside television series in the "In the Cards" episode (1985), in ALF as Maura Norris in the episode "Tequila" (1988), Generations as Rebecca Whitmore (1990–1991), and in The Bold and the Beautiful as Bonnie Roberts (1991–1992).

Her most notable soap opera role, though, has been on All My Children as Opal Sue Gardner, for which she received two Emmy Awards—as Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role in a Daytime Drama Series in 1982 and for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series in 1983.

In an appearance on Vicki Lawrence's talk show Vicki!, Lyman noted that she continued to perform on All My Children concurrently with the beginning of Mama's Family's production, flying back and forth each week between New York City and Los Angeles. While the commute was brutal, she remembered it fondly, referring to that stage of her career as "All My Paychecks". When Mama's Family ended its run, Lyman went behind the camera, producing and directing 75 episodes of The Nanny (all episodes of the third and fourth seasons, and all but four episodes of the fifth), even making a special guest appearance on the Fran Drescher sitcom. After Mama's Family ended in 1990, Lyman had a recurring role on Bob, Bob Newhart's third series.

On the big screen, she made a cameo appearance in I Love Trouble, a film starring Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts. She made another cameo appearance in the 2001 film Blow starring Johnny Depp. She was seen in the 2006 film The Departed.

In 2007, Lyman guest-starred in the third season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica as Starbuck's mother. She made a guest appearance on Reba, playing the titular character's mother. She appeared in The Blacklist in the season-six episode "The Pawnbrokers".

Lyman performed My Kitchen Wars in Hollywood and New York as a one-woman show based on the book by Betty Fussell.