Dear Friend,
“As most of you know, we’ve been doing conversations with artists for a number of years,” Bill says. “We’ve found that audiences are eager to learn about the lives and careers of those who have made significant contributions to the arts. During the past year, our audience has grown because we’ve been doing interviews online. Another advantage of using the internet as the platform for this Luminaries series is that it gives us more flexibility in scheduling. We’re delighted to begin with two fascinating people, Louis Gossett Jr. and Lynne Moody.”
In a celebrated 65-plus year career that spans stage, screen, and television and is still going strong, Louis Gossett Jr. is best known for his Academy Award-winning performance as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman and his Emmy Award-winning performance as Fiddler in the miniseries Roots. He has been a working actor since he was 17 and made his Broadway debut in Take a Giant Step (1953). He has appeared in nine additional shows on Broadway, including the original production of A Raisin in the Sun, in which he created the role of George Murchison, and the musicals Golden Boy and The Zulu and the Zayda. He was also featured in the first American production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks (1961), which became the longest running Off-Broadway play of the sixties. Gossett made his screen debut in 1961, repeating the role of George Murchison in the film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. A short list of his film credits includes Travels with My Aunt, The Laughing Policeman, The Deep, Enemy Mine, Daddy’s Little Girls, Why Did I Get Married Too?, and The Cuban. He has worked extensively in television, doing everything from miniseries to made-for-TV films to guest appearances in episodic shows. Some of the highlights include The Josephine Baker Story, Return to Lonesome Dove, Captive Heart: The James Mink Story, Strange Justice, Lackawana Blues, and most recently, Watchmen.
Lynne Moody has been a working actress since 1973, when she appeared in the blaxploitation horror film Scream Blacula Scream. She then went on to forge a distinguished career, particularly in television, where her credits include the mini-series Roots and Roots: The Next Generations (Irene Harvey); That’s My Mama, E/R, Soap, and Knots Landing (series regular); Hill Street Blues (recurring role); and the daytime series General Hospital, for which she received a 2001 nomination for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series. Other notable TV appearances include the mini-series The Atlanta Child Murders, which featured a cast that included James Earl Jones, Jason Robards, Morgan Freeman, and Ruby Dee; the TV movies A Caribbean Mystery (based on an Agatha Christie novel), A Fight for Jenny, Escape to Witch Mountain, Last Light, Lost in London (opposite Ben Vereen), Ray Alexander: A Taste for Justice, which starred Louis Gossett Jr.; and countless guest shots on a wide variety of series. Moody studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and the Goodman Theatre, and her acclaimed stage work in Los Angeles includes David Hare’s A Map of the World at Odyssey Theatre, Jefferson Beeker’s First Couple at Tiffany Theatre, and C. Bernard Jackson’s Piano Bar at Inner City Cultural Center. She also directed Dennis Gersten’s Willie Said To at Playwrights’ Arena.
Louise and Barry Snyder are the sponsors of PBDonline.
Tickets for the conversations with Gossett and Moody are free, but reservations are required. Tickets can be reserved at www.palmbeachdramaworks.org or by calling the box office at 561.514.4042, x2. Please note: it’s possible that our phones will be out for a few days beginning on May 7, when we vacate the theatre so that work can begin on the new HVAC system. Our box office will be setting up at our costume shop, but it might take a few days before everything is up and running.
Please consider donating to PBD. With your support, we can continue to offer a variety of programs virtually and preserve our reserve funds as we await the return to our live, mainstage performances later in the year.
Stay safe.
