Love Letters
biographies

February 10-13, 2004

A.R. Gurney (Playwright)

Plays: Scenes from American Life, Children, The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, Richard Cory, The Golden Age, What I Did Last Summer, The Wayside Motor Inn, Sweet Sue, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters, The Snow Ball (adapted from his novel), The Old Boy, The Fourth Wall, Later Life, A Cheever Evening, Sylvia, Overtime, Let’s Do It (a Cole Porter musical), Labor Day, Far East, Darlene and the Guest Lecturer and Ancestral Voices. Opera: Wrote libretto for “Strawberry Fields” with music by Michael Torke, part of the Central Park Opera trilogy presented by the New York City Opera in the fall of 1999. Novels: The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers, and The Snow Ball. Awards: Drama Desk, N.E.A., Rockefeller Foundation, New England Theatre Conference, Lucille Lortel, American Association of Community Theatres, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Honorary Degrees: William College and Buffalo State University. Gurney was on the faculty of M.I.T. until 1996. He is the husband of one, father of four, and grandfather of six.

Patty Duke
Patty Duke is a multi-award-winning actress and author, best known for her performance as “Helen Keller” in The Miracle Worker, a role that made her a Broadway star at the age of 12. Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune wrote of her, “Miss Duke is not an accomplished child actress, she is an accomplished actress who happens to be a child at the moment.” In 1962, she recreated her role on film and earned an Academy Award as “Best Supporting Actress,” the youngest performer at the time to have done so. She has starred in eleven feature films, appeared in more than 73 made-for-TV movies, made countless radio and television appearances, including her own series, “The Patty Duke Show,” and recorded six albums. To date she has won three Emmys and two Golden Globes, including awards for her work in My Sweet Charlie (one of the first TV movies to enjoy a theatrical release), the mini-series Captains and the Kings, and The Miracle Worker (in the adult role of Helen’s teacher, “Annie Sullivan,” opposite Melissa Gilbert.) She co-produced and starred in a TV adaptation of her best-selling autobiography, Call Me Anna, and went on to write A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness. Both books topped the New York Times best-seller lists.
In 1985, she became the second woman to serve as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the fifth largest labor union in the United States. During her tenure, SAG developed strategies to deal with the newly identified AIDS crisis. She is active in a number of political and humanitarian causes including famine relief, nuclear policy, the Equal Rights Amendment and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. She organized the West Hollywood Walkathon and 10K Marathon to benefit the AIDS Project Los Angeles, and was named “Woman of the Year” for her efforts.
In 1999, she returned to the stage with a masterful portrayal of “Amanda” in Spokane Civic Theatre’s The Glass Menagerie, directed by John G. Phillips. The four-week run of that production was one of the most successful in the theatre’s history.
Miss Duke is married to Michael Pearce, whom she met while preparing for a role in the TV movie A Time to Triumph. They make their home in northern Idaho with their son, Kevin.

John Grant-Phillips
John Grant-Phillips is one of fewer than three hundred people in the world to receive an M.F.A. degree in directing from the Acting/Directing division of the Yale Drama School. Before finishing his degree, Jack acted with fellow students Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep, among many others. He also worked to develop the early plays of Christopher Durang, another fellow student. He has appeared in over two hundred stage roles including major characters in A Shot in the Dark on Long Island, Philadelphia Here I Come in The Theatre of Western Springs, Tiger at the Gates in the Court Theatre of Beloit, WS and The Three Sisters in the American Repertory Theatre of Cambridge. He originated the role of “Jack” (which was written for him) in the American Repertory Theatre’s adaptation of Six Characters in Search of an Author. In that role and others, Jack has appeared onstage in most of the major theatre festivals in the world, including: Tel Aviv, the Betif Festival in Belgrade, Madrid, Venice and Perugia, Italy; the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival and the first New York Festival of the Arts, as well as in twenty-seven cities in fifteen U.S. states. Onstage he has appeared with Cherry Jones, Tony Shalhoub and Linda Lavin. On film and television, Jack has appeared in the NBC “Movie of the week” Terraces, had a small role in Benny and Joon, and was killed off as Detective Shaner on the Fox series Against the Law in order to return to the theatre. He has acted in dozens of radio and television commercials, one of which received a local Emmy. As a director, Jack has mounted nearly three hundred productions in the professional and community theatres from Edinburgh, Scotland to Los Angeles, California. Jack is included in both “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in the World.” He is a past president of the American Association of Community Theatres and regularly gives seminars on the art and craft of theatre throughout the United States. He has taught acting and directing as a Guest Artist at Harvard University, Gonzaga University, Ithaca College and the Leslie University Graduate School of Education where he is currently an adjunct faculty member. Jack is the Artistic Director of The Theatre of Western Springs. He is very active as an arts advocate both locally and nationally.

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