How did the piece come together about Dorothy Parker?
My good friend, Lucy Bishop, who is a director of children’s theater here on Cape Cod, is a real Dorothy Parker fan. She keeps a copy of “The Portable Dorothy Parker” by her bedside. Lucy, who by the way was in the cast of “Girls Who Wear Glasses” and was just terrific, had acquired a copy of Dorothy Parker’s play, “The Ladies of the Corridor,” and gave it to me as a possible piece to direct. I thought it would be too ambitious an undertaking for a summer project — the size of the cast being a major consideration — but it got me thinking about Dorothy Parker, whom I’ve always enjoyed reading, and how much fun it might be to put together an evening of readings of her poetry, short stories, reviews and plays. I proposed the idea to the artistic director of the Payomet Performing Arts Center here on Cape Cod, and we received rights clearance from the NAACP, who control the literary rights to Parker’s estate. The next step was to make selections from Parker’s works — that was the fun pa
