Copious Notes

Jack Parrish (right) discusses a scene with actor Walter May during rehearsals for Actors Guild of Lexington's 2004 production of Yasmina Reza's "Art." Herald-Leader file photo by David Stephenson.

Click here to sign an online guest book for Mr. Parrish.

Jack Parrish, a mostly Richmond, Va.-based actor and director who spent the last few years of his life enriching the Central Kentucky theater scene, died Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

Mr. Parrish was born in Richmond and got into theater while he was in high school. His theater and film career included the roles of Brad Garrick on Another World and Brian Collier on All My Children, as well as stage work in New York and regional stages around the country, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In 2004, Actors Guild of Lexington’s then-new artistic director Richard St. Peter hired Mr. Parrish to direct the first production under his watch: Yasmina Reza’s play Art.

Mr. Parrish eventually moved to Central Kentucky, where he directed the drama department at Kentucky State University in Frankfort and continued to be active in area theater.

“Watching him act was like watching a master class in the craft,” said Tim X. Davis, Mr. Parrish’s predecessor at KSU and one of the actors in that 2004 production of Art. “I was proud to have Jack take my place at Kentucky State and continue to improve upon the program we had built there. His colleagues and students from KSU, many of whom I’m still in contact with, have nothing but the most positive things to say about him and his work. His work onstage here in Lexington, brief though it was, was simply stunning.”

Mr. Parrish’s roles in Lexington included Polonius and the Gravedigger in Actors Guild’s 2007 production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He was set to take center stage as Falstaff in Actors Guild’s summer 2008 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor for Shakespeare at Equus Run but had to bow out because of his cancer treatments.

“It breaks my heart that the community never got to see his Falstaff … as it would have blown people out of their seats,” said Davis, who now directs the theater and film program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

Mr. Parrish eventually returned to Richmond with his wife, Kathy Ann Parrish. He was in hospice care when he died.

“I feel like I have lost a family member and one of my best friends all rolled into one,” said St. Peter, who resigned his post at Actors Guild in August. “He was an extraordinary actor, a brilliant interpreter of Shakespeare, a terrific director and a true ‘man of the theater.’”

Tim Soulis taking a swing through the Lucille Caudill Little Theatre on the campus of Transylvania University when the theater was new, in 1999. Herald-Leader file photo by Sam Haverstick.

Tim Soulis has done this before.

In 2003, the Transylvania University theater professor staged a production of Hamlet with two casts: one all male and one all female. The idea was to show how different genders bring different nuances and perspectives to the same material, and overall, it did make for an interesting couple of nights of theater.

Well, Soulis is at it again. This time, it’s not exactly Shakespeare Soulis is gender bending, but one of the most successful plays based on the Bard’s work. Nov. 5-14, Transy is presenting Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, with male and female players alternating roles each night. This time, it won’t be ladies night and then a boys club. The casts will be mixed genders, but on one night men will present the Shakespearian portion of the play and women will play Stoppard’s lines, and then they’ll flip roles for the next performance.

Of course, if you want the full experience, that means you’ll have to go twice. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5, 6 and 11-14 and 2 p.m. Nov. 7 and 8 in the Lucille Caudill Little Theatre. There will be post-show discussions following the matinees. Tickets are $10 and may be reserved by calling the box office at (859) 281-3621.

Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kimberly Shaw photographed in May in the theater's new offices in the Distillery District. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Actors Guild of Lexington Artistic Director Richard St. Peter has told the theater’s board that he will be leaving by the end of the 2009-10 season to pursue a doctorate degree in theater.

St. Peter declined to say where he will be going to graduate school, as he has not finalized those plans with the school. He did say that his departure is not a reaction to Actors Guild’s recent financial troubles which came to a head in June when LexArts declined to grant the theater an allocation for general operating funds.

“I want to stress as much as I can that this is not a bad thing, not death or disaster,” St. Peter said Saturday night. “It’s just the next thing.”

St. Peter said he is not leaving immediately and expects to negotiate a departure time with the theater’s board, when a succession plan is in place.

Actors Guild board president Jennifer Miller said that St. Peter’s decision was of his own volition. She said she had been aware he was contemplating pursuing a doctorate, but was still surprised when he informed her of his plans this weekend.

She said the theater’s board has not had a chance to meet and discuss searching for a successor, but she expected it would be a little while before that effort starts.

“We don’t want to make rapid decisions, we want to make the right decisions,” Miller said.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a 2004 photo, Tiffiney Kavanaugh, Adam Luckey, Michelle Czepyha and Rubin Thomas rehearse for Actors Guild's production of My Way, led by Peggy Taphorn. Taphorn is now director of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., where Luckey is playing Hamlet.

Two Actors Guild of Lexington productions from past seasons are getting some road work.

AGL artistic director Richard St. Peter and actor Adam Luckey have been in Sanford, N.C., recently to bring St. Peter’s high-tech production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the stage of the Temple Theatre. The production, with Luckey reprising his performance in the title role, opened Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 25. The Temple’s producing director is Peggy Taphorn, who directed Actors Guild’s productions of My Way in 2004 and Quilters in 2005.

Allie Darden in 2007. Herald-Leader photo by Mark Cornelison.

To the north, Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which received its world premier production at Actors Guild in the Spring of 2005, will be read Monday night at the Blackbird Studio Theatre in New York. Heading to Gotham for the reading is Lexington actor Allie Darden, who will be reprising her role as Brooke and Hampton, as Ben. The play is about a group of old high school friends from Virginia who reunite for a weekend at an Atlantic City hotel. One of the friends has been harboring a secret that threatens the group’s friendship. Filling out the reading’s cast will be several Broadway and television actors.