Conversations with Estelle Parsons (2014)

Career Conversations with Estelle Parsons on June 11, 2014.  Moderated by Richard Ridge, Broadway World. 

ESTELLE PARSONS is most widely known for her Academy Award winning performance in Bonnie and Clyde and her ten years as Mother Bev on the hit sitcom Roseanne. In the theater, she is best known for her portrayal of the tyrannical eighth grade teacher in Roberto Athayde's classic about totalitarian power, Miss Margarida's Way, which she performed on Broadway, all over the United States and in London, Dublin, Turkey and Australia. She has appeared in plays by the great writers of our time, including Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Dario Fo, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Paul Zindel and Horton Foote. Estelle starred in August: Osage County by Tracy Letts on Broadway for a year and on the road for a year. Most recently Estelle was seen in Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire and the George & Ira Gershwin musical, Nice Work If You Can Get It with Matthew Broderick. In 2012, she was directed by Neil LaBute in Marco Calvani's Things of This World. As a director, she created the New York Shakespeare Festival Players for Joseph Papp in the 1980s. For two seasons, they performed Shakespeare on Broadway for New York City school students and their families in an effort to develop a multicultural audience for New York She also directed Al Pacino in Oscar Wilde's Salome: the Reading on Broadway. Estelle Parsons is a member of The Actors Studio and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004.  She is currently starring on Broadway in The Velocity of Autumn at Arena Stage.