GL Actors' Theater Performs in NYC!

The cast of Vendler's Television Playhouse takes their bows.

At the Women in Television and Film's GL Symposium and in her exclusive interview with SoapCity, long-time GL star Maureen Garrett (Holly) talked about her pet project -- The Guiding Light Actors Theater.

On Friday, April 11, the company, including Maureen, Kim Zimmer (Reva), Robert Newman (Josh), Paul Anthony Stewart (Danny), Nancy St. Alban (Michelle) and Carey Cromelin (Wanda) performed a staged reading of Vendler's Television Playhouse an original play by Susan Rice, as a fundraiser for Kidsave International.

Constance (Kim Zimmer) gets dramatic in front of her director (Paul Anthony Stewart) and writer (Carey Cromlin).

Kim Zimmer portrayed Constance, the greatest theater actress ever (though don't call her the "First Lady of the American Theater;" she's not that old), forced to perform on live, 1950s television alongside Sidney (Robert Newman), a leading man easily mesmerized by a stray garden house, and Morning (Nancy St. Alban), a film starlet happy to announce that "I love the camera and the camera loves me." So, don't anyone dare stand in her way.

Sidney (Robert Newman) plots with his mistress, Morning (Nancy St. Alban).

Attempting to turn this not-very-congenial bunch into a well-oiled performance troupe a scant three hours before show time (when the starlet still doesn't know her lines and Mr. Vendler, the sponsor is insisting that his kitchen products be mentioned prominently during the course of their murder mystery), is the harried director (Paul Anthony Stewart).

Unlike the bickering Vendler players, the GL gang all dove into their roles with enthusiasm and gusto. The cast took time out of their already busy schedules to rehearse after-hours (sometimes with a GL script in one hand and Vendler's in the other) because, as Maureen explained, this was a pure labor of love.

GL's newest cast-member, Crystal Hunt (Lizzie), came to wish her co-stars well.

"This workshop was born out of mutual respect for our craft," she reiterated. "Theater is where most of us started and it's what you always want to go back to."

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