BARBARA LIFTON

Barbara Lifton is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art, and of Hunter College where she was a member of the Drama Workshop. She studied with Jim Boerlin, Edith Meeks and Austin Pendleton (Shakespeare) at HB Studio.  She appeared as Lorraine in a workshop performance of "A Lie of the Mind" at HB in 2004, directed by Ms. Meeks. Barbara studied voice (Opera) for many years, and more recently voice-over and narration. An attorney, mother and grandmother, Barbara is an artist, actor and singer who created funny and dramatic characters in productions of Chekhov’s "The Three Sisters", Sheridan’s "The Rivals" for the New Haven Siochin (Irish) Theater, has portrayed “Sarah Goode” in the Rising Sun Company’s production of Miller’s “The Crucible”, and has been cast in many ISC staged readings of Shakespeare's plays.  Manhattan Rep’s production of “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” in which she stars is her first play; she wrote it because Katherine Anne Porter created a great character for a mature actor!   Barbara is retired from 30 years of the practice of law, and plans to spend the rest of her life in the arts!

CAROLINA McNEELY

Carolina McNeely (Ellen) Theatre: Appearances in productions and staged readings throughout New York City, at theatres including The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Classical Theatre, The Spanish Repertory, and La MaMa ETC, among others. Film: Across the Universe, Mergers and Acquisitions, 670 Riverside. She currently divides her time between New York and LA.

JACOB PINION

Jacob Pinion is a recent graduate from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Theatre.  He most recently played "Teresias" in Kevin Khulke's production of THE BACCHAE at Tisch School of the Arts and will be seen as a "Soccer Player" in the upcoming Feature Film GRACIE.  A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Jacob now lives in New York City.

GLORIA ZELAYA, DIRECTOR.

Ms. Zelaya studied theater in France (Fulbright) and New York. She is the Aritistic Director of The Latino Experimental Fantastic Theater Inc.: Positive Women, For the Love of Liz, At Risk, Evelina's Heart The Missteps of a Salsa Dancer. Director of Theater Arts for Around the Block: State of Emergency, One for the Books, Compatibility. The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater summer tour: Don Quixote, The Last
Adventure, Women in Piquant Farce. She also has staged plays for: La MaMa E.T.C., Theater for The New City, The New World Theater, LATE Theater (Ace Award for best director, 2006) for The Little Hut, and Isabel Raising a musical for Barrio Production. Her current directorial project, a Latino musical, Eva Del Barrio, is premiering at the Roy Arrias Theater on February 15th.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER – AN ESSAY.
Barbara G. Lifton.

In her short story, “Old Mortality” from her collection, Pale Horse, Pale Rider Katherine Anne Porter seems to be talking about herself.  She says:“I don’t want any promises, I don’t have false hopes, I won’t be romantic about myself….”  This is a perfect description of Porter’s character Granny Ellen Weatherall, in her short story, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.”  When Granny Weatherall is left at the alter at the age of twenty by her lover, George, she literally wipes the memories of George and “that day” from her mind, and goes on with her life as a young wife and mother in frontier Central Texas in the 1870’s.  Granny Weatherall has the toughness and strength of character of Porter’s paternal grandmother, Catherine Ann Skaggs Porter, a stern disciplinarian who raised her from age two to age eleven.  Porter first heard stories of her family’s pioneer past from this extraordinary lady, about her affluent family’s life in the ante-bellum South before and during the Civil War, and the hard times in Texas during the War and Reconstruction.  Grandmother Porter was independent, had a strong sense of good and evil, and rigid Victorian manners, and was clearly a model for the Grandmother figures in Porter’s stories.

Like Granny Weatherall, Porter was largely self-educated – had only one year of school beyond the eighth grade – read all the classics in her family’s bookshelf and from the public library in town, from childhood to adolescence, and continued to read during her first failed marriage (at age 16) to John Koontz.  Her avid reading, enhanced by a broad interest in all of the arts, would continue to end of her life.

Porter’s first collection of short stories, Flowering Judas appeared in a limited edition of 600 copies in 1930.  The success of this collection led to a Guggenheim grant, enabling her to enlarge the collection in 1935.  There followed a 55-year career of extraordinary adventure, successful publications of stories and novellas, three more marriages, volumes of essays, and both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.  Her bitterly ironic novel about the bigotry of the Germans pre-World War II, “Ship of Fools” appeared when she was 72, and was made into an Oscar winning movie.

This story of the feisty 80-year pioneer woman was refuses to die before she tells her jilting lover what she thinks of him is Katherine Anne Porter living life to the fullest all the way to the end- as I hope to in my life.  Porter died in 1980 at the age of 90.  Porter’s work should not be forgotten.