It's a busy time of year for us, so we don't have a lot of time to make one of our usual extended blog posts! But here are a few photos and newspapers clippings about our interview subject in Episode 60, Penelope Reed:
First, an April 1954 article about her father, Jared Reed, from the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer. Remember that you can hear Penny's own reminiscences about her father and the rest of her theatrical family (in return for a small donation) on our Patreon page! https://www.patreon.com/AITHpodcast
Above, two photos of Reed from the 1970s, including one from her performance at Philadelphia's Playhouse in the Park, as Laura in The Glass Menagerie.
In the late 1980s, Hedgerow was struggling to recover from the fire that gutted the interior of its historic theater building inside an 18th century grist mill. Reed (then a member of the company at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey) performed as Emily Dickinson in the one-woman The Belle of Amherst to help raise funds for its reconstruction.
Below, a photo from 2008, where Penny (along with actor Paul Kuhn) was performing a delightfully comic tribute to the history of the Hedgerow Theatre, entitled Kafka in the Hedgerows.
Penny's dedication to comic acting and theatrical farce has always been a hallmark of her work. In 2000 she was appearing at the Hedgerow - again with Kuhn, as well as her husband Zoran Kovcic, in Don't Dress for Dinner. And in 2001 the Philadelphia Inquirer published a photo of Penny posing with her mother, Janet Kelsey, and her son, Jared Reed, on the Hedgerow's front steps.
In 2017, Reed, by now the Director Emeritus of the Hedgerow Theatre, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Barrymore ceremony. Below is a photo of her and Zoran Kovcic at a post-ceremony reception given in her honor.
In her acceptance speech, Reed said, enthusiastically: "A life in theater is worth it! To be idea generators, We can share ideas that go far beyond us. We can help change and transformation - and what better place than Philadelphia!"
