Guiding Light Onstage:
Maureen Garrett and her castmates from CBS's Guiding Light
take to the stage and remember a dear friend.
A SoapCenter Feature on SoapNet, February 2, 2001
[NOTE: The segment consists of clips of all of the actors, with narration by show host John Callahan].
BETH CHAMBERLAIN: Without Maureen, none of this could happen. She keeps it rolling. She gets the people involved. She gets people excited about it.
JOHN CALLAHAN: Welcome back to SoapCenter. I'm John Callahan. As you just heard from
Guiding Light's Beth Chamberlain, Maureen Garrett is the driving force behind a new
theater company she's founded with some of her cast mates from the CBS soap. As someone
who's worked in both theater and soaps, I know firsthand you miss that immediate feedback
of a live audience when you're doing a soap. So I'm glad--and a little jealous--that
Maureen and the Guiding Light actors have such an incredible opportunity.
Leaving the glamour of the celebrity life behind, some of the biggest stars of CBS's
Guiding Light say goodbye to Manhattan and travel to Nyack, New York, to the Helen Hayes
Performing Arts Center, for one reason--theater.
LIZ KEIFER: I love the intimacy of an immediate audience. You can feel the energy.
ROBERT NEWMAN: I adore the theater. I adore being on stage.
BETH CHAMBERLAIN: It refreshes us creatively.
JOHN CALLAHAN: These lucky actors get to do what they love, thanks to a conversation
Maureen Garrett had with former co-star and close friend, Michael Zaslow.
MAUREEN GARRETT: You know, Michael Zaslow and I used to sit around and talk about it, and
say, "How about if we did 'Night of the Iguana', or 'Four Poster', or 'oh, we could
do a period piece and take it around in the summer'" -- and we never did.
JOHN CALLAHAN: In 1997, Maureen started the Guiding Light Actors' Workshop, which is now
the Soap Theater Company.
MAUREEN GARRETT: I just saw so many people coming in and spending years in
this--myself, for example--and not developing our craft, playing different roles, working
with different kinds of literature. And I spread the word. It just grew.
LIZ KEIFER: You'd be surprised how little I might see Robert Newman, or Michael O'Leary,
until we evolve into a story line together.
MICHAEL O'LEARY: On the show, I've been married and divorced four times. Two of my wives were prostitutes. I've killed twenty-four patients as a medical doctor. So, I'm looking to do something funny.
ROBERT NEWMAN: I'll work with Crystal [Chappell] under any circumstances, regardless of the role, regardless of the play, whatever it is. She's a marvelously gifted actress and it's just a joy to work with her in a different capacity here.
CRYSTAL CHAPPELL: With our day job, as great as it is, we don't get to really stretch
and work out our craft, so this is a wonderful opportunity for us to do that. It's also a
great way to socialize.
MAUREEN GARRETT: We have such a good time, working on it together, and so many of us know
each other for years, and now to see each other in this light, as truly a developing
ensemble acting company.
JOHN CALLAHAN: Michael Zaslow died of Lou Gehrig's Disease before he had the chance to
see the company develop.
MAUREEN GARRETT: Michael would be right there with us. (looking up) Michael, we started
it.
JOHN CALLAHAN: You can log on to www.soapnet.com for more information about the Guiding Light Actors' Workshop. In addition to being a talented actor, the late Michael Zaslow was also a talented soap writer. I'll bet you didn't know that he wrote for NBC's Another World in the late eighties.
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