I was thrilled to be cast in a proposed 2019 production to play my idol, Miss Bette Davis, in Anton Burge’s play Bette & Joan.
As a child I spent many an afternoon flopped on the couch, watching Bette in an afternoon movie. I cannot describe the ecstasy of now trying to reproduce her feelings, and her words.
The play was to have been performed at the Players Theater in Callao, Virginia in January 2019, in a brilliant Director’s Showcase Production devised by Director Marcia Peters and Stage Manager Janice Coates. Sadly, after fifteen weeks of rehearsals and intensive preparations, the production fell through (on opening night shortly before curtain!) when the playwright’s agent refused permission for this community-theater production. However I did get to play Bette in a one-off staged performance – not of Burge’s play, but introducing a special showing of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” hosted for an ecstatic audience at the theater – click here for a video excerpt from that performance.
Kat Shepherd 