Episode Details

Host Patrick Pacheco welcomes the four time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh to "THEATER: All the Moving Parts". Tovah talks about her new memoir "Lilyville: Mother, Daughter and Other Roles I've Played". It focuses on her main role as Lily Feldshuh's daughter and how that affected her life and her acting career. Lily was a force of nature, with a wicked sense of humor. She told her daughter that she rated the parts Tovah played by looks. "Dolly is a 10, Golda Meir is a ZERO." As a headstrong and free-spirited woman, Tovah was torn between living a life on her own terms and a need to gain approval from her mother.  That tension played a role in her fifty years in show business, as she recalls lively stories that include Uta Hagen, Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Barbra Streisand. A stellar performance in “Yentl,” put her on the map, and she earned more plaudits as Golda Meir and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among others.  "These people were amazing human beings. I got to imbibe their knowledge, imbue it inside myself and give it back to the audience.” Ditto for her Shakespearean roles but only after director Jack O’Brien redeemed the brutal criticism she received from Michael Langham, the artistic director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre. 
 
Patrick Pacheco says, “Tovah is a great story teller; funny, sharp, smart and a superb mimic. A good example is her imitation of Isaac Bashevis Singer bemoaning the fact that he gave Streisand the rights to his story, 'Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy’. Most impressive, however, is her clear-eyed view of how love of family trumps fierce ambition and how, ultimately, one must forgive the parental sins of the past.”

• Coming up on CUNY TV
• Recently aired on CUNY TV