About Marion

Marion has had an extensive career in the entertainment industry. She was awarded the Drama Logue Critics award for her performance as Angela, the lead in "Bedtime Story". She earned a master's degree in theatre from Illinois State University. Marion has played the leads on stage in "The Star-Spangled Girl", "Midsummer Night's Dream", and "Black Sun", to mention only a few. One of her motion picture features was "Corvette Summer". She's had roles on television shows including, "The Young and the Restless", "Days of our Lives", "CHiPs", "Little House on the Prarie", "Rhoda", and "Nine to Five", as well as many other shows and movies.

Marion is currently focusing her time and energy on writing, directing, and acting in morality plays. Her current passion has driven her to write three plays that take on a range of controversial topics. Her play "A Prison of the Mind", takes on the tough topic of the Death Penalty from all angles. "If Only I Had More Time", deals with end of life issues, in an uncommon and wonderfly poignant way. One of the first plays she wrote, "To Do Something Good", is a futuristic play about science verses religion on stem cell research and human cloning. She approaches all of these issues with an incredibly open mind, exploring them from many points of view. In all of her plays, she encourages the audience to think deeply about the topics, ask questions, and share stories.

A Word from Marion

In order to complete my Masters Degree in Theatre I had to tour with the Illinois State Repertory Theatre, funded at the time by government programs for the arts, and perform a variety of plays for culturally underprivileged schools and communities. Our troop got on a bus, 5 days a week and performed a different play each day. We brought our own set, costumes and some lighting. This meant things like: " if its Tuesday this must be A Glass Menagerie." Often times our stage would be a gymnasium so blocking for a proscenium (straight forward with the audience directly in front of you as is typical theatre) would change drastically and become theatre in the round with the audience surrounding you. Blocking changed moment by moment to: "just go where the light is." This would be considered a director's nightmare--but often times we didn't have a choice and had to improvise. Doing a different play every day really wasn't that hard--or as hard as some people think it is. It was great fun to switch from Tennessee Williams to Shakespeare with all the costumes and set changes from day to day. Our only nightmare was bringing the wrong set and costumes for the play we were scheduled to do. How would Laura in The Glass Menagerie, look in Bianca's costume from A Taming of the Shrew? Thankfully I don't recall that ever happening.

So, I went to New York via Theatre Communications Group Finals (only 73 actors in the country had made the finals that year to be interviewed by the repertory companies in America and I considered it an honor to be a part of this event.) I received a offer to perform with Cafe La Mama, an off-off Broadway Theatre and my experience with professional theatre began.

In the back of my head was always an idea of what I wanted theatre to be. I wanted to continue to travel to places where people who might not go to the theatre or who couldn't afford it would come. I wanted to do "theatre for the people." My journey in theatre and film and television hasn't always been fulfilling to me. I've often wondered why I was given the talents of acting, writing and directing if I wasn't really going to use them to the best of my ability. In California, I thought it was strange to be asked what cup size I wore, or could I fake a good orgasm on film? Better yet was the unspoken requirement: " Can you handle this major movie star? You'll probably need to have an affair with him."

For many years life just passed me by until it finally sunk into my head that I could create my own kind of theatre. Plays that could inform, educate and most of all enlighten people, make them aware of their own feelings. I was once working for an after-school drama program with students from the first to the fifth grade so I just wrote plays for them that fit each age group. A Day At the Beach and Dr Exoneration's Secret Plot were born. I called them baby "morality" plays. There was something to be learned about life, even for the little ones. If Only I Had More Time was a play I was asked to write for a hospital doing a tele-conference on aging. It's the story of 5 people visiting a cemetery one afternoon and their stories. A Prison of the Mind, came out of a request by a prison chaplain to write "something about these kids in prison." What a wonderful journey this has been. I've made "Prison" into a one-woman show and have taken it nationally on tour. "More Time" has been performed by hospice groups, faith based groups and uses 5 people ( not necessarily actors) who read from scripts. I like to go into a community with this one and use their local people to put on this production, I'm the moderator who weaves their stories together.

There are a few consistencies that I will always use in these plays. The last line of every play will always be: " we have the ephemeral ability to heal each other." I'll always use a red scarf in some way to symbolize life, and I'll always ask the audience to become the second act and to voice their opinions on the issue I present to them. The future holds: "To Do Something Good", about stem cell research and human cloning, and "I Belong Here Too" about immigration. I hope in the days to come that many more projects will come into my brain. Until then I appreciate all comments and questions about plays in development and performances!

For further information or to book a performance please contact Marion.