Lauded actress Anne Gerety - The Providence Journal
Nicholas Hill
http://www.projo.com/obituaries/content/projo_20031107_ag07x.49525.html
Lauded actress Anne Gerety; starred at Trinity, in film, TV
01:00 AM EST on Friday, November 7, 2003
STONY BROOK, N.Y. -- Anne Gerety, 77, the founder of Storefront
Theatre in Portland, Ore., and an acclaimed actress in regional
theaters around the country, died Oct. 25 at Stony Brook Hospital.
The cause was heart failure, her son, Nicholas Hill of Brooklyn, said.
A winner of the Dallas Critics Award for her Big Mama in Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof at the Dallas Theatre Center, and the Los Angeles Drama Logue
Award for her Essie Miller in Ah! Wilderness at SouthCoast Repertory,
Ms. Gerety also performed at Trinity Repertory Company, in Providence;
Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Conn.; WPA Theatre, New York City;
ACT, in Seattle; the Seattle Repertory Theatre; the Pittsburgh
Playhouse; the Cleveland Playhouse, the American Theatre Company,
Portland; and the Berkshire Theatre Festival, in Stockbridge, Mass.
She appeared in film (Quintet, directed by Robert Altman) and on
television (St. Elsewhere, Barnaby Jones, Westinghouse Theatre and
Benson).
Ms. Gerety, along with her then-husband, actor/director Thomas Hill,
founded the Storefront Theatre of Portland, which grew out of the
political unrest of the Vietnam era and went on to wide acclaim for
its no-holds-barred performances of original works.
After concluding studies at the Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence, in 1946, Ms. Gerety worked with Peter Hunt, the master
folk-art-style furniture painter, in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. She
learned her craft as an actress working with the Provincetown Players.
She appeared in several shows at Trinity Rep in the 1970s, including
Juno and the Paycock, Passion Play, Pygmalion and The Showoff.
Her brother Peter Gerety, now appearing in the new Broadway musical
Never Gonna Dance, described her acting as unusually powerful and
called her his artistic mentor. On her retirement from the theater,
Ms. Gerety returned to painting and exhibited in both oil and
watercolors regularly until her death.
But she never truly retired from the stage. She performed, directed,
and mentored actors, playwrights and poets, as the need arose.
She leaves five sons, Christopher, Michael and Richard Condon, all of
Los Angeles, and Nicholas and Timothy Hill, both of Brooklyn, N.Y.;
two brothers, Peter Gerety of Manhattan and Liam Gerety of Salem,
Ore.; and six grandchildren.
A memorial service was held at her home near the mouth of the
Nissequoque River, on Long Island Sound, N.Y. Additional memorials are
scheduled next month in Portland, Oregon and New York City.