“Tea For Three” Offers Portraits Of Three Formidable First Ladies presented as the 4th Artist in Residency Program at the O’Neill Center

Waterford, CT, September 14, 2004 —

Three former First Ladies will be sharing secrets in Waterford this Saturday night at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, in the new one-woman show, “Tea for Three: Lady Bird, Pat and Betty.” This is the fourth presentation under the newly formed Artist in Residence Program. “The O’Neill is thrilled to aid in the development of Tea for Three. Our last project in residence, Madagascar, is currently running at the Salt Lake Acting Company with half of the creative team that was in residence - a wonderful indication that artists are making the most of their time here at the O’Neill.” -Richard Kuranda, Producing Director.

Written by Eric H. Weinberger with Elaine Bromka, and starring the Emmy Award-winning Ms. Bromka, the play offers a refreshingly witty and intimate portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, and Betty Ford at threshold moments in their lives. The Record-Review in Westchester County recently cited the show as a “thought-provoking perspective,” adding, “In a subtle feat of brilliant acting, there is an exfoliation of public courtesies, and we come to know their most private thoughts and emotions.”

Ms. Bromka has thirty years’ experience in film, television, Broadway, and off-Broadway. She appeared as the mom in “Uncle Buck” with John Candy, as Stella on “Days of our Lives,” and on “E.R.,” “The Sopranos,” and “Law and Order.”

The inspiration for “Tea for Three” came about when Bromka starred opposite Rich Little in “The Presidents,” which she performed across the country and on PBS. Called upon to impersonate eight of the most recent first ladies, she ended up spending months poring over videotapes of the women. Studying nuances of their body language and speech patterns to figure out psychologically why they moved and spoke as they did, she became more and more drawn in by their personalities.

“These were women of intelligence and grit who suddenly found themselves in a fishbowl,” Bromka observed. “Pat Nixon called it the ’hardest unpaid job in the world.’ I realized I wanted to tell the story from their point of view.”

“And I wanted to explode myths. Pat was called ’Plastic Pat’ in the press, for example, because she was always smiling. Look more closely at her eyes, though. There’s nothing plastic about her. You see the eyes of a private, watchful survivor.”

Her collaborator, Weinberger, is the author of several plays, including “Class Mothers ’68,” which garnered a Drama Desk nomination for its star when it was done Off Broadway. He and Bromka zeroed in on three of the women, linking their stories by revealing each one at the end of her time in the White House.

Directed by Byam Stevens, the play has been packing houses over the past few months, prompting audience delight with unexpected laughter, and breaking box office records this summer in the Berkshires.

The performance will be 7:30 PM, at the O’Neill Center, 305 Great Neck Road, in Waterford. For tickets, call (860) 443-5378 ext 0.