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in memoriam
When one celebrates Gloria Foster, one thinks first of the powerful words that critics have used to describe her: "fierce," "passionate," "magnificent," "compelling," "majestic," "full-voiced," "a thunderbolt," "unforgettable"-and my favorite comment, from Howard Taubman of the New York Times: "Someone should write a play for Miss Foster." (Someone did-Emily Mann wrote Having Our Say for her.) Because I was frequently her producer, standing in the back of the theatre for my favorite scenes over and over again (okay, so we're an odd breed, we producers), I had the pleasure of watching Gloria Foster give the same performance-only different-night after night after night. She was that kind of actress: she never got stuck with a sure-fire kit bag of tricks. She had command over her voice and her body. She hit her marks with precision but not for the rote of it-rather to give herself the freedom to find the character's truth, again, tonight.
And then I think of her uncompromising integrity, of her trying her damnedest to make whatever kid was reading with her at a casting call hear what he was saying; how he was being asked to talk. I think of Gloria's teacher Bella Itkin at the Goodman School in Chicago, giving her black student classical roles to play without making anything of it, of her whetting...