Dark Night: Professional Purposes

Prime Stage Theatre's Dark Night Series
For Professional Purposes: An Artistic Journey
Written by Shirley Barasch
Read by Lynne Franks

The second of Prime Stage Theatre’s new reading series, Dark Nights, will feature the newly published memoir by award-winning multi-media artist Shirley Barasch, For Professional Purposes: An Artistic Journey. The reading, reception, and book signing will take place on Monday, February 27, 2012 at 7:30 pm at the New Hazlett Theater.

Reviewers of the book have called it “[a]n amazing look into the early development of an artist and a person.” Barash takes the reader on a visual and sensory journey of a gifted, head-strong girl through the depression and World War II years in Pittsburgh. By age four-and-a-half, Shirley Barasch already showed artistic talents. She wrote poems before she could spell or pronounce all of the words, and played the piano by ear -- her “parlor trick” according to her father. With her mother’s tragic death, she was thrown into an environment where a strict religious social order did not encourage girls to be independent or creative. Instead, she became even more determined to fulfill her dreams, often using her creativity secretly to finagle free professional lessons.

Barasch paints Pittsburgh characters working in local bakeries, synagogues, schools, and businesses who made an impact on her life. In vivid details and from a child’s perspective, she describes the experience of riding trolleys, taking forbidden backyard shortcuts, and visiting Kennywood Park. Her coming-of-age adventure is nostalgic, touching, and funny. Her celebration of family life also includes a chapter of treasured Jewish recipes.

Actress Lynne Franks will read excerpts from the book. Franks has delighted Prime Stage audiences in The Westing Game, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and To Kill a Mockingbird. She has also entertained audiences and received awards for performances in theatres throughout Western Pennsylvania.