Sissy gets some sun from acting teacher/director/actor Austin Pendleton on The Sissy Gamache Show!

July 10, 2012 - PRLog -- Pendleton was born in Warren, Ohio. He is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a member of Scroll and Key Society. As a stage actor, he has appeared in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance and an Obie Award ), The Diary of Anne Frank, Grand Hotel, Goodtime Charley, The Little Foxes, Fiddler on the Roof, and Up from Paradise.

Pendleton penned the plays Uncle Bob, Booth, and Orson's Shadow, all of which were staged off-Broadway. His direction of Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes garnered him a Tony Award nomination. Additional directing credits include Spoils of War by Michael Weller, The Runner Stumbles by Milan Stitt, and The Size of the World by Charles Evered.

Pendleton served as Artistic Director for Circle Repertory Company with associate artistic director Lynne Thigpen.

Pendleton is an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. He began his artistic relationship there by directing Ralph Pape's Say Goodnight, Gracie for the 1979-80 season. In addition to directing at Steppenwolf, Mr. Pendleton has appeared as an actor in such Steppenwolf productions as Uncle Vanya, Valparaiso and Educating Rita. In the seventh and final season of Homicide: Life on the Street he portrayed Dr. George Griscom, a medical examiner with a quirky outlook on his profession and a dark sense of humor. In the 1970s, Pendleton had a small role on "Good Times"; he played Mr. Hargrove the Director who recommended Michael Evans to attend trade school instead of college due to a low score on an IQ test.

Hipsters know him as the villain’s sidekick in The Muppet Movie. Television-watchers recognize him from his turns as eccentric criminals on Oz and Law & Order: SVU as well as his other film appearances in What's Up Doc and at as his scene stealing best as the stuttering and stammering public defender in My Cousin Vinny.  But theatergoers have long appreciated Austin Pendleton as an actor, director and writer whose career spans 50 years on Broadway and Off, as well as in regional houses and more recently at his other scene stealing best in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Mother Courage opposite Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

And that’s exactly how the acclaimed thespian wants to be seen: as a man of the stage. “When I was about eight, I triumphed in a school play in Ohio,” he recalls. “My mom, a former actress, said to me, ‘If you could have a successful life in the theater, that would mean more to me than anything.’ I was happy to oblige.”

At an age when most people let alone actors contemplate retirement, Pendleton remains constantly busy this year, He's fresh off a sold out run at Classic Stage Company's production of Three Sisters, later this month he’ll be directing and acting in an Off Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s Small Craft Warnings (featuring students from an acting class which he still teaches at HB Studio). In April, A Minister’s Wife—his adaptation of Shaw’s Candida —opens at Lincoln Center, and this fall, Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit, which he directed to great acclaim at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company last year, bows on Broadway.

Pendleton is grateful to be working so much, especially in smaller theaters, since he credits Off-Off Broadway with saving his career. “Things were really falling apart for me in the industry back in the ’80s,” he remembers. “Then I got this call out of the blue from a tiny company called Riverside Shakespeare, asking if I would be in Hamlet. And I thought, Oh great: I’m not 50 yet and already I’m being offered Polonius. Turns out they wanted me for the Prince of Denmark!” Solid notices led to classical roles at other theaters on what Pendleton calls “the church-loft circuit.” Although the pay was paltry, he soon found himself back in demand.

Considering his extensive experience as a performer, it’s not surprising that Pendleton is an actor’s director, and that reputation helps him attract big-time talent. Three Sisters which just closed March 6th reunited him with Hollywood players (and married couple) Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, who headlined Pendleton’s mounting of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at CSC two seasons ago. Like that production, Three Sisters feels quite contemporary and emotionally raw. No mid-Atlantic accents or stilted phrasing here; the cast members, including New York stage stalwarts Marin Ireland, Jessica Hecht, Josh Hamilton and Louis Zorich, speak colloquially and passionately, pacing the stage as if imprisoned. The audience reaction is sometimes surprising. At a recent preview, there was a striking amount of giggling—even at lines that are traditionally devastating. When the titular sisters’ brother told his fiancée that he loved her because she was so “ordinary,” viewers cracked up.

Pendleton says let ’em laugh. “There’s this whole argument about whether Chekhov should be played for comedy or for tragedy that’s been fruitlessly going on for 100 years,” he says. “It evades the issue: In life, things are tragic and ridiculous, sometimes in the same instant. There’s always that edge in his writing.

The actor-director turns 71 this month and pretty much the only thing not on his agenda is retirement. “Oh, on a bad night I imagine quitting the following day, but that has nothing to do with my age; that started when I was 28,” Pendleton admits. Then his face erupts into a devilish grin. “Of course, the time may come when they retire me like a horse! But I’ll still be there on the line calling, ‘Hello? Hello? I’m ready to play Polonius now!’ ”

And now he'll see if he's ready for Sissy this Friday night 7:30pm EST on MNN (Manhattan Neigborhood Network) Channel 56 on Time Warner Cable in Manhattan or you can watch it streamed through our website at www.thesissygamacheshow.com