The Diva is Dismissed - actress Jenifer Lewis' one-woman, autobiographical play with music

Diva means "divine," "goddess"--or "someone who pretends to know who she is and looks fabulous doing it," says actress Jenifer Lewis, writer and star of the autobiographical The Diva Is Dismissed.

Lewis' one-woman mix of staged drama, comedy and song--with seven characters, including a girl of 5 and an old man who is a preacher--is a journey from childhood to the present, as well as from states of egotism and arrogance that have been channeled and changed into love and compassion.

What was it that inspired Lewis to spend two years writing Diva? "So many friends were dying of AIDS, and my one way to get release, to grow, was to perform live," she explains; she also had to experience the passing of her father and a friend within two days of each other. "There's a lot of pain, but there's also a lot of joy in it."

The Diva Is Dismissed is currently enjoying an extended return engagement at the Hudson Back-Stage Theatre in Hollywood. If you miss Lewis there, catch her playing Tina Turner's mother, Zelma, in Touchstone Pictures' tentatively scheduled June release What's Love Got to Do With It? or as television's Dean Dorothy Davenport on A Different World, Aunt Helen on Fresh Prince of Bel Air and the Saleslady From Hell on Murphy Brown.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group