100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Lisa McNulty
As Manhattan Theater Club’s Associate Director of Artistic Operations, Lisa McNulty has plenty of creative opportunities. “For me, putting together the artistic team is the most creative act possible,” she says. She is currently producing playwright Lucy Thurber’s Monstrosity at 13P and developing the Butch Casting Project, a program designed to promote butch talent. “We want to grow and develop an underrepresented pool of actors,” she explains. McNulty says it is exploring women’s stories—or any unusual turn of mind—that keeps her interested in theater. “It may be controversial to say that women tell stories in a different way than men, but there is a singularity of vision in women’s voices that I honor through my work as a producer and dramaturge.” –LM
In no particular order…
