Sara Lee HARRIS

STADELMAN, Sara Lee (nee Harris) Actor, innovative choreographer, ACTRA Award-winning broadcaster, playwright, poet and writer of fiction and memoir, has died at age ninety. She died March 9, 2008 at home, in the presence of Paul Mackan, her partner of forty-seven years. Brooklyn-born, a Canadian since 1974, Sara Lee studied theatre at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She was a pupil of Sanford Meisner and of Martha Graham. She performed legitimate theatre with the USO in Europe and North Africa during World War II, and made her Broadway debut in 1942 with Gregory Peck and Karl Malden. Sara worked with and became friend to many of the leading names of her era, including the master playwright, Thornton Wilder. She met and married Richard Stadelman, the Las Vegas architect who designed Bugsy Seigal's Flamingo Hotel, and founded the Birdcage, Nevada's first professional Equity theatre. With Richard, she lived and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesen East and West. She then turned her art away from commercial theatre, to focus on spiritual themes, using the Bible and the lives of saints as source material for celebration on stage. She needed an epic form to carry this epic content, so created Choreologia TM ("The Word Moves"), an original theatre form in which actors and dancers melded speech with choreographed movement, performing both at once. She trained thousands of students and performed in religious venues in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and Italy. She founded and directed The Moving Word Centre, a Christian ministry of communication arts in 1968. Here in Ottawa Sara Lee was a contributor to "All In A Day", "CBO Morning", "Open House", and "Commentary". In 2000, she published her award-winning memoir, Walk-Ons & Bit-Parts (Penumbra Press). Sara Lee is survived by her son Kris Ryerson Stadelman, daughter Catherine Stadelman Ponsonby, grandchildren Steven and Lorraine Ponsonby, great-grandson Tristan Ponsonby and partner Paul Mackan. In keeping with Sara Lee's wishes no funeral is planned. A gathering of friends will be held early May, 2008. Those wishing to make a memorial donation should send it to the Great Canadian Theatre Company, 910 Gladstone Ave., Ottawa K1R 6Y4. Condolences at www.kellyfh.ca . Published in the Ottawa Citizen on 3/12/2008