Staged Portraits Of Three Formidable First Ladies

MIDDLEBURY — Three former First Ladies will be sharing secrets in Middlebury at 7:30 pm on Friday, January 20, in the new one-woman show Tea for Three:Lady Bird, Pat & Betty. The show will be presented at Westover School’s Performing Arts Center theater. The public is invited, and admission is free.

Written by Eric H. Weinberger with Elaine Bromka, and starring the Emmy Award-winning Ms Bromka, the play offers a refreshingly witty and intimate portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon and Betty Ford at

threshold moments in their lives. It has been called a “thought-provoking perspective and a subtle feat of brilliant acting” as audiences come to know the women’s private thoughts and emotions.

Ms Bromka has thirty years’ experience in film, television, Broadway and off-Broadway. She appeared as the mom in Uncle Buck with John Candy, as Stella on Days of our Lives, and on E.R., The Sopranos and Law and Order.

The inspiration for Tea for Three came about when Ms Bromka starred opposite Rich Little in The Presidents, which she performed across the country and on PBS. Called upon to impersonate eight of the most recent First Ladies, she ended up spending months poring over videotapes of the women.

Studying nuances of their body language and speech patterns to figure out psychologically why they moved and spoke as they did, she became more and more drawn in by their personalities.

“These were women of intelligence and grit who suddenly found themselves in a fishbowl,” Ms Bromka observed. “Pat Nixon called it the ‘hardest unpaid job in the world.’ I realized I wanted to tell the story from their point of view.”

For more information about the 80-minute performance call 203-758-2423. Parking and entrance to the Arts Center are both on South Street, off Route 188 in Middlebury.