The Park Theatre's OSCAR® TALK! On-Demand Repeat of Original Live Program OUR PANEL

ERNEST THOMPSON (Host)
Ernest Thompson has won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild Award and a Broadway Drama Guild Award for Best Play. His work has been nominated for a Tony, an Emmy and a British Academy Award. His more than 35 plays have been seen in theatres around the world. The most enduring, ON GOLDEN POND, has been translated into 30 languages, Arabic the newest, and played in more than 40 countries on six continents. Among other plays are THE WEST SIDE WALTZ (starring Katharine Hepburn and Dorothy Loudon), A SENSE OF HUMOR (Jack Lemmon and Estelle Parsons), AX OF LOVE, AMAZONS IN AUGUST, MURDERING MOTHER, WHITE PEOPLE CHRISTMAS, THE ELIXIR, and HUMAN BEINGS. His soon to be released anthology of 25 short plays contains the collections POLITICAL SUICIDE, THE PENIS RESPONDS, ANSWERS and VALENTINES FOR TWO, as well as THE ONE ABOUT THE GUY IN THE BAR and AMERICAN TERRORIST.
ESTELLE PARSONS (Guest)
Estelle Parsons was last seen on Broadway in 2014 as Alexandra in The Velocity of Autumn, for which she received her fifth Tony Award nomination. Although she has spent most of her professional life in the theatre, she is most widely known for her Academy Award-winning performance as Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde and her ten years playing Beverly, mother of the title character in the hit sitcom Roseanne. In the theatre, she made an indelible impression as the tyrannical eighth-grade teacher in Roberto Athayde's classic about totalitarian power, Miss Margarida's Way, which she performed on Broadway, all over the United States, and in London, Dublin, Turkey, and Australia. She has appeared in plays by the great writers of our time, including Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Dario Fo, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Paul Zindel, and Horton Foote. Estelle starred in Tracy Letts' August: Osage County for a year on Broadway, followed by another year on the road.
RUSSELL WILLIAMS II (Panelist)
Russell Williams, II was the first African American to win more than one Academy Award in any category. Two-time Academy Award and prime-time Emmy Award winner, Williams grew up an avid movie-goer, raised in Washington, D.C. In 1970, Williams attended the American University where he earned his B.A. in film production and literature in 1974. After moving to Los Angeles in 1979, Williams began working as the sound mixer for various films including Making the Grade (1984); In the Mood (1987); Billionaire Boys Club (1987) and The In Crowd (1987). In 1988, Williams won a prime-time Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound for Terrorist on Trial (1987). In 1990, he won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Sound for Glory. In 1991, Williams made history when he won another Academy Award for his contribution as a sound mixer for Dances With Wolves, making him the first African American multi-Academy Award winner.
LARRY BENAQUIST (Panelist)
Larry Benaquist was on the faculty at Keene State College, from 1969 until 2010. Appointed originally to the English department, having a doctorate in Renaissance Studies, his interests turned to the study of film. Educating himself on various leaves at Brown University, the University of Southern California, and other institutions, he began offering courses in film theory, history and then film production. The program he founded in the seventies became a major in the mid-nineties. He himself has produced films, several of which having been on public television. Here Am I, Send Me: The Journey of Jonathan Daniels, produced with Bill Sullivan, narrated by Sam Waterston, is the story of Keene native Jon Daniels, martyr to the civil rights movement who died in 1965.
PEG ALOI (Panelist)
Peg is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, and was a critic for the Boston Phoenix from 1997-2013. She taught film and TV studies at Emerson College, Massachusetts College of Art, and SUNY New Paltz. Her film writing has appeared in Refinery29, Bustle, Vice/Broadly, Polygon, InStyle, Diabolique, The Establishment, The Arts Fuse, Crooked Marquee, Bloody Disgusting, Film School Rejects, Vague Visages, and The Orlando Weekly. She's writing a book about witchcraft in popular culture.