BARBARA COLTON: Pray With Your Feet

10 July 1938  –  4 April 2026

First Vice President of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION for four terms and serving in a variety of Equity leadership positions over nearly a quarter of a century, she fought for the rights of Actors and defended the rights of All People. My friend, BARBARA COLTON, passed away a couple of weeks ago. She was a True Woman of the Theatre and a Model Citizen!

She appeared onstage with Katharine Hepburn in A Matter of Gravity.

In recent years, BARBARA faced some of the challenges of aging, including the need to choose soft foods. I remembered that I had the recipe for Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies which Liz Smith had famously wrestled away from Ms. Hepburn and was given permission to publish in the 1980’s. They are a perfect Brownie: soft, melt-in-your-mouth fudgy, and delicious. I baked a batch, leaving out the nuts, and brought them to BARBARA, explaining that they would be very easy to eat. She lit up! “I’ve had these!” she exclaimed delighting in the bit of nostalgia and pointing to the tray of Brownies! Then she added, enthusiastically, “From Kate!”

“Well,” I replied, “You are the certainly the only person I know who could say that!”

BARBARA, A Pillar of ACTORS’ EQUITY…

BARBARA became a Member of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION on February 8, 1961 (The Union itself was only 48 years old then). Only thirteen years later, she was entered on their list of Distinguished Life Members. Five Years after that, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter named her to an advisory panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, when the Helen Hayes and Morosco Theatres were threatened with demolition, she stood out in front protesting with the Save The Theatres Campaign.

She was nominated for Equity Council the first time in October of 1963. As she put it, “My opponent was Robert Preston. I lost!” Eight months later, she was elected to her first term on Council. By 1976 she was elected as a Vice President of the AFL-CIO, the first woman who had been so honored in over ten years.

In 1963, BARBARA marched on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She tried to get a seat on one of the Equity Buses to Washington, but they were all filled up. She made a deal with Equity that if they would agree to rent an additional bus, she could fill it. They did, and she did.

After Dr. King’s Assassination in 1968, as a Member of Council, she helped organize and marched in Memphis with a Delegation from ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION.

And she Marched.

And she Marched.

And she Marched.

She would quote to us the famous Jewish Theologian and Philosopher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, saying that you pray with your feet.

She marched against the war in Vietnam and against Nixon, and for Women’s Rights and the rights of Black People, and calling for the shutdown of Nuclear Power Plants, and against apartheid, and against Guantanamo Bay.

And she marched against donald trump.

And she marched against donald trump.

As time progressed, even in a wheelchair, she marched against donald trump.

She fought for the rights of Actors and was at the lead whenever ACTORS’ EQUITY walked out on strike. She was the picket captain on the picket lines fighting for the rights of every Union Actor! In her youth, she had volunteered at Kennedy Memorial Hospital, performing for children with Cerebral Palsy and Spina Bifida – she understood the importance and transformative power of theatre for children.

She created the AEA THEATRE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES (TYA) Contract – As a member of the Equity Council, she introduced it, fought for it, negotiated it, and gave birth to it! In 1961 she had been offered a job in the Children’s Theatre Company at the prestigious Brooklyn Academy of Music. She walked into the Equity Office to ask what contract she would need to sign and they laughed, explaining that for Children’s Theatre, there was no contract and telling her to just go and do it. Elected to Equity’s Council in 1964, she vowed to create the contract that she dreamed about and she made it manifest! What’s that worth? Well, Equity News reports Members’ TYA Contract salary earnings to be over Four Million Dollars per year.

If you are working or have ever worked under an AEA TYA Contract…

If you have, or have had the benefit of an AEA Stage Manager with you on that contract…

If you got your Equity Card through a TYA Contract…

You have BARBARA COLTON to thank for that!

Once that was accomplished, one of BARBARA’s fellow-alumna from the High School of Performing Arts observed about her, “While we were making babies, Bobbi was making a contract!”

Oh, but she went further! She got these Theatre Companies and Productions funded so that Equity Actors would have a plethora of those jobs available and they could get paid for their work! As First Vice President of ACTORS’ EQUITY and as a Vice President of New York State’s AFL-CIO, she became actively involved in lobbying for the passage of a New York State Bill known as the “Board of Cooperative Educational Services [BOCES].” BOCES had been originally created in the 1940’s to provide funding when two or more public schools came together in a single district to offer educational opportunities that one school alone could not afford to do (such as sponsoring performances by theatre companies in school districts throughout the State). However, sometime later, politicians reinterpreted the law to mean that two or more districts had to come together, not schools, in order to make State Funding available, and this decreased funding substantially – this meant way less jobs for Actors. In the 1970’s, a Bill was introduced, though not passed, to close the loophole in that law. In 1985, when it was reintroduced, BARBARA, now in her Vice-Presidential positions, got in there and fought as only she could fight. And the Bill passed into law providing countless jobs for Equity Members to this day!

BARBARA created the Code of Ethics that govern Equity Members and protect their rights when they perform in Showcases even today. She served as Chair of the Showcase Code Committee for ACTORS’ EQUITY, and at the time, it was so controversial that in 1975 a special membership Meeting was held – with the number of members voicing strong opinions about this particular issue in all directions, a larger space than usual would be required. On August 25^th of that year, it was standing room only at the Majestic Theatre with BARBARA COLTON as Presiding Officer. The next month, Equity News reported that at the Council Meeting following that Membership Meeting, resolutions were passed to extend a “great vote of thanks to BARBARA for the manner in which she chaired the meeting. Variety cited BARBARA’s “impressive composure and authority.” Members noted BARBARA’s “fair and firm chairing,” “miraculously, [keeping] her head while all about her (including the signatory) were losing theirs,”  “professionalism, strength, fairness and humor,” “admiration and respect for [her] masterful way,” “patience, objectivity,  fairness and (above all) skill,” and “patience, objectivity and strength that I found astonishing and wholly admirable.” BARBARA led EQUITY to another triumphant advancement and during just her first six years as Chairperson, EQUITY collected over $250,000 in Subsidiary Rights for Equity Members.

All told, BARBARA COLTON served 24 years on Council for ACTORS EQUITY ASSOCIATION: 3 terms as a Member of Council, 1 term as Recording Secretary, 4 terms as First Vice President, and continued to work as a proud Member of ACTORS’ EQUITY for her Lifetime.

Betwixt and between, BARBARA found time to enjoy her own career onstage over some forty years. Among her many performance credits, in addition to her work onstage with Katharine Hepburn, she appeared with Chita Rivera in Born Yesterday, Ted Knight in The Impossible Years, Molly Picon and Thelma Lee in Milk and Honey, and in six productions of Fiddler on the Roof, mostly as Golde or as Yente, with Zero Mostel, Robert Merrill, Paul Lipson, and her favorite, Theodore Bikel.

BARBARA put together a website to document her Life Journey, as an Actress, as a Director, as a Political Activist, as First Vice President of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION and as a Vice President of the AFL-CIO, her diplomatic relations with the then Soviet Union, Teaching, Lecturing, and what she calls her Jewish Journey, as she was an extraordinary woman of Faith. You can learn more about her Life so well Lived here: https://barbaracoltonstages.simdif.com/ She also generously gives credit on this site to the many other Members of Council, Members of Congress, and others who were instrumental in the fights that made these things happen. It takes a village! But you will also find enough Thank You Notes and acknowledgements to see clearly that none of these things would have happened without her!

BARBARA, My Friend…

Now, just to clarify, for a woman so accomplished and so indispensable to the cause of labor, unions, and the integrity of the acting profession, my friend BARBARA was one of the funniest most ribald, cheeky and irreverent human beings it has ever been my pleasure to know!

We’re Theatre People! And so our relationship happened episodically – show to show, event to event, serving together on a Delegation to the Soviet Union or bringing her chicken soup and Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies in the Hospital, or her directing me in a show or my directing her in a show or her taking me to a Broadway Show as a young man or my taking her to a Broadway show later in life… And so many Wonderful Stories!

And so, I can best describe the Joys and Delights of our Lifelong Relationship in Stories. In no particular order, here’s a few:

We first met when I was in college. I attended Circle-in-Square Studio at the NYU Drama Department. What an esteemed faculty: Nikos Psacharopoulos, Founding Artistic Director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival and Acting Teacher at the Yale School of Drama, Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of the National Shakespeare Theatre and the head of Acting at Juilliard, among other luminaries of theatre in Higher Education. Oh, we were so painfully young – many of us just out of High School where we had been such big fish in such little ponds, playing lead roles in our high school plays. And the faculty made it their duty to break us all down and shake out of us the idea that we were talented or had any chance of making it in this industry. That seemed to be the moral imperative of theatre training in that era. The thing was that there was not a lot of thought given to the idea of building us back up. There did not seem to be any plan for that part. The teaching was extraordinary. But what a bunch of seriously depressed young theatre people these methods yielded.

Imagine our surprise when we began our third year of Undergraduate Studies and made our way down the familiar staircases all the way to the sub-basement of Circle-in-the-Square’s Broadway Theatre for our Acting Technique Class, and this bright and smiling woman seemed pleased as punch to meet us! She smiled. She beamed. She told jokes. She lit up the room with stories from the professional theatre, what it was like to work on stages across the country and how much fun it all could be! She included in her teaching countless anecdotes emphasizing the importance of Actors’ Equity as our union-to-be and why it was important. She immediately took her place as our Favorite Teacher; her Friday afternoon class was the one to which we most looked forward all week! She supported us and she built us back up! She made us appreciate our own talent and one another’s. BARBARA had served as the Chair of the New Membership Committee, whose protocols she had completely revamped, updated, and improved. Having run so many New Member Orientations for ACTORS’ EQUITY – the first Friday of every month over so many years — her enthusiasm about the Union was infectious! She made us feel like we were the luckiest people entering the best profession with the finest union in the world! She directed us in shows and cast us perfectly. I, myself, played Dudley in Willaim Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life. And OH, how we looked forward to those rehearsals! She instilled in us the one thing we had all lost and most needed: Joy in doing the work!

Years later, I would get to direct her in a new original play, A Letter From Max, presented by the Playwrights’ Construction Company under the AEA Showcase Code that she had created and fought to keep.

She had mentioned in passing that summer, one night after the theatre, that she needed to get home and get out her “poor man’s air conditioning.” I asked what that meant and she explained that when you could not afford the high electric bills of air conditioning through a New York Summer, the best way to handle that was to keep your pillows in the freezer – then, when you take them out at night, they are very cool as you rest your head on them to go to sleep. The General Managers of the Play Festival were somewhat chagrinned when I insisted that we had to have a refrigerator on stage for A Letter Form Max so that we could incorporate that piece of business – which got one of the biggest laughs of the evening!

In her position as First Vice President of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION, she hosted a delegation of Theatre Artists visiting from the CULTURAL WORKERS’ UNION of the then U.S.S.R. As the Cold War was in full swing, they were only allowed here in the United States with a 48-hour Visa. Among the activities she planned for them, BARBARA got on the phone and quickly assembled a group of her current and former students to talk with them about Theatre Training in the United States. It was exciting, even electric, for delegates from two countries in a Cold War with one another to immediately find commonality talking about theatre arts for which everyone in the room had a deep appreciation. It was only a few days later when BARBARA called each of us to let us know that the Russian Delegates were so impressed with meeting us that they had extended an invitation to the Soviet Union to experience theatre there for two weeks, all expenses paid. (Well, the airfare was not covered, but BARBARA found someone willing to underwrite the cost of that, as well.)

It was 1984. We travelled to Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk, and we saw the work of major People’s Artists, Theatres and Theatre Training Programs: from the Moscow Art Theatre to the GITIS School. BARBARA was our guide, our Ambassador, our Protector, our Earth Mother… For our Fellow Artists on the other side of the globe, BARBARA was so colorful, animated, enthusiastic and fully alive that their curiosity about American Theatre and what we did and how we did it was peaked along with their admiration for what they saw and heard.

We stayed friends, and our friendship only grew and grew over the years. As one of the perks of her position with the Union, she had Tony Voter Tickets to every Broadway Show. She never seemed to look forward to seeing the show as much as she looked forward to calling up one of us, her former students, and extending an invitation for us to join her! These invitations would make our starry-eyed theatre-industry-dreaming eyes pop out of our heads with delight, and she so enjoyed that! She took one of us with her to see every show!

The AIDS Crisis hit and it hit the Theatre Industry particularly hard! BARBARA was there!

The Theatre Community came together. It was a moment when, late one night, after theatre and leaving McHale’s, Equity Councilors Jane Neufeld and Arne Gunderson, stood on a street corner and said to one another, “We must be able to do something! We’re Theatre People!” Soon enlisting the help of Judith Rice, Patrick Quinn and Jane Robertson, they came up with the idea for The Best of the Best a huge Gala Benefit to take place at The Metropolitan Opera House on November 3, 1985, which raised 1.3 million dollars in a single night (That was a tremendous amount of money back then!) This event marked the birth of EQUITY FIGHTS AIDS which soon would merge with BROADWAY CARES and become the Theatre Industry’s beloved Charity Organization, BC/EFA. Everyone wanted to help, and I, myself, volunteered countless hours making phone calls, spreading the word, selling tickets – lots of legwork! But, alas, as the great day approached, there were no tickets to spare to allow seats for all those who volunteered. Representing ACTORS’ EQUITY, BARBARA had a pair of prime seats in the center of the Parterre Level and invited me as her guest! That night, in the lobby, we were introduced to the CEO of Marshall Field’s Department Stores. “Oh,” BARBARA quipped in her usual indefatigable humor, “You just turned me down for a credit card last month!” The gentleman simply exuded class and grace and with perfect aplomb, he reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small box of Frango Mints, the store’s renowned signature chocolates, handed it to Barbara with his business card, and said, “Please accept this with my greatest apologies. If you will call my office this week, we shall remedy that for you immediately.”

BARBARA looked at the box of chocolates and exclaimed, “FRANGO MINTS!!! These are Orgasmic!” adding, “Thank You So Much!”

Not ten minutes later, we were in our seats, as the house lights dimmed to half – that dramatic moment at The Met when the chandeliers are raised throughout the house and disappear to the ceiling for the show to begin. In this rather dramatic moment, BARBARA had noticed a friend seated in the next box and extending her arm to offer a chocolate, called out to her, breaking the silence, “Have a Frango Mint! They are ORGASMIC!!!!”

We grew ever closer over the years! I still lived at home with my parents in my twenties, and for my Birthday dinner one year, I had over BARBARA along with another friend, a rather sophisticated socialite. After dinner we somehow got into a discussion about funny names and I said that I had heard about a woman whose last name was “Pigg” and her parents named her “Ima.” My socialite friend was only slightly amused at my off-color remark, when Barbara who was knitting while seated next to her on our sofa, chimed in with, “I went to school with a girl named Vagina Copenis!” (To this day, I wonder if that was a mispronunciation of something more like “Virginia Kophinos.”)

Barbara never married but she always said that in order to even consider dating a man, he would have to be what she called “4S!” explaining further that that stood for: “Single. Straight. Solvent. And Circumcised!”

I would call BARBARA whenever I had a question about all things Jewish – she had an expertise from studying the Torah and a gift for explaining things so well! And whenever she needed help understanding anything to do with the Catholic Religion, she would call me. One time, she wanted help understanding John 19 which says in verse 25, “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” And trying to figure out if this indicated three or four women, she asked me in her own unique phrasing, “So, there was His mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mrs. Clopas…”

BARBARA did eventually deepen her studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, having the title of Maven conferred upon her.

When I learned about Affirmations as a practice, I shared this with BARBARA one evening over dinner. I explained how instead of repeating to ourselves thoughts of a poverty consciousness, the idea was to affirm thoughts of prosperity, giving the example of how she might use phrases such as,
“I, Barbara, deserve to be wealthy and prosperous!”
“You, Barbara, deserve to be wealthy and prosperous!”
“Barbara deserves to be wealthy and prosperous!”

That evening, shortly after I got home, my phone rang and I heard these proclamations in her most dramatic voice,
“I, Barbara, deserve to be wealthy and prosperous!”
“You, Barbara, deserve to be wealthy and prosperous!”
“Barbara deserves to be wealthy and prosperous!”

She then added excitedly, “I repeated it all the way home! And it worked! When I got home, there was a check in my mailbox!” Then she admitted, “It was an unemployment check, but nevertheless…”

BARBARA told me that when Katharine Hepburn was starring in – – I think the show might have been Coco – – a situation arose. The young female lead had a very big number in the second act in which she had to appear in a beautiful ball gown. When they got to costume fittings, as they were getting toward dress rehearsal, the designer put the gown on this young actress. The actress was so displeased. She felt it was ill-fitting, did not suit her, and was uncomfortable with it. Ms. Hepburn could see that, and she took the young woman aside and said she would take care of her. She invited her up to her home in Connecticut where she had a huge space that contained all of the many Hollywood ball gowns that she herself had worn to the Oscars and to many galas over the years. She sent a car for the young woman to get her up to Connecticut and back on their day off. The girl tried on a number of gowns and found one they both agreed was absolutely marvelous and perfect for the show. The next day, they brought it to the costume designer who approved it and agreed that it was much more wonderful than what she had originally tried out.

The young woman was very happy with this solution. Rehearsals continued. About 2 or 3 days later, the young actress found in her mailbox backstage, an envelope. She opened it, and it was a note in Miss Hepburn’s own handwriting. It said something to the effect of: Dear Kate, I want to Thank You for taking the time to meet with me and to help me to find a ball gown for my second act number. I so appreciate your consideration and how much time you spent with me to help me and advise me. I am most grateful to you for the generosity, time and care that you took out of your schedule to make that happen. And I just want you to know how much I appreciate it. Sincerely, and signed, in Ms. Hepburn’s writing, the young actress’s name.
Then she punctuated the story with her signature look – head tilted down with eyes looking up and directly at you, as if to say, “You got the lesson here, right!? Make sure you remember it!”

Just recently, I had a student at NYU seek me out and contact me to ask my advice about a career in Casting. I made time to speak with her and advised her from my many decades of expertise in the field – spent a full hour with her. A few days later, having not heard a word from this charming young creature, I emailed her that story. Still have heard nothing back. But Grateful to be passing on the lessons and the wisdom! Thank You, BARBARA!

Eventually, BARBARA needed to use a wheelchair or a scooter to get around. Didn’t stop her from using her voice (and her mechanics)! A group of us met her for dinner at a restaurant near her home on the West Side, and she rode in with her wheelchair adorned with a very large banner above it that read, “Humpty Dump Trumpty!” and she was delighted to discuss it with the restaurant’s many guests who approached her about it with deep admiration.

Years ago, someone brought up the name of a particular Broadway Producer. BARBARA clearly knew who it was and nodded in a way that prompted the question, “Oh, are you close?”
“Close?” BARBARA responded in a tone that made us all somewhat fearful of what might be coming next. She continued in her voice of boldest pronouncement, “He and I are so close that if I were walking down the street and I noticed him on the other side of the street and he were on fire, and I had to pee, I would not so much as cross the street to pee on him to put the fire out!”

Her knack for hyperbole was uncanny!

And then there was the night in 2013 when I took her with me to the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Winslow Boy. She had done their production Off-Broadway in 1980. She had invited me so many times as her guest over the years when she had Tony Tickets. Now, a Tony Voter myself, I was able to invite her to see Broadway Shows as my guest. We were funneling into the main doors of Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre – quite a crowded bottleneck, the way that lobby is designed. And in the midst of such a thick crowd of patrons, she turned to me with her big booming voice and asked, “Do you have anything to chew or to suck!?” I reached in my pocket for my Listerine Pocket Pack Breath Strips and offered her one. Having never seen these before, she asked what to do with it. I explained that you simply place it on your tongue and it dissolves with a burst of freshness. She held it up to the light, examined it, and asked, again quite loudly, “Shiny side up or shiny side down!?” I whispered to her that I had never noticed that one side was different than the other and to please just place it on her tongue. It felt to me that the crowd was taking an awful long time to get inside. BARBARA followed my instructions and proclaimed to the crowd, quite vociferously, “Instant Hysterectomy!!!”

Another time, years earlier, we were coming from the theatre together, late night in Times Square, and a crowd had formed at the corner waiting to cross the street. The light changed and the crowd started to move when a motorcyclist revved his engine, running the red light and stopping the crowd from crossing the street (even though we now had the green light), just so that he could go ahead of everyone. “BARBARA raised her arm spreading her thumb and forefinger about two inches apart and announced to the crowd, punctuating each word as she spoke, “You see, he has a very small one, and that is why he finds it necessary to do that!”

Every Moment Fabulous!

Every Moment making people Laugh!

Every Moment so full of Life!

Thank You, Dear Teacher, Mentor, and Friend, for spending more than two thirds of my Life with me, and half of yours!

I treasured every moment!

I will treasure you always!

#  #  #