Barbara Orson

ORSON, BARBARA, 88, passed away on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. An accomplished American stage actress, Barbara Orson co-founded the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence. She was born in New York. In 1956, she married Dr. Jay M. Orson and raised three children: twin daughters, Beth and Diane, and her son, Theodore. Orson’s first acting experience took place at the age of three on New York’s Lower East Side at the University Settlement House. When she was six, Orson appeared on the stage of the Martin Beck Theater. She attended Brooklyn College and was a scholarship student at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. In the 1950s, as the leading soubrette of the American Savoyards - a light opera company that performed the works of Gilbert and Sullivan - she toured the U.S. and Europe and appeared in radio and television. Orson appeared in more than one hundred productions at Trinity Repertory Company in a wide spectrum of roles including Madame Ranyevskaya in The Cherry Orchard; Christine Mannon in Morning Becomes Electra; Lady Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret; Ethel Rosenberg in Angels in America, Part 1; and Jack’s Mother in Into the Woods, Nurse Edna in The Cider House Rules and portrayals of the Ghost of Christmas Present and Mrs. Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol. She performed in a televised broadcast for PBS of Adrian Hall's and Richard Cumming's play about Oscar Wilde, Feasting with Panthers in 1974, and toured with the company to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 1968. Other professional credits included roles at the Yale Repertory Company, the American Repertory Theater, the Dallas Theater Center, and the Williamstown (Mass.) Theater Festival. She was also featured in the independent film Mission Hill (1982). Barbara Orson is survived by her husband Jay; daughters Beth and Diane, son Ted; sons-in law Robert W. Elner and Tim Moran and daughter-in-law Iris van der Walde; and grandchildren Joshua and Jacob Orson; and Emily and Max Moran. Funeral services will be held Friday, July 21st at 11:00 a.m. at the Redwood Chapel in Swan Point Cemetery, 585 Blackstone Blvd, Providence, RI. Friends of the family are invited to Shiva at The Lighthouse of Lincoln, 425 Albion Road, Lincoln, RI 02865, Friday, July 21st from 1:30-3:30 p.m. and Sunday July 23rd from 2:00-4:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Lighthouse of Lincoln Staff Appreciation Fund.