Parallel Lives

About the Cast and Director

Peg O’Keef is a native Floridian. Central Florida performance credits include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Angels in America, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Three Tall Women, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Under Milk Wood, Happy Days, Our Town, A Delicate Balance, Ubu Roi, The Constant Wife, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and Lion in Winter.  Locally, Peg has directed numerous productions, including Antigone (twice), Grapes of Wrath, The Piano Lesson (featuring Joe Reed), Indians, Le Bete, Orpheus Descending, American Buffalo, and Camino Real.  Peg teaches at Rollins (humanities) and UCF (film) and gigs at Sleuths. When not immersed in theatre or teaching, Peg spends her time editing collateral materials for the Florida Film Festival and as Show Director for Fantasy of Flight, where she indulges her fascination with vintage aviation, or in her garden, where she indulges a losing battle with vines and weeds.  She is deliriously delighted to have married Andy Salter.

About the play, Peg remarks, “What strikes me most often as I work on this is the tremendous courage and compassion that Beverly and Bill must possess to expose so much truth... and how much of what they say lies just below the surface of all of us--yet we have to keep it buried lest we bruise each other or ourselves. I think the gift they give each other (and all the rest of us in the form of this play) is faith that we can withstand the discomfort necessary for growth. The play is fearless.”

Also... “I am absolutely loving the creative reunion with Jerry Klein and Joe Reed prompted by this production. We've worked together before in different configurations, and those two guys bring oodles of integrity to the process of staging and performing. And because the play makes the demand of fearlessness, it's critical to be in an environment that allows (even encourages) strong commitment and confrontation. I learn from Jerry and Joe every time we meet... and the collaboration is deeply satisfying.”

Joe Reed, a product of Asbury Park, NJ, (where he grew up with Danny DeVito) is a self-described “General Purpose” actor. While he has been an active stage actor for the past eighteen years, he is also an accomplished screen actor with a long list of feature film (D.A.R.Y.L; Splash, Too); TV (Sheena, America’s Most Wanted, Clarissa Explains It All, Welcome Freshman); and major commercial credits (McDonalds, Ford, AARP, New York Life, Michelob Lite, Bank of America, Sun Communications, WalMart, Blue Cross/Blue Shield et al.). He recently finished filming a Claycastle Production, The Message. He is particularly taken with August Wilson’s theatrical works and has performed in Fences (three different times), The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running. He has also performed at a number of Central Florida venues in The Boys Next Door, I’m Not Rappaport, and earned multiple awards with his portrayal of “Hoke” in Driving Miss Daisy.

Regarding Parallel Lives, Joe is reunited with his director of The Piano Lesson, Peg O’Keef, who he is thrilled to be working next to, and long time professional light designer, Jerry Klein, who directed this great work’s Seminole Community College second coming. Joe considers it a privilege to be portraying Bill Maxwell and believes “it is critical that we continue a dialogue on race relations in the U.S. and abroad. It’s about education, understanding, and tolerance.” “Bev and Bill demonstrated exceptional courage in their encounter, the same courage that we all need to exhibit.”

Joe is a Vietnam Veteran who proudly served in and retired from the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was a pilot and a paratrooper. He is married, has three children and eight grandchildren. When not trying to learn lines, he enjoys family, friends, jazz, being a college psych professor, and officiating basketball games.