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Lee Chamberlin




Lee Chamberlin (born Alverta La Pallo; February 14, 1938 – May 25, 2014) was an American theatrical, film and television actress. She studied at NYU and The Sorbonne in Paris, France receiving honors for her mastery of French grammar both written and oral. She perfected her study of the craft of acting at HB Studios in New York and studied with Uta Hagen. She attended grammar school at Convent of the Sacred Heart School in Harlem.
Lee began her career on stage in "Slave ship" written by LeRoi Jones who would later be known as Amiri Baraka in 1968. "Do Your Own Thing" a musical loosely based on Shakespeare and "The Believers." She was cast as Cordelia to James Earl Jones King Lear in 1974 at Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park Festival in New York City's Delacorte Theatre. The production also featured Raoul Julia, Ellen Holly, Rosalind Cash and Paul Sorvino. Later Chamberlin went to to win half a dozen AUDELCO Awards for Excellence in Black Theatre on November 21, 1988 for the direction of her own musical play "Struttin" that was performed under the aegis of Rosetta LeNoir AMAS Repertory Theatre located on Was 104th Street. From February 10 - 14, 2010 the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York presented Chamberlin's one woman reading "Objects in the Mirror…(are closer than they seem) directed by Rachel Lampert. In 2011 Chamberlin founded a non profit organization Lee Chamberlin's Playwrights' Inn Project, Inc. establishing it in France to nurture the work of African American playwrights. Theatre was her first love “The reciprocity between the actor and the live audience, the immediacy of contact with them creates a living organism that breathes and pulses and makes one feel very alive.”

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