Play Will Benefit Scholarship Fund—

Gurney’s ‘Love Letters,’ For A Friend And Daughter

By Shannon Hicks

DANBURY — At Shepaug High School in Washington (Conn.), every senior is required to do a year-long senior year project. The students are free to create the themes of their projects, but the outcome of each project should benefit the community at large whenever possible.

Some of Shepaug’s seniors this year are raising money for organizations, organizing a fundraiser tennis match, and burning and selling audio CDs.

Not all projects are money-makers, either. One student is teaching Spanish classes, while another is writing a book in French that will be used for elementary school students.

Senior Kirsten Pratt has created something that will benefit and entertain the community while also honoring the memory of her friend Tam Farrow, a teenager who died less than a year ago. Tam was a daughter of the actress Mia Farrow and a dear friend of Kirsten.

Through the efforts of Miss Pratt, the actor Sam Waterston — the award-winning actor of TV’s Law and Order — and Ms Farrow — whose list of screen successes ranges from Rosemary’s Baby through The Great Gatsby to Hannah and her Sisters and Forget Me Never — will be at Danbury High School next weekend to perform A.R. Gurney’s beloved and oft-produced two-person play Love Letters.

Kirsten Pratt and Nguyen Thi Tam Farrow met and became fast friends when both girls were in seventh grade. Kirsten’s family had just moved into Roxbury, and Tam had recently moved into the Bridgewater home of her new family.

Shepaug High School’s student body lives not only in Washington, where the school is located, but also Bridgewater and Roxbury. The school is also open to students who live in Sherman.

“She had a great personality, and a great laugh,” Kirsten said. “Everyone liked her, and we immediately became friends.”

Tam never used her blindness as a crutch. The teenager became a talented sculptor, and she was always looking for ways she could help others.

In her 1997 memoir What Falls Away, Mia Farrow described her daughter Tam as “an inspiration.”

Ms Farrow adopted the youngster in early 1992 directly from the Vietnamese orphanage for blind children where the girl was living at the time. Tam joined a family that would eventually number 14 children, ten of whom were adopted by the kind-hearted actress and devoted mother.

“Although she had lost everything — her parents, home, country, language, friends, and her sight — still, with doubts and difficulties, she was able to open up to each member of the family, one by one. I have never respected anyone more than Tam,” Ms Farrow wrote in her memoir. “She helped to restore my perspective, and taught me about surviving with grace and without bitterness.”

By 1997, Tam had “made up for her lost school years,” Ms Farrow also wrote of her daughter. “Today she wins top marks in the eighth grade. She’s a wiz at math, and along with [older brother] Satchel, she is a passionate gardener; by touch, Tam can identify any plant or weed.”

One of the toughest things any parent could ever go through is the death of a child. Mia Farrow went through that last spring, when 19-year old Tam died in March of a heart ailment.

Tam had a reputation as someone who was always looking for a way to help others. Her mother wrote fondly of one moment when the teenager gently reminded her to stock up on Asian rice and nuk-mam, a Vietnamese fish sauce, when Ms Farrow was preparing to bring home another blind Vietnamese girl, Minh. Her still-mourning friend Kirsten also knew that one of Tam’s goals was to assemble a scholarship fund for those pursuing careers in special education and the arts.

Last fall, as Kirsten began her final year as a high school student and knew it was time to start working on her senior project, the memory of her late friend came back to her.

Following her friend’s wishes, there will be two scholarships awarded at the end of the 2000-01 school year in memory of Tam Farrow. One will be given to an art student, and another will go to a senior planning to specialize in special education in college, just as Tam had wanted.

 “We established the Tam Farrow Memorial Scholarship Fund this school year,” Kirsten said. There are two parts to her senior project: one was to establish the fund soundly and legally, and the second was to raise money for the fund. “Love Letters is one way of raising money for this scholarship.”

Last fall, Kirsten sent out 500 letters across the country, seeking donations for the establishment of the fund. She then moved on to setting up the February 17 performance.

Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston are both donating their time for the production.

“I was really happy” when Ms Farrow agreed to the project, Kirsten said recently. “It’s really nice of her to do this in Tam’s memory. It’s really great that they can both make this happen.”

Love Letters is going to be performed at Danbury High rather than Shepaug High School because when it came time to decide on the performance date and location, the Washington school’s auditorium was being renovated.

Shepaug’s auditorium, it turns out, may actually be ready for use by next weekend, but Kirsten and her advisors decided it would be safer to book a venue that would be available without hesitation. An additional bonus came up with the decision to go with the Danbury school’s auditorium: The Shepaug auditorium holds 500 seats, while Danbury’s can seat 1,200 audience members.

The award-winning Love Letters, a bare-bones classic by A.R. Gurney, is a 90-minute story of two childhood soulmates who carry out a 60-year relationship through letters. The play has enjoyed tremendous success since its 1989 debut.

Love Letters chronicles the friendship between the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd, III, and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, their tale gradually unfolding through the correspondence they share over the course of their lives. Audiences are captivated by Andy and Melissa’s bittersweet relationship, from the happy exuberance of childhood confidences and the teasing flirtations of college youth to the passionate thrill of secret lovers and the empty heartache of a love gone wrong.

The work’s two-character cast reads the play side-by-side at a desk. The play’s co-stars have included real-life husband and wife actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. In August 1999 Oscar winner Patricia Neal appeared with television star James Douglas is a three-show benefit for the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem.

“I spoke with Mia and told her what I was doing,” Kirsten said recently on the decision to go with the Gurney work. “I asked her if she would be willing to help me, and she and Sam Waterston had just finished doing Love Letters in New Milford, so she was actually the one who suggested [the play]. That’s how the whole thing got started.”

Ms Farrow and Mr Waterston teamed up last September for a one-evening performance of Gurney’s play to raise money for powerALERT. The environmental protection agency is New Milford-based and successfully argued a case last fall before the Connecticut Siting Council, winning a 9-0 decision which prohibited a California company from coming in and building a 500-megawatt power plant in New Milford.

“Tam had a big lake in the back of her yard, and we would go walking around that lake, or go ice skating,” Kirsten remembered last week. “We listened to music, we’d go out to eat, we’d talk on the telephone — we did that every night.

“We liked to watch movies too,” continued Kirsten. “They have those movies that are for the blind, that tell you what’s happening, but as long as you told her what was going on she was happy.

“She was really happy, and she was a good friend.”

Advance tickets for Love Letters can be purchased at Wesley’s Shoes in Southbury, or Colonial Ford or Always Summer in Danbury. Tickets are $40 each, or $65 for those who wish to attend a post-performance reception with the actors.

Tickets will also be available at the door. Call 860/355-5323 for additional information.