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Respected actor Jack Parrish dies of pancreatic cancer at age 56

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

David Stephenson

Jack Parrish, an actor and director from Richmond, Va., who spent the last few years of his life enriching the Central Kentucky theater scene, died Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

Mr. Parrish was born in Richmond and got into theater while in high school. His theater, film and TV career included the roles of Brad Garrick on Another World and Brian Collier on All My Children, as well as stage work in New York and regional stages around the country, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

In 2004, Actors Guild of Lexington's then-new artistic director, Richard St. Peter, hired Mr. Parrish to direct the first production under his watch: Yasmina Reza's play Art.

Mr. Parrish eventually moved to Central Kentucky, where he directed the drama department at Kentucky State University in Frankfort and was active in area theater.

"Watching him act was like watching a master class in the craft," said Tim X. Davis, Mr. Parrish's predecessor at KSU and one of the actors in that 2004 production of Art. "I was proud to have Jack take my place at Kentucky State and continue to improve upon the program we had built there. His colleagues and students from KSU, many of whom I'm still in contact with, have nothing but the most positive things to say about him and his work. His work onstage here in Lexington, brief though it was, was simply stunning."

Mr. Parrish's roles in Lexington included Polonius and the Gravedigger in Actors Guild's 2007 production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. He was set to take center stage as Falstaff in Actors Guild's summer 2008 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor for Shakespeare at Equus Run but had to bow out because of his cancer treatments.

"It breaks my heart that the community never got to see his Falstaff ... as it would have blown people out of their seats," Davis said.

Mr. Parrish eventually returned to Richmond with his wife, Kathy Ann Parrish. He was in hospice care when he died.

"I feel like I have lost a family member and one of my best friends all rolled into one," said St. Peter, who resigned his post at Actors Guild in August. "He was an extraordinary actor, a brilliant interpreter of Shakespeare, a terrific director and a true 'man of the theater.'"