Media Path Podcast Powerful Playwriting & Collective TV Icon Memories with Anson Williams, Linda Purl & Sharon Scott Williams
Sharon Scott Williams bares her soul in a play called Crazy Mama, a powerful, personal story that's at once unique and wholly relatable. It's about family, mental illness and the bonds and devotion that propel us to protect and defend those we hold dear.
Crazy Mama is running at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, CA March 26 - April 6, 2025. It stars Linda Purl and is directed by Anson Williams, both icons of classic TV, including Happy Days, and one of whom is married to playwright Sharon Scott Williams. (You only get one guess which.)
Sharon came home from school, at the age of eight, to find her mother wielding a knife, in a psychotic episode. The ensuing events led to extended hospitalization and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Her family’s coping heroism inspired her, decades later, to write a memoir, which Sharon’s husband, actor and director Anson Williams (Yes, you guess correctly), felt would make an astonishing one-woman stage show.
With Linda Purl in the starring role (playing 16 different characters!) the stage play of 'Crazy Mama' gives audiences the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences and it provides a conduit to conversations about mental illness, trauma and family dynamics.
Sharon tells how the crafting of the play inspired the processing of her long buried, confusing emotional cocktail of fear, guilt, shame, and anger and with similar Virginia ancestral roots, Linda identified instantly with the work and the power of its messages.
Plus, Sharon, Anson and Linda all claim Covid Love stories! Sharon, an Ojai, California Real Estate agent, had shown Anson a house a decade earlier. But, with both of them single, she received a text invitation from him for lunch! They spent the pandemic falling in love.
Linda ran into an acquaintance with a very similar show-biz history, Patrick Duffy. Their mutual friend, Richard Thomas paved the way and their Zoom friendship blossomed into romance! Also, we are proud to present our all-new IMDB Roulette Sub Genre quiz sensation, Were You On It, featuring full disclosures about Anson and Linda’s appearances on: Baywatch, The Waltons, The Secret Storm, Fantasy Island, Black Market Baby and I Married A Centerfold!
In recommendations--
Weezy: Documentary Beatles 64 on Disney+
Fritz: Documentary Becoming Katharine Graham on Amazon Prime
Path Points of Interest:
Crazy Mama at The Rubicon Theatre
Linda Purl in "POSSIBILITIES - songs of HOPE, RISK and MAYBE" at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood