Mari Gorman is an American actress perhaps best known for her work in television, particularly as one of the informal repertory company of the 1970s and 1980s sitcom Barney Miller, on which she made a half-dozen appearances. She has won two Obie Awards and is the founder of the New York City theater company Glass Beads Theatre Ensemble.

Biographie

Mari Gorman broke into professional theater with a production of the Arnold Wesker play The Kitchen, directed by Jack Gelber. One of her first major screen roles was as murder victim and mob pawn Taffy Simms on the television soap opera The Edge of Night in the 1970s. She was a cast member of the Barbara Eden sitcom Harper Valley PTA, playing PTA member, Vivian Washburn, and was one of the informal repertory company of the 1970s and 1980s sitcom Barney Miller, on which she made a half-dozen appearances, including as an amateur prostitute housewife (in Series 4 Episode 3, "Bugs") and as a police detective with a jealous husband (in Series 4, Episode 18, "Wojo's Problem" and other episodes).

Theater work includes the lead role in The Girl in The Red Convertible, by Enrique Buenaventura, in the premiere production of The Third Stage at Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Ontario, Canada; Pam in the American premiere of Saved by Edward Bond, with the Yale Repertory Theatre; and Kathy in the world premiere of Moonchildren (originally titled Cancer) by Michael Weller at Royal Court Theatre in London, England.

Her films include Goodbye, Columbus (1969), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), 10 (1979), Oh, God! Book II (1980), and Max Dugan Returns (1983).

She has also directed theater and teaches acting, and founded the New York City theater company Glass Beads Theatre Ensemble. In 2003, she produced and directed Cries for Peace, composed of firsthand accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors. She produced and directed playwright Michael Locascio's Glass Beads production Lily of the Conservative Ladies, staged at the June Havoc Theatre; and she produced, directed and, with Danna Call and Craig Pospisil, co-wrote Browsing, performed as part of the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival.