Penny Orloff was a working actor and dancer in Los Angeles when a Juilliard scholarship took her to New York, where she sang more than 20 Principal Soprano roles for New York City Opera and played featured roles on Broadway. In a career spanning over 50 years, she starred in 100+ productions off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Symphony, theater, and opera engagements have taken her all over the US, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. She has recorded for Vox-Turnabout, Warner-Nonesuch, Protone, and Original Cast Records. Penny’s one woman show, Jewish Thighs on Broadway—based on her award-winning comic novel, available at Amazon.com—toured the US for a decade, including a successful run off-Broadway. She is currently touring in a new one woman show, Songs and Stories from a Not-Quite-Kosher Life. A Tarot reader for over 50 years, Penny has used the cards in her counseling practice for decades. For ten years she was the Art Therapist at a residential drug and alcohol rehab facility in Malibu. She is the author of Art as Lifework, Life as Artwork, a creativity seminar and workbook that has been offered nation-wide since 1991; and is currently at work on her new book, Who Would You Be If You Had Nothing to Bitch About? Her personal development system, Wishful Thinking, synthesizes the human proclivity for magic and symbol with practical steps to the manifestation of your fondest dreams. She is a regular contributor of stories to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books.
Learn more about Jewish Thighs on Broadway . . .
Breaking into Show Business is like breaking into Fort Knox; breaking out, we’re talking Alcatraz. Penny Orloff’s novel is populated by a meshuggah family, on-again-off-again lovers, diets from Hell, and a Rogue’s Gallery from the Showbiz underworld. Miriam Rosen has been in love with Show Business since childhood, perpetually fantasizing herself as the Little Trouper Who Finds Stardom and True Love by the end of the movie. After a hundred shows and a hundred one-night stands, love and fame still elude her, and she’d rather suck a tailpipe than face another audition. Complicating her search for the Busby Berkeley ending is her primitive alter-ego—The Beast. This creature can track, kill, and devour a whole cheesecake; can kick the crap out of smaller muggers on the sidewalks of New York; and can’t say no to recreational sex with a famous director on the Third Ring of the New York State Theater while a public tour is in progress. When Miriam finds true love at last, she is faced with an agonizing choice: Showbiz or The Guy.
