Meet ‘Last Night of Ballyhoo’ actor Kate Dirrigl
The 1997 Tony Award-winning comedy/drama The Last Night of Ballyhoo opens at the Laboratory Theater of Florida on April 14. Among the show’s talented cast is Kate Dirrigl.
Kate made her Lab Theater debut in last Christmas’ production of Jeff Goode’s highly-satirical The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, in which she played Dancer, a ditzy, adorably clueless Jewish ex-ballerina who found refuge at the North Pole after it became illegal and downright unsafe for reindeer to dance the Nutcracker, Swan Lake and the other classics back in the day. Then she returned to The Lab as a blond-haired, blue-eyed shiksa girlfriend in Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews. The stage direction included in Harmon’s script describes Melody as “like 
someone who would have been abducted when she was nine but returned to her parents unharmed.” Vacuous to a fault, when asked what type of a name Melody is, she answers, “Oh, I don’t know, Caucasian?” She was last seen in Wings, where she reprised the role of Amy, a miraculously patient, uber-competent therapist who establishes a close 
rapport with stroke veteran Emily Stilson and members of her speech therapy group.
Kate has a B.A. degree in theater performance from the University of Texas Pan American, where she was involved in numerous plays, including Arsenic and Old Lace (in which she played Elaine Harper), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in which she played Cecile Volanges) and Peter Pan (where she was both Captain Hook and Mrs. Darling). When she is not on stage, Kate works as a preschool teacher for the Montessori School of Fort Myers. At Montessori, Kate holds the dubious 
distinction of being the school’s “most caffeinated preschool teacher.”
March 31, 2017.
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About the Author
Tom Hall is both an amateur artist and aspiring novelist who writes art quest thrillers. He is in the final stages of completing his debut novel titled "Art Detective," a story that fictionalizes the discovery of the fabled billion-dollar Impressionist collection of Parisian art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, thought by many to have perished during World War II when the collection's hiding place, Castle de Rastignac in southern France, was destroyed by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for attacks made by members of the Resistance operating in the area. A former tax attorney, Tom holds a bachelor's degree as well as both a juris doctorate and masters of laws in taxation from the University of Florida. Tom lives in Estero, Florida with his fiancee, Connie, and their four cats.