Ed Asner, Marion Ross to perform new comedy at broadcast museum

26-Mar-13 – A new situation comedy being pitched to television networks will be filmed next month at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in River North. TV legends Ed Asner (left) and Marion Ross are among cast members who will perform I’ve Got a Life in Kalamazoo before a live audience in mid-April.

Described in a news release as “Everybody Loves Raymond meets Will & Grace,” the show is about a professional singer who is trying to move her career from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Chicago. Teresa Thome, who will narrate the performance at MBC, based it on her one-woman show. Feedback from the audience will be encouraged.

Asner, now 83 years old, won an Emmy Award for playing Lou Grant on two television shows, The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1977 and Lou Grant from 1977 to 1982. He was the voice of Carl Fredricksen in the 2009 animated film Up along with hundreds of other roles he landed after attending the University of Chicago.

On March 12, Asner was briefly hospitalized and treated for exhaustion following a performance in Gary, Indiana. Asner was in Gary to perform a one-man show in which he portrays President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ross (right) is best known for her role as Marion Cunningham on the television series Happy Days that ran from 1974 to 1984. (Photo courtesy of The Old Globe.)

Cast members include Vicki Lewis, who played Beth on the NBC sitcom News Radio, Broadway actor Gregory Jbara, and Patrick W. Ziegler, who won an Emmy in 2009 as executive producer for a children’s television show.

• What: I’ve Got a Life in Kalamazoo
• Wait, what? Live, staged reading of a new TV show
• When: April 13 at 7:30 p.m., April 14 at 2 p.m.
• Where: Museum of Broadcast Communications, 360 North State Street MAP
• Tickets: Range from $22 to $155 and are on sale at LifeInKzoo.com