As a young mother in the 1950's, Lee Brady managed to take some drama classes at MPC, but because she was the wife of a military intelligence officer and her family moved every three years, she finally completed her master's degree in Asian theatre at the University of Hawaii. While attending the university, she did some acting, including the role of Linda Loman, Willie's wife in DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

After returning to the Monterey Peninsula, she auditioned for dinner theatre and was cast in a small part by Morgan Stock. Later she earned a second master's degree in playwriting at San Francisco State when she decided to focus on writing plays rather than on performing. She was especially inspired by the notable playwrite Sam Shepard, as well as by other writers, when she attended their workshops. Since her children were now grown, Lee spent every morning writing, a regimen which honed her craft.

In the late Seventies, Lee taught older adults at MPC and formed a play-acting group for seniors called The Peninsula Players. The group toured the Monterey Peninsula performing the works of Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward. Eventually the group was taken over by Nick Zanides.

Lee and her husband, who is himself a creative writing teacher at an all-girls' school in San Francisco, moved to San Francisco in 1980 shortly after purchasing a home in Pacific Grove that they still own. Lee, however, wanted to continue her involvement with theatre on the Monterey Peninsula so she wrote to MPC theatre-director Peter DeBono and was subsequently hired to teach a Saturday playwriting class at the college. Many local actors attended the class: Anne Mattingly, Henry Guevera, Ron Cohen, Lyn Whiting, Jerry Connelly, David McMillen, Richard Boynton and Laura Reyna, to name a few. Lee feels that actors make good playwriting students because, as she states, "Actors don't write boring stuff; they write for an audience."

Linnet Harlan is a good example of what happens in the class. A former Silicon-Valley lawyer, Linnet has been a class member for the past three years and has become involved in both acting and directing in order to learn more about playwriting.

As the same students tended to repeat the class, it became a writers' workshop. To provide an opportunity for students who were already attending college to attend her class, Lee moved it to Thursday, whence it has been held ever since. The ten-minute plays written by the students are performed during the Christmas holidays before a live audience at the college's SRO theatre. Lee is considering presenting only the best of the plays before a live audience in the spring of the year and having the bulk of the plays viewed only by the class members themselves.

This spring Lee will travel to Guatemala to perform in a ten-day run of THE GIN GAME, the two-person show made famous by the husband-wife team of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Who knows what else lies in store for the versatile and inspiring teacher, playwrite and actress?