Writer/Director of "The Answer" Profiled on Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon This Labor Day Weekend

Chicago, IL September 4, 2004 -- This Labor Day Weekend, September 5-6 on Channel 9 WGN-TV – when Jerry Lewis and a host of celebrities hit the airwaves on behalf of children, women, and men who suffer from neuromuscular diseases – Chicagoan Delle Chatman will be among them. She'll be there pitching for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and allowing audiences to see how her own life was turned upside down by a disabling disease the MDA has helped her harness. On Saturday, September 4 at 6:30 AM, Chatman appears on WGN-TV's "People to People" with host Steve Sanders sharing the story of the sudden onset of the autoimmune disease dermatomyositis that left her so weak she was unable to feed herself for two months.

A rare "side effect" of abdominal malignancies, dermatomyositis descended upon Chatman along with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer in November 2002. Incredibly, the cancer has gone into remission. But treatment of the second disease – much of which is underwritten by the Muscular Dystrophy Association – has been crucial in allowing the writer-director to resume her creative career.

"When I first started seeing doctors at Northwestern Memorial's Clinic for Neuromuscular Diseases I couldn't roll my own body over in bed," says Chatman, "But soon I was in a wheelchair, then using a walker, then a cane, and now I brandish a pretty stylish walking stick. Without the mercy of God, the MDA, and the treatment I've received at the clinic, I'd probably still be bedbound." The playwright-patient's journey into recovery will be profiled during the national telethon.

Chatman – whose career spans episodic television, film, books, and theater – doubted whether she would write anything after these illnesses hijacked her life and then realigned her priorities. But a year after chemo ended, once she was able to spend significant time sitting up at the computer, her first project turns out to be "THE ANSWER," a play begun almost twenty years ago even though it reads like today's headlines.

Set and performed in a Catholic church, this spiritual musical in one act explores the dilemma of a Catholic Democrat under fire for supporting pro-choice legislation. A month before Election Day, a reporter reveals the fact that the senator's own daughter had an abortion when she was in college, an abortion her father knew nothing about.

"THE ANSWER" will be performed October 1-3, Friday and Saturday 8PM, Sunday at 5PM at St. Gertrude's Catholic Parish in Edgewater, 1420 W. Granville Avenue, Chicago. Reservations may be made by calling St. Gertrude's Rectory (773) 764-3621 or by visiting the production's website:

http://www.theanswerin2004.com

To learn more about "THE ANSWER," please contact publicist Regina Sawyer
at (773) 338-3718 or at regina@theanswerin2004.com





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