Ed Begley Jr. is back on a stage for the first time in roughly a decade, and he has turned the occasion into a fundraiser for the disease he lives with, ABC7 reports.
The show
Begley, 76, is starring alongside his daughter Hayden Begley in "Proof," the David Auburn drama that won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best play. The run is at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, with performances scheduled Thursday through Sunday.
For Begley it is a notable return: by ABC7's account, it is his first stage acting in about eleven years. He has one of the longer résumés in television, stretching back six decades and including his run as Dr. Victor Ehrlich on "St. Elsewhere," but the theater is a different and more exposed kind of work, and he is doing it now, at 76.
Why it is more than a play
What lifts this above a standard revival is the reason behind it. Begley was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2016, and every cent the production takes in is going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the research organization founded by another actor whose public life has been shaped by the same illness.
"100% of the proceeds from every single production goes to the Michael J. Fox Foundation," Hayden Begley said, pointing people to donate through the production's Instagram, @proofforparkinsons.
That is an unusually clean arrangement. Charity performances often route a percentage, or the proceeds of a single gala night, to a cause. Here the entire run is the fundraiser, and the person at the center of it is not lending a name from a distance but doing the work on stage while managing the condition the money is meant to fight.
A daughter's view
Part of what makes the story land is that it is a family one. Hayden Begley spoke about admiring her father's activism and, as she put it, the way "he moves about the world", a phrase that carries a particular weight for a performer with Parkinson's choosing to stand in front of an audience.
There is something quietly pointed about the pairing of actor and play. "Proof" is a drama about a father and daughter, about brilliance and the fear of losing it, about what gets passed down between generations. Casting a real father and daughter in it, in service of research into a disease that affects movement and, sometimes, cognition, gives the production a resonance beyond the script. For four nights in North Hollywood, the Begleys are turning a night at the theater into something with a direct purpose, and inviting Los Angeles to be part of it.
