Joan Hotchkis

September 21, 1927 - September 27, 2022 Joan Hotchkis, veteran actor, writer, screenwriter, playwright and groundbreaking feminist performance artist, whose career spanned over five decades, died on September 27 in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure. She was 95.

Hotchkis was the last surviving child of Preston Hotchkis and Katharine Bixby, civic leaders in Los Angeles. More importantly, Hotchkis was an exquisite human being: warm, generous, supportive, gracious, open-minded, and funny. She cared about each person she met and used her resources to uplift the downtrodden, especially women, artists and elders.

After earning a B.A. at Smith College and an M.A. at Bank Street Teacher's College, she began her acting career in New York in the 1950s, where she appeared on television and Broadway and studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. She married television director Bob Foster in 1958 and had a daughter, Paula. After getting divorced In 1967, Hotchkis moved back to her home city of Los Angeles, where she continued acting on stage and screen. Her most memorable screen roles were as Dr. Nancy Cunningham on "The Odd Couple" (1971), Paula in "Breezy" opposite William Holden (1973), and Mama Hartley in "Ode to Billy Joe (1976).

Hotchkis also made noteworthy contributions on stage and page. In 1974, she wrote and starred in one-woman play "Legacy," which was made into an award-winning feature film of the same name in 1975. In 1977, she co-authored the enduringly popular acting text "No Acting Please" with renowned Method acting teacher Eric Morris.

In the 1980s, Hotchkis did local and regional theater, including seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (1983-84) and Milwaukee Repertory Theater (1985). She was exceptional as Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" and played that role four times, including at Los Angeles Theater Center.

Inspired by a 1989 workshop with the legendary Rachel Rosenthal, Hotchkis transformed herself into a feminist performance artist, writing and starring in two groundbreaking works at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica: "Tearsheets" and "Elements of Flesh, or Screwing Saved My Ass." "Tearsheets" (1990) exposed the sexism and brutality underneath the upper class ranching culture in which she was raised, and "Elements" (1996) skewered the cultural stereotype that elders do not, cannot or should not have sex. "Tearsheets" won an award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1992. "Elements" received great notices and also hate mail, proof that she had touched a nerve.

Hotchkis then enjoyed a long retirement that included ballroom dancing, travel, writing, speaking, and philanthropy. She is survived by daughter Paula and many others who loved her.