Lola Pashalinski

Lola Pashalinski, born Regina Hirsch in Brooklyn, New York, is an American theatre artist whose father worked as an insurance salesman. Before entering the theatre, she held various jobs primarily in publishing and briefly attended college before leaving. She appeared on Broadway in 2002 in Fortune.

Pashalinski's theatrical career began in the 1960s when she joined John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous as an assistant director, a company in residence at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. In 1967, a disagreement between Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam during rehearsals for Conquest of the Universe led Ludlam to depart, and Pashalinski left alongside him. Ludlam subsequently founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and Pashalinski was among its founding members. She remained with the company from 1967 through 1980, appearing in 17 of its productions. Her roles during that period included Miss Cubbidge in Bluebeard at La MaMa in 1970, alongside Black-Eyed Susan, Mario Montez, and John Brockmeyer, with design work by Mary Brecht and Leandro Katz; Lola Lola in Corn in 1973; and Brunhilde in Der Ring Gott Farblonjet in 1977. She also performed with Black-Eyed Susan, Brockmeyer, and Ethyl Eichelberger in Eichelberger's Phedre and Oedipus at La MaMa in 1977.

Following her departure from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Pashalinski worked across a broad range of theatrical contexts. In 1981, she played the jester Trinculo in Lee Breuer's production of The Tempest at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. She collaborated with director Richard Foreman on two productions: Egyptology (My Head Was a Sledgehammer) at The Public Theater in 1983 and Film is Evil, Radio Is Good at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1987. That same year she appeared in Tom Eyen's Give My Regards to Off-Off-Broadway at La MaMa.

Pashalinski worked on multiple occasions with director and choreographer David Gordon. In 1983 she appeared in The Photographer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a collaboration between Gordon, JoAnne Akalitis, and Philip Glass. She returned to work with Gordon in his 1992 production of The Mysteries And What's So Funny at the Joyce Theater, which also featured music by Glass, and in his 1996 production of Punch and Judy Get Divorced. In 1999, she portrayed Gordon himself in his Autobiography of a Liar at Danspace Project.

Also in 1999, Pashalinski and her partner Linda Chapman co-wrote and performed in Gertrude & Alice: A Likeness to Loving, a play based on the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Pashalinski portrayed Stein in that production and returned to the role in 2022 in performance artist John Kelly's Underneath the Skin at La MaMa.

Her screen work includes the role of the psychiatrist in Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol, Narc in Peter Sellars's The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, Mona Black in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Hedy Wormenhoven on the television series One Life to Live. She also appeared in smaller roles in All Good Things, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and The Equalizer.

Pashalinski received Obie Awards for Distinguished Performance by an Actress on three occasions: for her performances in the Ridiculous Theatrical Company productions Corn in 1973 and Der Ring Gott Farblonjet in 1977, and for her performance in Gertrude & Alice in 2000.