Kathleen M. Barry, 64; Led Theater Programs

Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page B04

Kathleen Margaret Barry, 64, former program director of the National Theatre's free Saturday Morning and Monday Night programs, died of pneumonia Nov. 20 at Iliff Nursing Home in Dunn Loring. She had Alzheimer's disease.

Ms. Barry, an effervescent personality, ran the National Theatre programs for 15 years and a summer program at Wolf Trap for five years. At one 1987 National Theatre performance, she commanded the audience members to introduce themselves to someone they didn't know.

"I won't start the show until you do it -- and don't think I'm not watching you," she admonished, later telling a Washington Post reporter: "Late one night, I thought, 'There are so many lonely people in this city, and as long as I'm up there being the village idiot,' I thought, 'why not do something about it?' "

Ms. Barry swore that matches have been made through the programs: "I myself dated a lawyer from the Justice Department, who asked me out after several Monday Night shows."

She started the Saturday Morning programs in 1979 for children and adults because of her own preferences. "Listen, I'm a self-indulgent soul, and I thought if I was going to get out of bed on a Saturday morning, I wanted to book something I wanted to see, too," she said.

In 1989, Ms. Barry produced the fifth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, which featured a remarkably eclectic array of performances, from an area church choir to Brazilian, Korean, Hawaiian and West African singers and dancers.

"I like to think we are all related," she once said. Putting on this marathon program is "a kick and a joy for all of us. We'd like to see babies and retired folks, people in walkers and wheelchairs, everybody come out for Martin. The show is not limited to a certain cluster of people, and the audience shouldn't be, either."

Ms. Barry was born in Bridgeport, Conn. She attended the College of New Rochelle in New York and graduated in 1963 from Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. She moved with her family to Arlington and she began studying theater at Catholic University and raising her children.

She taught yoga in the late 1970s and taught drama through adult education classes. She was a consultant on public speaking and media training for corporations and government agencies. She retired from the National Theatre in 1995.

Her marriage to Vincent A. Fuller Jr. ended in divorce.

Survivors include four children, Vincent A. Fuller III of Palo Alto, Calif., Kathleen Fuller of San Diego, Garrett Fuller of Phoenixville, Pa., and Meghan Dunn of Centreville; two sisters; and eight grandchildren.

Electronic article can be found at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15706-2004Nov26.html?referrer%3Demailarticle&sub=new

You can contribute to her guest book at:

http://www.legacy.com/washingtonpost/Guestbook.asp?Page=Guestbook&PersonID=2842855