[New York Post] In December 1978, a bizarre theater company headed by an actress from the "Slaughterhouse-Five" film was run out of San Francisco.Members of Sharon Gans’ so-called Theater of All Possibilities had come forward to claim they were pressured into arranged marriages, beaten if they didn’t sell tickets and had gone broke paying for classes ‐ while Gans and her husband lived in a tony home in the posh neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
With the police asking questions and the ex-members’ claims splashed across the pages of local papers, the actress and her theater group closed up shop and seemingly disappeared from public view.
But they never really went away.
A new group sprang up in the 1980s in New York under the name Odyssey Study Group and has been operating here quietly ever since ‐ still led by the washed-up actress, now 84, who reigns from a $8.5 million apartment at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel that was mostly paid for by devotees, according to public records.
A dozen former members have spoken out to The Post ‐ telling similar stories to those shared more than four decades ago, including claims they forked over huge sums to Odyssey while being emotionally abused and exploited.
"In my 30 years of working in this field, this is one of the most secretive groups I’ve encountered," said cult expert Rick Ross, a key witness in the recent Brooklyn trial of upstate sex cult Nxivm who tried unsuccessfully to stage an intervention for a member in the early 2000s.
"After San Francisco, everything was hush-hush.