Donna Wyant (born Donna McLaughlin, and often credited as Donna McLaughlin Wyant) is an actress, director, singer, songwriter, and producer. She is an Emmy Award winning producer, and Clio Award recipient for her network television promotional campaigns. [1] She is an alumna of the HB Studio, where she studied with Uta Hagen.
Acting credits include: playing the role of Jeanie in the first European tour of the musical Hair , which opened in Munich in 1968; [2] numerous off-Broadway productions; The Wellfleet Harbor Players and The Provincetown Players in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Teatro Goldoni in Italy; The Ramses Shaffy Theater; and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in Amsterdam.
A collaborator and close friend of Donna Summer, (they met while performing in Hair ) she cowrote several songs on Summer's 1991 album, Mistaken Identity . Songs she cowrote for Summer include Fred Astaire, Say a Little Prayer, the album's title track Mistaken Identity, and What Is It You Want. She has written songs with Donna Summer, Keith Diamond, Anthony Smith, Vince Lawrence, and David Resnik, among others. She also composed and arranged It's the Small Things recorded by Kathy Troccoli.
Recently, she has been directing theatrical productions in Connecticut. [3]
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The work reflects the creators' observations of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, and several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The work broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-In" finale.
Hello, Dolly! is a 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955. The musical follows the story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker, as she travels to Yonkers, New York, to find a match for the miserly "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder.
LaDonna Adrian Gaines, known professionally as Donna Summer, was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s and became known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following.
Mamma Mia! is a jukebox musical written by British playwright Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, members of the band. The title of the musical is taken from the group's 1975 chart-topper "Mamma Mia". Ulvaeus and Andersson, who composed the original music for ABBA, were involved in the development of the show from the beginning. Singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad was involved financially in the production and she was also present at many of the premieres around the world.
Irene Cara Escalera known professionally as Irene Cara, is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and actress. Cara sang and co-wrote the song "Flashdance... What a Feeling", for which she won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1984. Cara is also known for playing the role of Coco Hernandez in the 1980 film Fame, and for recording the film's title song "Fame". Prior to her success with Fame, Cara portrayed the title character Sparkle Williams in the original 1976 musical drama film Sparkle.
Kim Carnes is an American singer and songwriter.
Donna McKechnie is an American musical theater dancer, singer, actress, and choreographer. She is known for her professional and personal relationship with choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she collaborated on her most noted role, the character of Cassie in the musical A Chorus Line. She earned the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for this performance in 1976. She is also known for playing Amanda Harris/Olivia Corey on the Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows from 1969 to 1970.
Donna Murphy is an American actress and singer, known for her work in musical theater. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she has twice won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical: for her role as Fosca in Passion (1994–95) and as Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1996–97). She was also nominated for her roles as Ruth Sherwood in Wonderful Town (2003), Lotte Lenya in LoveMusik (2007) and Bubbie/Raisel in The People in the Picture (2011).
Frances Ruffelle is an English musical theatre actress and recording artist. She won a Tony Award in 1987, and represented the United Kingdom in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Lonely Symphony ", finishing 10th. The song became a UK Top 30 hit.
Thank God It's Friday is a 1978 American musical disco comedy film directed by Robert Klane and produced by Motown Productions and Casablanca FilmWorks for Columbia Pictures. Produced at the height of the disco craze, the film features The Commodores performing "Too Hot ta Trot", and Donna Summer performing "Last Dance", which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1978. The film features an early performance by Jeff Goldblum and the first major screen appearance by Debra Winger. The film also features Terri Nunn, who would go on to fame in the 1980s new wave group Berlin. This would be one of several Columbia Pictures films in which the studio's "Torch Lady" came to life in the opening credits, showing off her moves for a few seconds prior to the start of the film.
A Love Trilogy is the third studio album by American singer and songwriter Donna Summer. It was released on March 5, 1976, just eight months after her international breakthrough with the single and album of the same name – "Love to Love You Baby". The bold, sexual nature of that particular song had earned Summer the title 'the first lady of love'. By now Summer's work was being distributed in the U.S. by Casablanca Records, and the label encouraged Summer, Moroder and team to continue in this vein. A Love Trilogy uses the first side for one long disco track in three distinct movements 'Try Me', 'I Know', 'We Can Make It', and coalescing into the "love trilogy" of the title – "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It". Side two contained three additional erotic disco songs, including a cover of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic". The album's artwork showed Summer floating light-heartedly through the clouds, again adding to the image of her as a fantasy figure.
Brenda Russell is an American singer-songwriter, producer, and keyboardist. Russell has a diverse musical range which encompasses pop, soul, dance, and jazz. She has received five Grammy nominations.
Anna Jeanette Waronker is a singer/songwriter, composer, and producer best known as the frontwoman of That Dog. She is the daughter of producer Lenny Waronker and actress and musician Donna Loren, the sister of session drummer Joey Waronker, and is married to Steven Shane McDonald of Melvins and Redd Kross.
Sharon Delores Clarke is an English actress and singer, best known to television audiences for her role as Lola Griffin in the medical drama Holby City, and as Grace O'Brien in Doctor Who. Clarke has also played lead roles in many West End musicals, and originated the roles of the Killer Queen in We Will Rock You and Oda Mae Brown in Ghost the Musical.
Live and More is the first live album recorded by American singer-songwriter Donna Summer, and it was her second double album, released on August 28, 1978 by Casablanca Records. The live concert featured on the first three sides of this double album was recorded in the Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles, California in 1978.
Paul Jabara, also known as Paul Frederick Jabara, was an American actor, singer, and songwriter of Lebanese ancestry, born in Brooklyn, New York. He wrote Donna Summer's Oscar-winning "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday (1978) as well as "No More Tears " her international hit duet with Barbra Streisand. He also cowrote The Weather Girls iconic hit "It's Raining Men". Jabara's cousin Jad Azkoul is a Lebanese-American musician specializing in classical guitar.
She Works Hard for the Money is the eleventh studio album by Donna Summer, released on June 13, 1983. It was her most successful album of the decade, and its title track became one of the biggest hits of her career.
Julia Kathleen Murney is an American actress and singer, also known for television commercial voice-overs. Until 2005, she was commonly known as the Broadway actress who had technically never appeared on Broadway. This was because her fame came mostly from her performances on the Broadway charity circuit, and not traditional Broadway productions. She played the role of Elphaba in the musical Wicked, both on the US national tour (2006) and on Broadway (2007). She is also a two-time Drama Desk Award nominee, for The Wild Party (2000) and Falling (2013).
Mistaken Identity is the fifteenth studio album by singer Donna Summer, released on August 23, 1991 by Atlantic Records and Warner Bros. Records.
Crayons is the seventeenth and final studio album by American singer Donna Summer. It was released through Sony Burgundy on May 20, 2008 in the United States. Recorded over a period of two years since signing with the Sony Music label in 2006, Crayons marked Summer's first full-length studio album in fourteen years since 1994's Christmas Spirit, and her first album of original material since 1991's Mistaken Identity. She worked with a number of different producers and songwriters on the album, including Greg Kurstin, J. R. Rotem, Wayne Hector, Toby Gad, Lester Mendez.