Gwendolyn J. Shepherd is an American actress. In the late 1970s and 1980s she performed in a number of musical theatre productions. From 1989 onwards she had a number of minor parts in prominent television series.
Shepherd was one of the actresses to play Maria in the famous 1977 Houston Grand Opera production of Porgy and Bess in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. [1] She reprised the role in the 1983 production at the Arie Crown Theater, Chicago, [2] and in some performances of the revival on Broadway later in the same year. [3]
She went on to play Evelline in the national touring production of The Wiz that ran from June 1978 to July 1979. [4] In 1980 she was one of the three female singers in the off-Broadway production of Blues in the Night . [5] [6]
In 1984 Shepherd appeared in the Broadway production of the operetta Show Boat as Queenie. [7] In 1986 she was an understudy in the original touring production of Legends , performing at least once during the tour, [8] and in 1987 she was understudy as Rose in Stepping Out . [9]
In 1988 she was "an ample and vocally strong Peaseblossom" in a Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (running December 7, 1987, to March 27, 1988). [10]
To television viewers Shepherd is best known for her various guest appearances in major television series over the period 1989–1994, including Webster , Knots Landing , Law & Order , Married People , Murder She Wrote , Family Matters , and most notably Seinfeld .
In the Seinfeld episode "The Stranded", Shepherd played a cashier who has an altercation with George Costanza after allegedly short-changing him for ten dollars.
Her voice appearance was Opal Otter on the Playhouse Disney series PB&J Otter .
Shepherd also had minor roles in the films Easy Money (1983) and Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989).
In theatre, an understudy, referred to in opera as cover or covering, is a performer who learns the lines and blocking or choreography of a regular actor, actress, or other performer in a play. Should the regular actor or actress be unable to appear on stage, the understudy takes over the part. Usually when the understudy takes over, the theater manager announces the cast change prior to the start of the performance. Coined in 1874, the term understudy has more recently generally been applied only to performers who can back up a role, but still regularly perform in another role.
Joan Martha Van Ark is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Valene Ewing on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing. A life member of The Actors Studio, she made her Broadway debut in 1966 in Barefoot in the Park. In 1971, she received a Theatre World Award and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the revival of The School for Wives.
Judy Kuhn is an American actress, singer and activist, known for her work in musical theatre. A four-time Tony Award nominee, she has released four studio albums and sang the title role in the 1995 film Pocahontas, including her rendition of the song "Colors of the Wind", which won its composers the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Donna Murphy is an American actress, best 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 (1994–1995) and as Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1996–1997). 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).
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Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."
Harley Venton is a Canadian-born American television, film, and Broadway actor.
Judy Kaye is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Mamma Mia!, and Nice Work If You Can Get It.
Lois June Nettleton was an American film, stage, radio and television actress. She received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won two Daytime Emmy Awards.
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Betsy Joslyn is a Broadway musical and dramatic actress and soprano. Joslyn is best known for her Broadway work, including the original 1979 production of Sweeney Todd. She appeared in the ensemble of the original Broadway production and eventually took over the ingenue role of Johanna after Sarah Rice. She is married to conductor Mark Mitchell.
Haila Stoddard was an American actress, producer, writer and director.
Ruth Kobart was an American performer, whose six-decade career encompassed opera, Broadway musical theatre, regional theatre, films, and television.
Karla Burns was an American mezzo-soprano and actress who performed nationally and internationally in opera houses, theatres, and on television. Her first major success was as Queenie in the Houston Grand Opera's 1982 revival of Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern's 1927 musical Show Boat. This production premiered in Houston, and then toured nationally and on Broadway. For her portrayal of Queenie, Burns won a Drama Desk Award and received a nomination for the Tony Award. The role of Queenie became a pivotal part in Burn's career, and she portrayed the character in many productions internationally for two decades. For this part, she became the first black person, African-American or otherwise, to win the Laurence Olivier Award, Britain's most prestigious award for theatre.
Jane Summerhays is an American actress known for her work on stage, screen, and film. Her television credits include guest roles on One Life to Live, All My Children, Tales from the Darkside, Working It Out, The Cosby Mysteries, New York News, Law & Order, Sex and the City, and Ed. Summerhays has also appeared in the 2001 film This Train in the role of Love and the 2005 film Backseat as the mother.
Driving Miss Daisy is a play by American playwright Alfred Uhry, about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Coleburn, from 1948 to 1973. The play was the first in Uhry's Atlanta Trilogy, which deals with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. The play won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Marcie Dodd is an American musical theatre actress, who is best known for playing Elphaba and Nessarose in various U.S. companies of the smash-hit musical Wicked.
Lenora Nemetz is an American stage and musical theatre actress.
Ethel Muriel Ashton, known professionally as Queenie Ashton, was a character actress, born in England, who had a long career in Australia as a theatre performer and radio personality, best known for her radio and television soap opera roles, although she did also feature briefly in films.
Lauren Ashley Zakrin is an American musical theatre actress. She was a finalist in MTV's Legally Blonde: The Musical – The Search for Elle Woods, coming in fourth place overall. She has appeared on Broadway, as well as in national tours and regional theatre.
Gwen Shepherd, buxom and bubbling with joyous spirits that frequently spill out over her sorrows, lies on a bed going through a scrapbook.
Gwen Shepherd gets the double-entendre songs, "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" and "Kitchen Man."
While the casting in general is creditable, there is one real coup in Gwen Shepherd, who turns Queenie, the rotund mammy type supporting role that is often a scene stealer, into a real show. With her awesome, booming contralto and hysterical, high-pitched laughter, Miss Shepherd is the spirit of that Mississippi levee incarnate.
Annie-Joe had simply not shown up for the matinee. No one knew where she was, so her understudy, Gwen Shepherd, went on for her. The matinee was sold out, very good house. Gwen got through it without a hitch