WAYNE BARKER
Wayne Barker (The Fingers on the Keyboards) performed for over five years with Chicago City Limits, New York's most prestigious improvisational comedy theater, where he also taught music improvisation for the stage. He was heard weekly on WFMU and WKCR FM as one-third of "Radio Active Theatre," an interactive radio comedy program he co- developed. He was also on the staff of HBO's animated children's series "A Little Curious," to which he contributed music and arrangements. His arrangements have been played by such orchestras as the St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Seattle and Syracuse Symphonies, and his symphony pops program "Hollywood - The Concert" debuted in 1996. His chamber work "A Kiss Without Touching" was premiered in Moscow by Lydia Kavina, the world's most renowned thereminist. Wayne is pianist and arranger for the seven-piece Raymond Scott Orchestrette, which celebrates the music of that unsung American composer. His recordings include the upcoming Kurt Weill project by jazz musician Mike Hashim, and Doug LaBrecque's debut CD "More I Cannot Wish You." He has been seen in a great variety of New York cabaret acts, including the acclaimed Check In With The Jet Set which he co-wrote with Jamie MacKenzie. Wayne is a card-carrying member of The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Sending love to Aki and Pika, Wayne is grateful and thrilled to be here performing with Dame Edna.

 
TERI DIGIANFELICE
Teri Digianfelice (The Gorgeous Ednaette # 1). Most recently performed on Broadway and in the national tour of Footloose. She has also been seen on MTV, as a Radio City Rockette and a Knicks City Dancer. She would like to thank her teachers, Eleanor Rubino and Paula Terenzi Byrne, Mom, Dad, Nanny and Richard for their love and support. "I love you all!"


 
MICHELLE PAMPENA
Michelle Pampena (An Equally Gorgeous Ednaette # 2) is very excited to join the cast of Dame Edna. Originally from Pittsburgh, Michelle began her career as a swing in Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage in Orlando, Florida. She has also performed in various New York theatrical event productions; AC Swing, Zoot Suit Strutt (assistant/dance captain), and Club Indigo (dance captain). She was most recently seen performing at Radio City Music Hall as a Rockette in the Christmas Spectacular. Thanks to her Mom, Dad and dance teacher, Abby Miller.

 
DR. BARRY HUMPHRIES
Dr. Humphries is not only a successful character actor in Europe and Australia, but also one of Australia's best-loved landscape painters. His pictures are in innumerable private and public collections, both in his homeland and abroad. He was educated at the University of Melbourne, where he studied law, philosophy, and fine arts. It was at the University of Melbourne where he held his first Dada exhibitions - experiments in anarchy and visual satire. These have become a part of Australian folklore.

After writing and performing songs and sketches in University revues, Humphries joined the newly formed Melbourne Theatre Company. In 1956, he created the character of Mrs. Everage, a Melbourne housewife who has subsequently become internationally celebrated, and has evolved into the hugely popular Dame Edna. In Sydney in the late '50s, Humphries joined the Philip Street Revue Theatre, Australia's first home for intimate revue and satirical comedy. After a long season in which he developed his newly invented characters, Humphries appeared as Estragon in Waiting for Godot. This production marked Australia's first ever production of a Samuel Beckett play. In 1959, Humphries sailed to Venice.

During the '60s in London, Barry Humphries appeared in numerous West End productions. Most notable were the musicals Oliver! and Maggie May by Lionel Bart, and stage/radio productions by his friend Spike Milligan, in particular The Bed Sitting Room. He also worked in productions with Joan Littlewood at Stratford East, and played Long John Silver at the Mermaid Theatre. In 1967 he starred as Fagin in the Piccadilly Theatre's revival of Oliver! with Phil Collins playing The Artful Dodger. Between West End engagements he regularly returned to Australia with a new one-man show, presenting a wide range of characters, including one female character, Edna, whose popularity was fast developing. In the early 1970s, with his friend, director Bruce Beresford ("Driving Miss Daisy"), Humphries brought to the cinema the character of Barry Mackenzie, a character he had invented in the '60s in a cult comic strip he wrote for Peter Cook's satirical magazine Private Eye.

By the mid-70s Humphries was no longer playing character roles in British films, plays and television shows, but starring in his own one-man show at the Apollo Theatre in London. Housewife Superstar!, dominated by Dame Edna, took London by storm. He has been presenting his own shows in the West End ever since, culminating in Edna, The Spectacle at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, arguably the most beautiful theatre in Europe. In 1979, Humphries won the Society of West End Theatres Award for A Night with Dame Edna at the Piccadilly Theatre. Since then, he has collected innumerable honors for stage and television work, including the Rose d'Orde Montreux in 1991 for his television show, "A Night on Mount Edna," and a Sir Peter Ustinov Endowment, for his life work as an entertainer, at the Banff Television Festival in 1997. He has toured in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and in the Far and Middle East, and recorded Dame Edna television specials for the NBC and Fox networks.

Dr. Humphries is the author of several books, novels, autobiographies, poetry and plays. His autobiography More, Please won the J.R. Ackerley prize for biography in 1993, and he is the subject of two critical and biographical studies: The Real Barry Humphries by Peter Coleman, and Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization by John Lahr. He was given the Order of Australia in 1982, and was endowed with an Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University (Australia) in 1994. He is married to Lizzie Spender, the daughter of British poet Sir Stephen Spender, and has two sons and two daughters.