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.
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