Audra McDonald

McDonald, Audra (b. 1971), actress and singer. The African‐American performer, with an opera‐quality voice and a passionate stage presence, has found success with each of her New York appearances to date. She was born in Berlin, Germany, to American parents in the military and was educated at Juilliard and the American Conservatory Theatre School. McDonald made an impressive Broadway debut as the textile worker Carrie Pipperidge in the 1994 revival of Carousel, followed by highly praised performances as the young opera student Sharon in Master Class (1995), the tragic servant girl Sarah in Ragtime (1998), winning Tony Awards for all three, and the murderous Creole lover Marie Christine (1999).

actress; singer

Personal Information

Born Audra Ann McDonald, July 3, 1970, in Berlin, Germany; daughter of Stanley McDonald, Jr., and Anna McDonald.
Education: Juilliard School of Music, BA, 1993.

Career

Singer and actress in theatrical productions since age nine. Stage appearances include Broadway and national touring company of The Secret Garden, 1992; Carousel, 1994; The Master Class, 1995-96; Ragtime, 1996-. Recordings include Carousel, cast album, 1994; Leonard Bernstein's New York, 1996; Songs from Ragtime: The Musical, 1996; Ragtime: The Musical, original Broadway cast album, 1998; George Gershwin: The 100th Birthday Celebration, 1998; Way Back to Paradise (solo album), 1998. Television appearances include Some Enchanted Evening: A Tribute to Oscar Hammerstein, PBS, 1995; Leonard Bernstein's New York (video version), PBS, 1996; Creating "Ragtime," PBS, 1997. Film appearances in Seven Servants, 1996, and Object of My Affection, 1998.

Life's Work

Audra McDonald is one of the American theatre's outstanding performers. Within the span of only a few years, McDonald picked up three Tony Awards in the featured (or supporting) actress category for her work in Carousel in 1994, The Master Class in 1996, and Ragtime in 1998. In his review of Carousel, David Richards of the New York Times called McDonald "the real find of this production" adding that she has a "welcomingly open manner...a vigorous voice and a ready sense of comedy."

McDonald was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1970, while her father was stationed there with the U.S. Army, and grew up in Fresno, California. Her mother worked as an administrator at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and her father, finished with his military service, was a high school principal. Musical talent runs in the family. Her parents are both trained musicians and her aunts tour with a gospel singing group. McDonald joked with Barry Singer of the New York Times that if she had not shown musical ability as a child "I probably would have been sent back." McDonald's professional career began at age nine when she began participating in shows at Roger Rocka's Music Hall, a Fresno dinner theatre that showcases young performers. As a teenager she participated in Music Hall productions of Hello, Dolly!, A Chorus Line, Grease, and had the lead role of Dorothy in The Wiz. After high school at the Roosevelt School of the Performing Arts in Fresno, McDonald enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. At Juilliard, McDonald focused her studies on voice and did not take any classes in the school's highly regarded drama division. Because of her lack of formal training in drama, McDonald is especially pleased when her acting is praised, particularly her sense of comedy. "Comedy is difficult for me. I'm good at suffering and dying...I haven't done much comedy professionally, and I've never really had acting lessons," McDonald told Glenn Collins of the New York Times.

Broadway was always McDonald's first love and she was unhappy at the classically-oriented Juilliard. "It wasn't me," McDonald said of Juilliard to Singer. "I had danced around the room singing to Barbra Streisand. That's what I wanted to do." Mental stress caused McDonald to take a break from her studies at Juilliard. While away from school she landed a part on Broadway in the chorus of The Secret Garden, a musical version of the beloved children's story by Frances Hodgson Burnett. McDonald then toured with the national company of The Secret Garden. She eventually went back to Juilliard and finished a bachelor's degree in 1993. McDonald credits her Juilliard training with providing her with a greater sense of discipline and with a prestigious credential that draws notice. "I think people will certainly pay a little more attention to you, just because you've got Juilliard on your resume. That certainly helps to get the door opened a little bit," McDonald explained to Chris Haines of Tony Awards Online.

McDonald auditioned several times before being cast in a much ballyhooed production of Carousel at the Lincoln Center in 1994. The project was a restaging of a highly praised production of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical done at London's National Theatre in 1992. Reviews in New York were mostly favorable, and McDonald was singled out as one of the stellar performers. Brian Kellow in Opera News wrote that "Audra Ann McDonald works wonders with the part of Carrie Pipperidge; she also sings well." Stefan Kanfer in The New Leader, among the minority of critics who did not like the overall production, had only good words for McDonald, saying that she "possesses great warmth and purity of tone. She also reveals a comic gift." The character of Carrie Pipperidge, a millworker in a nineteenth-century Maine town, is not a specifically African-American part and there was some criticism of the non-traditional casting of McDonald, and of opera star Shirley Verrett in the role of town matriarch Nettie Fowler. "Is this a color-blind New England town?...Or are we not supposed to notice hue and ethnicity? In that case, why was the multiracial policy given ceaseless self-congratulatory publicity in London and New York?" wrote Kanfer. McDonald dismisses the race issue. "It's a universal story, with universal music and lyrics...If these people are concentrating on the fact that I'm black...well, there's nothing I can do about that," she told Collins.

McDonald won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards for her work in Carousel. She recalls her acceptance of her first Tony Award as a blur. "The only thing that really stuck out in my mind was when I got up there and I looked in the audience, I thought, 'Oh, my God, I have to talk. How am I going to do this?' I looked down and saw Carol Channing just beaming up at me. I thought, 'That is just the sweetest face I've ever seen.' And then I was fine," McDonald said to Haines.

Terrence McNally's play Master Class is a fictional depiction of a "master class" for three aspiring opera singers conducted by legendary opera star Maria Callas. In the Broadway production, Callas was portrayed by Zoe Caldwell and McDonald played Sharon, a talented, attractive student mercilessly bullied by the great diva. McDonald was hesitant to try out for the part of Sharon, which requires an impressive delivery of a demanding aria from Verdi's Macbeth. She was so frightened of the aria, a piece so challenging that even Callas herself sang it only a few times in her career, that she canceled her first audition. A week later McDonald's agent called to say the part was still open and suggested she make another attempt. She did so and, despite her lack of confidence, came through with flying colors. "She has got it all. She has such natural ability, she doesn't even realize it," Master Class director Leonard Foglia said of McDonald to Susan King of the Los Angeles Times. Master Class opened on Broadway in November 1995. Robert Brustein of the New Republic said the part of Sharon was "powerfully sung and acted by Audra McDonald."

The most valuable aspect of Master Class for McDonald was working with Zoe Caldwell, one of the theatre's most admired actresses. "She is just it for me," McDonald said of Caldwell to Kipp Cheng of American Theatre. "She's such a force of nature, on and offstage. She is like my touchstone. A ruby-red gem I touch and I get my energy. I learned so much from Zoe." McDonald picked up a second Tony award for Master Class, this time for best featured actress in a play. Despite her success as Sharon in Master Class, a role that was basically an acting assignment that called for singing, McDonald continued to consider herself primarily a singer. "I've always felt that I am a better actress when I'm singing than I am when I am just speaking. I think it's because I'm more comfortable singing. What I am trying to do as an actress is to bring that abandonment that I find in singing, in line with the choices that I make as an actress. I don't judge myself as much while I'm singing as I do while I'm acting," McDonald said to Haines.

Among the most highly touted productions to come to Broadway in the 1990s, Ragtime is a musical version of E.L. Doctorow's bestselling 1975 novel about New York at the turn of the century. The sprawling plot concerns three sets of characters: a prosperous white family living in pleasantly suburban New Rochelle; black musicians in Harlem creating the new musical style called "ragtime;" and Jewish immigrants struggling in poverty on the teeming Lower East Side. McDonald's character, Sarah, a young black washerwoman who abandons her illegitimate child, is the thread that weaves the different characters together. To the disappointment of many theatergoers, McDonald's part, though important plotwise, is relatively small (she dies in the first act and comes back only as a ghost figure in the finale). She does get a powerful solo number, "Your Daddy's Son," and shares a duet, "Wheels of a Dream," with the lead male character, ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker, Jr., played by Brian Stokes Mitchell.

The ebullient and sensitive McDonald associates with Sarah's emotionalism. "She's very impulsive. Very, very, impulsive. Sarah does not think before she acts. That comes really easy to me," McDonald explained to Haines, adding that "I think the challenge with Sarah, is that she's so innocent. And she's so young in her thinking, and in her way of viewing the world. I don't consider myself to be as innocent and as young in the way I view the world. I try to wipe off the grittiness of the way I view the world and look at it through a crystalline point of view like Sarah's."

Produced by the Canadian company, Livent, Inc., Ragtime came to New York in December 1997, after playing for a year in Toronto. An album of songs from the musical was made by the Toronto cast (including McDonald) even before the show had been seen by any audience. This unusual situation allowed Ragtime to open on Broadway as a known quantity and a proven success that could survive in regional productions even if it failed in New York. Happily, the musical was a smash hit. Michael Tueth of America wrote that "Ragtime: The Musical creates a kaleidoscope whose brilliant colors glitter against a constantly threatening darkness," adding that the cast offers "some of the finest voices in American musical theater today," including the "operatic richness of Audra McDonald." John Lahr of the New Yorker called McDonald "outstanding" and praised Ragtime as "a kind of theatrical watershed: an awesome pyrotechnical display of theatrical craft and showmanship..a big, brave passionate gamble, not just with cash but with content, and it brings the American musical back to its roots as populist commercial entertainment." Written by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens,with a book by Master Class playwright Terrence McNally, Ragtime won Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book, but lost in the Best Musical category to the Disney- produced spectacle The Lion King. McDonald won her third Tony for Ragtime, her second in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Category.

McDonald plans to remain in the theatre for the foreseeable future. A reworking of Aida, with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice is in development with McDonald most likely to have the title role when it reaches Broadway. Though McDonald has made two brief film appearances, she is interested in film and television only if a suitable project presents itself. "I couldn't see myself doing Booty Call," she said to Cheng, referring to a ribald African- American comedy film.

On her debut solo recording, Way Back to Paradise, released in the autumn of 1998, McDonald sings fourteen songs by promising young musical theatre composers, including Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Michael John LaChiusa. Originally McDonald and her producers considered using "standard" songs by Harold Arlen. When the idea to do untested material was suggested McDonald became excited about taking a chance and quickly warmed to the notion. As she told Singer, "When it's music that fills my soul, there's just no fear."

Awards

Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and Theater World Award, for Carousel, 1994; Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, Los Angeles Ovation Award, for The Master Class, 1996; Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Ragtime, 1998.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• America, March 28, 1998, p. 21.
• American Theatre, July-August 1998, p. 26.
• Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1995, p. F7.
• New Leader, April 11, 1994, p. 22.
• New Yorker, February 2, 1998, pp. 79-80.
• New York Times, March 25, 1994, p. C1; May 15, 1994, sect. 2, p. 5; November 6, 1995, p. C11; August 30, 1998, sect. 2, p. 5.
• Opera News, September 1994, p. 62; December 14, 1996, p. 52.

Other

• Information also obtained from Tony Awards Online (www.tony.org/pantheon)

— Mary Kalfatovic

• Born: July 03, 1970, Berlin, Germany
• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "Way Back to Paradise," "How Glory Goes," "Happy Songs"

Biography

Classically trained soprano Audra McDonald was the most celebrated new singer/actress on Broadway in the 1990s. She was raised in Fresno, CA, and graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with a bachelor's degree in music in 1993. Even before her graduation, she had begun to work professionally in the musical theater, taking a role in the national tour of the musical The Secret Garden in 1992. Fresh out of school, she was cast in a Broadway revival of the musical Carousel (March 24, 1994). She appeared on the cast album and won a 1994 Tony Award for her performance. Two years later, she took home a second Tony for her portrayal of singing student Maria Callas in the play Master Class (November 5, 1995). She then joined the cast of the new musical Ragtime in its premiere production in Toronto. After making her feature film debut in Seven Servants in 1996, she returned to Ragtime when it opened on Broadway on January 18, 1998, winning her third Tony in five years. She was featured on both the initial studio cast album of the show and on the original Broadway cast album. McDonald signed a solo recording contract with Nonesuch Records and released her debut album, Way Back to Paradise, on September 22, 1998. On it, she sang songs by young theater composers, among them Michael John LaChiusa, in whose musical Marie Christine she planned to appear. She made her nightclub debut in New York in October 1998 to promote the album, beginning an extensive career as a concert performer. The same year, she appeared in the film The Object of My Affection and in a regional production of John Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky that produced a cast album. In 1999, she appeared in the film The Cradle Will Rock, based on the Marc Blitzstein musical, and in the TV-movie version of the musical Annie, and she was on soundtrack albums for both. She also acted in the TV movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years and sang on a studio cast album of Wonderful Town. Then came Marie Christine (December 2, 1999), her third Broadway musical. Her second solo album, How Glory Goes, featuring a mixture of show music standards and more new theater songs, was released on February 15, 2000, and the Marie Christine cast recording followed within months. Also in 2000, she appeared in a benefit performance of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic that was recorded for a cast album, and she was in another TV movie, The Last Debate. She also found time to marry bass player Peter Donovan, with whom she had a daughter. In 2001, there was a TV movie of the Broadway play Wit and a benefit performance of the musical Dreamgirls (September 24, 2001) that was recorded for an album. McDonald's third solo album, Happy Songs, was released September 17, 2002. It found her revisiting standards associated with female pop singers of the interwar era, such as Ethel Waters and Judy Garland. In 2003, she appeared in the feature film It Runs in the Family and the TV movie Partners and Crimes; was a regular on the TV series Mister Sterling; and returned to Broadway in a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV (November 20, 2003). The next year brought another film, The Best Thief in the World, and a featured role in a Broadway revival of the drama A Raisin in the Sun (April 26, 2004) that earned her her fourth Tony Award. In 2005, she took a part in a staged concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Passion that was broadcast live on PBS. She became a regular on the TV series The Bedford Diaries in 2006. Her fourth solo album, Build a Bridge, was released September 26, 2006. It featured songs by rock-era writers like Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, and Burt Bacharach. At the same time, she was planning her next return to Broadway in a revival of the musical 100 in the Shade scheduled for April 2007. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

Build a Bridge Buy this CD

Happy Songs Buy this CD

Way Back to Paradise Buy this CD

Way Back to Paradise Buy this CD

How Glory Goes Buy this CD

• Born: Jul 03, 1970 in Berlin, West Germany
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Drama, Music
• Career Highlights: Wit, A Raisin in the Sun, The Best Thief in the World
• First Major Screen Credit: Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First One Hundred Years (1999)

Biography

A multi-talented performer who segued to acting out of an operatic vocal background, Audra McDonald began life in Berlin, the daughter of a U.S. Army employee father and an Affirmative Action officer mother. McDonald's dad subsequently transported the family to Virginia and then to Fresno, CA, where he taught school; meanwhile, McDonald set her eyes on show business at age nine. She sang and danced in cabaret and acted in dinner theater, and attended a junior high and high school designed expressly for youngsters interested in the performing arts. Soon, Juilliard beckoned, but even though McDonald gained acceptance at age 17, she reportedly felt less than enthusiastic during her time there -- complaining vocally about the instructors' insistence on leading her down an "operatic" path though she felt disinclined to go that way. This rectified itself when McDonald "found her way" into opera via dramatic readings of French literature. Many a stage musical followed for the blossoming diva, among them The Secret Garden, Carousel, and Master Class; throughout, she quickly attained a superior reputation for the dynamic range of her voice and the almost incomparable breadth of her vocal modulation.

McDonald transitioned to non-musical film acting in the late '90s, with such productions as the made-for-television Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First One Hundred Years (1999) and Mike Nichols' cable movie Wit (2001); in the years to follow, she also joined the casts of the prime-time dramas Bedford Diaries (2006) and Private Practice (2007). The following year, McDonald carried her involvement in the 2004 Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry's seminal play A Raisin in the Sun to the next level by appearing opposite Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Phylicia Rashad in the 2008 TV movie of that production. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

It Runs in the Family Buy this Movie	Wit Buy this Movie	The Last Debate Buy this Movie	Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First One Hundred Years Buy this Movie
My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies Buy this Movie

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