McDonald, Audra 1970–

Audra McDonald 1970–

Singer, actress

Aimed for Broadway in Childhood

Made Her Mark in Carousel

Plans to Stay in Theater

Sources

Audra McDonald is one of the American theater’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.”

Aimed for Broadway in Childhood

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 theater that showcases young performers. As a teenager she participated in Music Hall productions of Hello, Doll];!, 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

At a Glance…

Born Audra Ann McDonald on 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 100^th 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.

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.

Addresses: Home—New York City; Agent — Gersh Agency, 130 W. 42nd St., New York, NY 10036.

what I wanted to do,” she added. 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.

Made Her Mark in Carousel

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 dismissed 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 recalled 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 of 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 theater’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 best selling 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 plot-wise, 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 of 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.

Plans to Stay in Theater

McDonald plans to remain in the theater 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 theater 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.”

Sources

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