Erin: a snapshot
- full-on American mutt (a mix of first wave Eastern European Jews and Puritans from the British Isles)
- mother was an artist, father was a microbiologist/photographer/spiritual student/communist
- raised as an only child (half sister is 21 years older)
- spent lots of time in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side with parents' Beatnik poet/artist friends
- had an anatomically correct boy baby doll named Dion
- began acting at age 7 with the children's wing of the Croton Shakespeare Festival
- thought I was a witch in 3rd grade
- became obsessed with ghost photographs and the book Alive in 5th grade
- father died when I was 15
- broke rules but never got caught
- was reviewed in the Woodstock Times for Blithe Spirit at Bard College "deWard's performance was beyond what one expects in a student production. She is already performing at a professional level"
- met James Taylor, Margot Kidder, and Bill Murray working at the Hyde Park Festival Theatre
- moved to NYC to act, barely auditioned but learned to type
- moved to Seattle, barely auditioned but learned to cocktail waitress
- moved to Brooklyn then to Nyack
- played roles as varied as Maggie in Lend Me a Tenor, Goneril in King Lear, Eurydice in Cocteau's Orpheus (and others)
- became a wife and a mother and an associate executive director at a non-profit serving people with intellectual disabilities
- trained to work in the field of audio description
- performed in the US premier of Israel Horowitz's Man in Snow as part of the 70/70 festival
- did my first audiobook project for Pearson Educational in 2010 (It was released on cassette - ha!)
- trained to work in audiobooks
- became a full time narrator in 2015
- won an Audie (2016)
- separated
- launched 2 children
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Erin: the fuller picture
With a background that didn't look quite like anyone else's in her small Hudson Valley town, Erin was a bit of an outsider. It wasn't just that her family didn't watch sports, or mow their lawn, or attend the Catholic church like most of the other families in town did. It was things like the family knowledge that their phone was likely tapped, that her father stayed up into the night studying I-Ching, tarot, and astrology, and that her mother was thoroughly tethered to her art. Their home was decorated with pre-Columbian statues, Balinese puppets, and native American sand paintings while the houses of her peers were decorated with Hummels, or water colors, or graphic pop art. When she set foot on stage (in 1973) as Piglet #1 in the Children's wing of the Croton Shakespeare Festival, she not only found other weirdos, she also found her purpose. Connecting people through story.
Erin has been studying and performing ever since. From The Bennett Conservatory in Croton-on-Hudson, to HB Studios in NYC, to Bard College, early on she worked to not just learn theater art, but to fully sink herself into it. She graduated with a double B.A. from Bard College (in theater and choreography). One of her 4 senior projects was Harold Pinter's "A Kind of Alaska" which opened her eyes to the delights of working text in very specific ways AND of playing an unreliable narrator. She went on to experience the "actor-ey" life of a 20 something in NYC (cocktail waitress, temp, auditions, extra work on Law and Order, and lots of macaroni and cheese). Then, she traveled, worked with individuals with intellectual disabilities, married, renovated a house (talk about drama), raised 2 children, learned to walk two BIG dogs at a time, separated, and continued to act in audiobooks, on stage, in web series, and audio dramas.
Erin is also a big old Shakespeare geek. Be careful asking about anything Shakespeare related, you may get a very enthusiastic and long-winded response. She's taken classes with Red Bull Shakespeare and Shakespeare & Co. and has studied Shakespearean Clowning with Zach Fine and Andy Grotelueschen from Fiasco Theater.
In addition to the above, Erin works in the field of audio description services, as a writer, describer, narrator, director, and casting consultant. Audio description is a translation of visual images into auditory images inserted into pauses in the dialogue of a movie, play, show, opera etc. This concise and evocative additional "soundtrack" helps people with low or no vision to more fully access media and culture. AND finally, she has directed and acted in English language dubs for foreign movies and television shows.
In 2010, Erin became a member of The Strange Bedfellows, a company of actors who perform Shakespeare in all of his bawdy, violent, funny, and tragic glory. The Bedfellows strive to make their audiences forget about that horrible experience they had in high school English class reading Willie. Instead of treating Shakespeare as some delicate, acquired taste, the Bedfellows romp, clown, fight with passion, and work to communicate the humanness in all of Shakespeare's characters. Roles with the Bedfellows include:
Erin lives in beautiful Nyack, NY about 30 minutes outside of New York City. She has 2 fully grown kids, a trans man and a cis woman, and they are the most remarkable people. During COVID, Erin became a bit obsessed with making a native plant garden and the trial and error of finding the right plant for the right place. She keeps trying to sew her own clothes but refuses to follow a pattern (too much math).
She can get a bit bristly when people in NYC knowingly say "Oh, you live upstate". For the record I can be in midtown in less time than it takes another person to get from Williamsburg to Grand Central.
I am a suburban divorcee Superwoman and the West Side Highway is my cape!
With a background that didn't look quite like anyone else's in her small Hudson Valley town, Erin was a bit of an outsider. It wasn't just that her family didn't watch sports, or mow their lawn, or attend the Catholic church like most of the other families in town did. It was things like the family knowledge that their phone was likely tapped, that her father stayed up into the night studying I-Ching, tarot, and astrology, and that her mother was thoroughly tethered to her art. Their home was decorated with pre-Columbian statues, Balinese puppets, and native American sand paintings while the houses of her peers were decorated with Hummels, or water colors, or graphic pop art. When she set foot on stage (in 1973) as Piglet #1 in the Children's wing of the Croton Shakespeare Festival, she not only found other weirdos, she also found her purpose. Connecting people through story.
Erin has been studying and performing ever since. From The Bennett Conservatory in Croton-on-Hudson, to HB Studios in NYC, to Bard College, early on she worked to not just learn theater art, but to fully sink herself into it. She graduated with a double B.A. from Bard College (in theater and choreography). One of her 4 senior projects was Harold Pinter's "A Kind of Alaska" which opened her eyes to the delights of working text in very specific ways AND of playing an unreliable narrator. She went on to experience the "actor-ey" life of a 20 something in NYC (cocktail waitress, temp, auditions, extra work on Law and Order, and lots of macaroni and cheese). Then, she traveled, worked with individuals with intellectual disabilities, married, renovated a house (talk about drama), raised 2 children, learned to walk two BIG dogs at a time, separated, and continued to act in audiobooks, on stage, in web series, and audio dramas.
Erin is also a big old Shakespeare geek. Be careful asking about anything Shakespeare related, you may get a very enthusiastic and long-winded response. She's taken classes with Red Bull Shakespeare and Shakespeare & Co. and has studied Shakespearean Clowning with Zach Fine and Andy Grotelueschen from Fiasco Theater.
In addition to the above, Erin works in the field of audio description services, as a writer, describer, narrator, director, and casting consultant. Audio description is a translation of visual images into auditory images inserted into pauses in the dialogue of a movie, play, show, opera etc. This concise and evocative additional "soundtrack" helps people with low or no vision to more fully access media and culture. AND finally, she has directed and acted in English language dubs for foreign movies and television shows.
In 2010, Erin became a member of The Strange Bedfellows, a company of actors who perform Shakespeare in all of his bawdy, violent, funny, and tragic glory. The Bedfellows strive to make their audiences forget about that horrible experience they had in high school English class reading Willie. Instead of treating Shakespeare as some delicate, acquired taste, the Bedfellows romp, clown, fight with passion, and work to communicate the humanness in all of Shakespeare's characters. Roles with the Bedfellows include:
- Queen Elizabeth in The Tragedy of Richard the Third
- Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors
- Goneril in King Lear
- Juno in The Tempest
- Isabella in Measure for Measure
- Olivia in Twelfth Night
- Mopsa in Winter's Tale
- Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Hero in Much Ado About Nothing
- Player in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged (not Shakespeare)
Erin lives in beautiful Nyack, NY about 30 minutes outside of New York City. She has 2 fully grown kids, a trans man and a cis woman, and they are the most remarkable people. During COVID, Erin became a bit obsessed with making a native plant garden and the trial and error of finding the right plant for the right place. She keeps trying to sew her own clothes but refuses to follow a pattern (too much math).
She can get a bit bristly when people in NYC knowingly say "Oh, you live upstate". For the record I can be in midtown in less time than it takes another person to get from Williamsburg to Grand Central.
I am a suburban divorcee Superwoman and the West Side Highway is my cape!
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First Show, Princess and the Swineherd, 1973 Croton Shakespeare Festival, Children's Wing
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