Emily (SAG•AFTRA) is an actor, vocalist, mezzo-soprano (or soprano with a solid bottom, as her voice teacher says), teaching artist, and voiceover artist of Mideast Jewish descent, native to and based in Washington, DC. A cousin was the late radio and TV actor and screenwriter Billy Idelson - recurring star Herman Glimscher on The Dick Van Dyke Show, who also wrote for The Twilight Zone and The Andy Griffith Show (not that she expects this to ever get her anywhere...).
She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Purchase College, SUNY, with a double major in Theatre and Classical Literature, and has continued training with Shakespeare & Co., Studio Acting Conservatory, Overtures at Signature Theatre, Shaw Festival, and private coaches including Jane Kalbfeld and Matt Farnsworth Voice in New York City.
As a theatre artist, Emily specializes in strong, spirited women who may look like ingenues, but are caught in dynamic power struggles with rich, complex inner histories. Since 2016 she has had the privilege of originating multiple new works with several of DC's new emerging playwrights, many of which have gone on to be fully produced and published - DC playwright Patrick Flynn's The Ferberizing of Coral, in which she originated the roles of Coral aged 8 and 17, was published in Samuel French's Off-Off Broadway Festival Plays, 43rd Series in August 2019. She was a founding collaborator with Tradition Be Damned (TBD) Immersive, DC's first company dedicated entirely to immersive work, founded in 2016, and since 2021 has been studying classical and contemporary musical theatre voice with Dan Thaler of Matt Farnsworth Vocal Studio in New York City.
When Covid-19 closed the world down in 2020, Zoom as a new medium allowed her to join podcasts and a variety of global livestreamed projects while moving her teaching artistry online, with students and castmates as far as Singapore, the UK, South America, and Israel. The largest of these was Richard II with The Show Must Go Online, a youtube-based, international company led by Ben Crystal and Robert Myles that performed the entire canon of Shakespeare over 1.5 years with actors on zoom, live at the same time all over the world, and broadcast live with an audience of online "groundlings."
In 2022 she was cast by Tony-winning director and playwright George C. Wolfe in RUSTIN, a feature film starring Colman Domingo and Audra McDonald, slated for release on Netflix in summer 2023.
Recent credits:
- Eastward Ho! At Maryland Renaissance Festival, dir. Steven Kirkpatrick (SINDEFY)
- In the Next Room or the vibrator play at Silver Spring Stage, dir. Jen Katz, CSA (MRS. GIVINGS)
- Uri and Ora Light the Menorah at Adventure Theatre MTC, dir. Cara Gabriel (MOM, PUPPETEER)
- Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley at Strand Theatre, dir. Erin Riley (ELIZABETH BENNET DARCY)
- Other Desert Cities at Peace Mountain Theatre, dir. Julie Janson (BROOKE)
- Principal actor in an ongoing Washington Metro covid safety campaign, in trains, stations, and billboards around DC
- Quorum: The Messenger's Tale with Jabberwocky Audio Theatre, dir. Bill Coughlan (ROBIN, 9 EPISODES)
- Featured soloist in Table Top Broadway's "Live From Quarantine" Cabaret
