Playwright Leenya Rideout is a Broadway actor (Cabaret, Company, Cyrano de Bergerac, and War Horse), musician, and a singer/songwriter blending folk, rock, and country with a Celtic edge. Leenya’s parents started her out on violin lessons when she was four years old and she was always singing around campfires and in the car. She began writing songs as soon as her father taught her three chords on the guitar, and she fell in love with playing characters and telling stories on stage in operas, musicals, and plays in local theater and at the University of Colorado. Leenya’s first original musical, Holidays with the Chalks, co-written with Mary Brienza and Kathryn Markey, premiered at the Alliance Theater in 2012.
Leenya’s wide range of disciplines as well as her unique and sometimes offbeat take on the human condition have enabled her to work with such visionaries as John Doyle, Sam Mendes, and Rob Marshall, as well as tour with such bands as Finn’s Fury and Gael Force, connecting with audiences in theaters, clubs, film screens, and music festivals around the world. A native of the Rocky Mountains, Leenya now resides with her husband, actor Ted Koch. Leenya’s mother, Lynn Rideout, is a visual artist who resides with her husband Chet, a retired teacher/singer/musician, in Pennsylvania.
The seeds of Wild Abandon were planted years ago by Leenya’s beloved acting teacher, Michael Howard, with a personal monologue assignment in his acting class. Since then, with the guidance and inspiration of director Lisa Rothe and too many to thank here, Leenya has sewn together her songs and stories to bring you this mostly true tale of two wild women.
Wild Abandon is Leenya Rideout’s Irish Rep debut! Rideout’s selected other credits include:
BROADWAY: War Horse; Cyrano de Bergerac; Company; Cabaret. OFF BROADWAY: Before We’re Gone, 13th Street Rep; Fire and Air, As You Like it, Classic Stage; Taming of the Shrew, Public Theater; Yiddle with a Fiddle, AJT; Portable Pioneer and Prairie Show, Melting Pot Theatre; Cowgirls, Minetta Lane. REGIONAL: That Face, Baltimore Center Stage; Camelot, Capital Rep; Man of La Mancha, Milwaukee Rep; On Golden Pond, Casa Manana; Fairfield, Cleveland Playhouse; Secret Garden, Capital Rep; Woody Sez, Westport Country Playhouse & Theaterworks; Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Hangar Theater; Holidays with the Chalks, Alliance Theatre; Merrily We Roll Along, Cincinnati Playhouse; Cardenio, ART; The Canterbury Tales, Guthrie Theater. FILM: Love, Repeat; Mona Lisa Smile; Loser. TELEVISION: Company (PBS); My Favorite Broadway (PBS); Nashville Star (USA). CONCERT: Sondheim Celebration (Avery Fisher Hall); Wall to Wall Broadway (Symphony Space); Nothing Like a Dame 2007; Bringing Broadway Back Home (Fort Collins Symphony with brother, Vale Rideout). RADIO: Selected Shorts (NPR). Her debut album of original songs is entitled Phoenix.
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