Wendy Girard

Wendy Girard, an award-winning actor and producer, began acting in her teens in Washington D.C. as a clown. She performed all of the women's voices for Gallaudet College for the Deaf productions, and acted at The Washington Shakespeare Festival, The Washington Theatre Club, Arena Stage, where she also spent a year doing Spolin Improvisation, and Center Stage in Baltimore, playing mostly leads from the Greeks and Shakespeare to modern writers. She is also an award-winning still photographer and works as a writer, journalist and film reviewer. In New York, Girard became the youngest life member ever accepted in to The Actors Studio where she worked under the tutelage of Lee Strasberg for 13 years, and fulfilled her dream of working with her inspiration and idol, Elia Kazan. She also studied with Stella Adler, among other masters. She played leads in classical, contemporary and original plays including Miranda in "The Tempest", the hit "Oil!", and the autobiographical "Lucky Star", about her saving the life of the private secretary of Joseph N. Welch, the lawyer whose confrontation with Joseph McCarthy -- in which he famously asked McCarthy, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" -- is largely seen as the point at which McCarthyism began its inexorable slide into ignominy. In Los Angeles, she starred onstage in the world premiere of "Playing for Time" to rave reviews, the West Coast premiere of "Extremities" at the LA Public Theatre, and the unpublished Clifford Odets play, "The Nursery", at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she was a founding member, while continuing to work at The Actors Studio West. Behind the scenes, Girard began producing at the age of 19 off-off Broadway, and directing in her twenties. Still a teen, she produced the first Earth Day Street Fair in New York's Lower East Side. She has developed, directed and/or produced numerous original plays in New York City and Los Angeles, several of which have been published, including the first all black musical by a black writer, Lamar Alford's "Thoughts", which moved to La Mama-NYC. She directed, shot and edited her first documentary, and has since worn virtually every hat on numerous documentaries, primarily focusing on the environment. Girard produced award-winning Public Service Announcements for the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (a former home town), as well as the United Nations 50th Anniversary, with Dennis Weaver, Lloyd Bridges, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Marsha Hunt, and others. As a voice-over artist she did national television campaigns for Maybelline, American Express, AT&T and Wheaties to name a few, as well as narration for documentaries. Girard grew up in Latin America and studied in Europe. She is a certified Sivananda Yoga and Da Dao Qi Gong instructor, and ordained to teach Zen meditation. She coaches and teaches film acting, method acting, and improvisation privately, at performing arts academies, and abroad.