Jason Graae

Jason Graae (pronounced "grah" He has won four Bistro Awards, He graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theatre from the now-merged University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music.

His mother was a dancer in Broadway musicals who moved to Europe after marrying his father; they fled from the Nazis in World War II and returned to the United States. Graae's first agent urged him to change his surname to "Grey" but he refused, wanting to honour his Danish father. Graae came out to his mother in 1983, an experience recalled in his two-hander production The Prince and the Showboy with Faith Prince.

Career

Early years

Graae made his off-Broadway debut in Godspell with Liz Callaway in 1980, forming a friendship which had them performing together in cabarets nearly 30 years later. It ran at Steve McGraw's for over four years with more than 1800 performances and, as his first hit show, helped him to become increasingly well known. Most recently, Jason traveled the U.S. for a year and 1/2 as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the National Tour of Wicked.

Overview

Graae's reputation has grown on Broadway with roles in the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue A Grand Night for Singing, Falsettos, Stardust, Snoopy!!!, and Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?. His voice work in advertising includes as the Lucky Charms leprechaun His television roles include recurring appearances as Chad on the Showtime series Rude Awakening and as Dennis on HBO's Six Feet Under. He has guest starred in TV shows including Friends, Frasier, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Caroline in the City, Living Single, and Providence, Coup de Graae! includes songs and stories from Graae's life (featuring Rodgers and Hart, Jerry Herman, and the Bergmans), and references to his voice-over work; he is described as "the complete entertainer, giddy, irreverent, mischievous and moving, often at the same time." The show won a New York Nightlife Award for Graae. He has developed other eponymous shows, including Graae's Anatomy (2007)

In 2004, Graae took on the one-man play Fully Committed, which required him to perform 30 different roles in 80 minutes. Praised for a hilarious performance in which he plays "low-key charm as well as pile-driving obnoxiousness with equal skill," he earned an Artistic Director's Achievement Award for his performance. this one for Best Major Engagement for Coup de Graae! In 2008, he starred opposite Constance Towers in the Los Angeles revival of Arthur Allan Seidelman's production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks; the play had premiered at the Geffen Playhouse in 2001 with Uta Hagen and David Hyde Pierce in the two roles. Hyde Pierce and Graae worked together as long-lost identical twin brothers in a 1999 production of The Boys from Syracuse.

The years 2011 to the present

In 2012, he worked with long-term friend Faith Prince on The Prince and the Showboy presented at the 54 Below nightclub.

Graae performed in Little Me in its original form with 42nd Street Moon in San Francisco in 2013, under the direction of Eric Inman. While collaborating with 42nd Street Moon, he performed in Once In Love With Loesser, developed by the company's artistic director Greg MacKellan as one of his musical tributes dedicated to exploring and celebrating the work of some of Broadway's greatest songwriters. The performance was built around the three stages of Frank Loesser's career: as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, his work in Hollywood, and finally as a Broadway songwriter. Graae performed Once In Love With Amy (from Where's Charley?) and The King's New Clothes (from the 1952 Danny Kaye film Hans Christian Andersen) and was described as having "scored strongly".

In 2015–16, Graae took on the iconic role of Ebeneezer Scrooge in the premiere of a new musical, Scrooge in Love! written by Duane Poole, (music by Larry Grossman and lyrics by Kellan Blair), at San Francisco's Eureka Theatre. For his performance as Scrooge, Jason won the 2016 Theatre Bay Area Award as Best Actor in a Musical and the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominated Graae for an Excellence in Theatre Award in the category of best principal actor in a musical .

Graae gave a series of well-received performances in a concert version of the musical The Pajama Game at the Musical Theatre Guild in Los Angeles in 2016. In October 2016, he performed in a concert version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along, winner of the Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for Best Musical. In March 2017 he is scheduled to appear with Liz Callaway in Happily Ever Laughter billed as an evening of "love songs, high belting, and hilarity" at Annenberg Theater in the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs CA.

Opera

Graae made his operatic debut with the Metropolitan Opera in Twyla Tharp's Everlast in conjunction with the American Ballet Theatre. He has also sung with the Washington National Opera and the Boston Pops. Performing with the Michigan Opera Theatre in the same role earned him a nomination for an Oscar Wilde Award in the category of Best Performance – Opera. He has played the roles of Offenbach in The Grand Duchess with the Los Angeles Opera, and Frosch in Die Fledermaus with the San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Manhattan School of Music.

Awards and nominations