Heather E. Cunningham
Although an actress first, Heather’s “survival jobs” have included administrative positions at the following companies; box office treasurer at Second Stage Theatre in New York City, box office assistant/ticket services representative for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City, box office assistant (sub) at the Culture Project at 45 Bleecker Theatre in New York City, development associate at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and box office assistant at the Media Theatre for the Performing Arts in Media, Pennsylvania. While a resident company member at the historic Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, her many non-acting assignments included box office assistant, costume shop and stock manager, costume designer, master painter (scenery), administrative assistant, literary manager, and coordinator for a festival of short plays by contemporary playwrights. Heather is currently a project manager at United Stages, a New York City based company dedicated to producer support and audience development for small venue and "indie" theater. United Stages publishes the only branded playbill for independant, off-off and off Broadway theater. Heather has performed in New York City for River Heights Productions (which she co-founded), Threads New Work Series, Kef Productions, Newfangled Productions, American Theatre of Actors, New York Theatre Workshop, Young Mindz Productions, Confluence Theatre Company, The Vital Theatre, and New York Play Development, among others. She has lent her voice to "Johnny Palmetto, Net Detective" and "Storywave," and her "image" to commercials, Manchurian Candidate and Saturday Night Live as well as other local television and movie productions. In addition to regional theatre and national tours, her residency at Hedgerow Theatre included appearances in over a dozen productions, including The Good Woman of Setzuan, Silence, Cole/Noel – “Let’s Fall in Love,” Camino Real, Cat Among the Pigeons, and Macbeth. Other favorite credits: Unveiling, Comedy 101, Women Who Dare, Evita, Four Dogs and a Bone and the short films Re-Union and Double the Treatment. Heather has also performed in cabaret rooms around the city, her solo debut Boy Wanted premiered at Don’t Tell Mama in 2003. Heather's acting has been called "a performance of such strength, nobility, and beauty," "simply pops off the stage," "the tragic star," "a gut punch of an actor. Completely without concern for herself when she's in character, utterly subsumed by the demands of the script," "perfect," a "marvel," "stirring and strong," "a knock-out," "not easily forgotten," "the real standout," and "charismatic." She has been hailed as a "beautiful woman with a fine voice and a glorious sense of fun" and a "fine comedienne." Peter Filichia of Playbill.com said "she has plenty of power already, and is using it splendidly." Of her performance as Cheryl in Emily Mann's Still Life Marc Miller said "Heather E. Cunningham burst with working-class outrage and resentment yet made you care for this lost soul without begging for sympathy. And in an evening of three monologues, she played off the other two actors, never showily but always eloquently." - Performances to Remember, 2007. In 2010, Heather added New York Innovative Theatre Award nominee to her list of accomplishments for Innovative Design with co-designer Casandera Lollar for their properties work on The Desk Set for Retro Productions. Heather has designed properties for most of Retro's productions and is thrilled to be among the first nominees for this award. Heather was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Jack, has been a set designer and her mother, Rebecca, recently retired as professor of costume design and construction at Brooklyn College. Rebecca is also the author of the costume texts The Magic Garment, Principles of Costume Design and Basic Sewing for Costume Construction. Always knowing she wanted to be in the theatre, Heather won many performance scholarships to both the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, NY where she went to 7th through 12th grades, and Denison University in Granville, OH, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Performance. Heather's first public performance was singing "Away in a Manger" for Christmas Services when she was so young she barely remembers it.
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 as Peg Costello in The Desk Set by William Marchant. Photo by Jordana Zeldin.  as Rosie in Holy Days by Sally Nemeth. Photo by Jordana Zeldin.  as Angel in When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? by Mark Medoff. Photo by K. Vaughan.  as Jessica Collins in The Tender Trap by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith, pictured with Ric Sechrest. Photo by K. Vaughan.  as Widow 1 in Sally Nemeth's Mill Fire. Photo by K. Vaughan.  as Anna Trumbull, "the Pig Woman" in A.R. Gurney's What I Did Last Summer.
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