Actress, singer, writer, and producer Angela Ingersoll received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in Get Happy: Angela Ingersoll Sings Judy Garland on PBS, which tours live nationwide. She won acclaim starring as Judy Garland in the play End of the Rainbow, including Chicago's Jeff Award, a Broadway World Award, and LA Times Woman of the Year in Theatre. (End of the Rainbow productions include Chicago: Porchlight Music Theatre; Los Angeles: La Mirada Theatre and Laguna Playhouse; St Louis: Max & Louie Productions). Attracting the attention of Garland’s family, she collaborated with Joey Luft in concert has been dubbed by critics "the heiress apparent to the Garland legacy."  

Angela and husband Michael Ingersoll created and produce the Artists Lounge Live concert company. Additional concert credits include her holiday show The 12 Dames of Christmas, I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues, Happy Together: Michael and Angela Ingersoll Sing Songs You Know By Heart (Artists Lounge Live); and Harry Shearer and Judith Owen's Christmas Without Tears.

Other theatre credits include How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Hedy LaRue, Jeff Award nomination) Marriott Theatre; Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice) Notre Dame Shakespeare; Richard III (Lady Anne), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Mistress Quickly), Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits (Titania/Katharine), The Comedy of Errors (Luciana) Chicago Shakespeare Theater; The Great Gatsby (Myrtle) Indiana Repertory Theatre; The Game’s Afoot (Daria), The 39 Steps (Woman) Drury Lane Theatre; The Mistress Cycle (Anais Nin, Jeff Award nomination) Apple Tree/ Auditorium Theatre; Carousel (Julie) Madison Rep; South Pacific (Nellie) Music Theatre Works; The Secret Garden (Martha, Jeff Award nomination) Porchlight; Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Belle, Ostrander Award), Jekyll and Hyde (Lucy, Ostrander Award), Macbeth (Lady Macbeth, Ostrander Award), Bat Boy: The Musical (Shelley, Ostrander Award), Man of La Mancha (Aldonza, Ostrander Award nomination), Ragtime (Evelyn Nesbit, Ostrander Award nomination), Nine (Carla), The Philadelphia Story (Tracy Lord), The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy) Playhouse on the Square; and work with Steppenwolf, Paramount Theatre, Writers Theatre, The Second City, and Goodman Theatre. Other television credits include Chicago PD (NBC).

Ingersoll is the recipient of an Emmy Award nomination, a Jeff Award, three Jeff Award nominations, Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in Theatre, a Broadway World Award, four Ostrander Awards, two Ostrander Award nominations, a St Louis Theater Circle Award nomination, and Year's Best honors from Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Sun-Times.

angelaingersoll.com / Twitter: @angelaingersoll / Insta: @angela_ingersoll

Little-Girl-Blue-collar beginnings

Angie always sang. Her Fairy Godmother, cleverly disguised as a public school music teacher, encouraged her. Angie fell in love with audiences before she was old enough to know how to fear them. She trusted the laughter, the applause, and the silence. She was always a moth, and knew how to find the light.

Angie always knew what she wanted to be, and was simply too naive to entertain doubt. The epiphany struck as she sat rapt in a dark cineplex, nestled in the maw of crimson seat cushions, insulated from the roar of the nearby Indianapolis Motor Speedway. She marveled at the image of a little red headed orphan, dog in tow, searching for home. She recognized that whether the heroine sang of rainbows or tomorrows, the message was the same. Angie's heart whispered, “I can do that.” A starlet was born, full of courage, and determined to make people laugh and cry their asses off so they would cease to be so pissed off all the time.

Audiences exclaimed then as they do now, “How did that big voice come out of that little body?!” Pink plastic boom box at her side, Angie practiced with devotion. She rehearsed her dream concert, which was, by her account, to be broadcast to the world from the moon. From where she sat, that couldn't have been much farther away than Carnegie Hall. That's where it said that Judy sang on her favorite record.

Her enthusiasm for emulating the stylings of entertainment greats was ceaseless. Armed with dozens of cable channels and a powerful VCR, she built an arsenal of comic gold. Relatives and neighbor kids alike were accosted with re-enactments of SNL sketches, Madonna videos, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse gags. Why aspire to play only her favorite character of Miss Scarlet, when she could clearly recite everyone's lines in Clue? In clear violation of Bedtime, she regularly stayed up late to rendezvous with Mr. Johnny Carson, though her tiny black and white TV obscured the brilliance of his classy rainbow curtain. She sought out all of Natalie Wood's movies, even the bad ones. She secretly popped Smarties as “happy pills” when convincing people she was just like Judy Garland. Her first crush was Bill Murray. The second was reserved for Sidney Poitier. She was, in unequivocal terms, a dork.

Her young hopes were housed in a prematurely blossomed body. “I’m not sure if you’re a girl trapped in a woman’s body or a woman trapped in a girl’s body,” puzzled one theatre director. In her quest for mature self expression Angie was often sent home from elementary school for not wearing enough clothes. It wasn’t a big deal to run home and quick-change her costume because she was a walker. She didn’t ride a bus until later, when attending Performing Arts Programs for junior high and high school. In fact, she graduated from David Letterman's alma mater. Like her famous fellow alumnus, Angela eventually fled her Indiana home for New York, attending Ithaca College to study Opera and Acting. She was grateful for the all-around education from the GORGE-OUS Finger Lakes town, and to be the first in her family to graduate college.

So began the journey of the little ingenue that could.

Further Credits

Further Chicago theatre credits include workshop readings of Evan Linder's new play Jo and Liv (Olivia de Havilland) Goodman Theatre and Writer's Theatre; The People vs Friar Laurence (Benvolio) The Second City/Steppenwolf Theatre Company; benefit performances of Pulp (Bing Cherry) About Face Theatre; the original cast of How Can You Run With a Shell On Your Back? (Riley), Macbeth (Witch), The History Of Cardenio (reading-Lucinda) Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Rex with composer Sheldon Harnick (Anne Boleyn/Elizabeth) Stages Festival Chicago; High Fidelity (reading-Liz) Route 66 Theatre Company; I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (Woman 1) Metropolis; A Midsummer Night's Dream (Titania), Julius Caesar (Portia) A Crew of Patches.

Further regional theatre credits include: The Trip to Bountiful (reading-Jessie Mae) Peninsula Players, The Last Five Years (Cathy) Champ Auditorium; Of Mice and Men (Curly's Wife), Picnic (Millie), Peter Pan (Wendy), I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change Playhouse on the Square; A Man of No Importance (Adele), Anton in Show Business (Holly), Charlotte’s Web (Charlotte), Honk! (Queenie/Grace/Dot) The Circuit Playhouse; Talking With... (Twirler) POTS @ TheWorks; Dead Man Walking (Victim) Cincinnati Opera, Arcadia (Thomasina), Twelfth Night (Olivia), As You Like It (Phebe), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hermia) Cincinnati Shakespeare Company; Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (Ensemble) Kitchen Theatre; and Othello (Desdemona) Expanded Arts NYC.

Further comedy credits include: LA Improv Comedy Fest, Upright Citizens Brigade, iO West, Funny Or Die, College Humor, and Hollywood Improv. She studied improvisation as a member of The Groundlings School in Los Angeles.

Further television credits include: commercials for Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Georgia Boot, and First Tennessee Bank. Voice overs include television, radio, gaming, and internet media including Electronic Arts, Paramount Theme Parks, and Time Warner Cable.

Additional concert appearances include: hosting New Faces Sing Broadway 1956 for Porchlight; The Beautiful City Project at Davenport's; Belt-Fest Bash at Uptown Underground, etc; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with The Lincoln Squares for Route 66 Theatre Company at Mayne Stage; Dan Holmes Group at Indiana Roof Balloroom, Under The Streetlamp at Croswell Opera House, Steppin’ Out with Michael Ingersoll at Paramount Theatre, etc; and Monday Nights New Voices with composers Andrew Lippa, Michael Mahler, and Alan Schmuckler at Chicago Center for the Performing Arts.

Angela holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY. Educational credits include: Into The Woods (Little Red), The Imaginary Invalid (Toinette), Sexual Perversity In Chicago (Joan), The Woods (Ruth), Dark Rapture (Julia), as well as staged readings of Saint Joan (Joan), Troilus & Cressida (Cressida), A New Brain (Waitress/Nurse), and Company (Joanne).

Early professional/community credits include: The Crucible (Mary Warren) Indianapolis Civic Theatre; West Side Story in Concert (Maria) Carmel Symphony Orchestra; Grapes Of Wrath (Aggie) Edyvean Repertory Theatre; The Comedy Of Errors (Luciana) Indianapolis Shakespeare in the Park; Totty: Young Eleanor Roosevelt (reading- Eleanor Roosevelt), and And The Tide Shall Cover The Earth (reading-Geneva) Indiana Repertory Theatre. Favorite early educational credits include: The Music Man (Marian), Pippin (Catharine), and Romeo and Juliet (Nurse). As a teenager Angela was awarded Honorable Mentions in both Theatre and Music from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, a Prelude Award for Acting, was a finalist for the National Shakespeare Competition, and attended the Northwestern University Cherubs Program for Theatre.

Angela enjoys frequenting sporting events, appearing as a National Anthem Soloist for the NBA, NCAA, and Arlington International Racecourse.