Angela Ingersoll is an award-winning and Emmy-nominated actress, singer, writer, director, and host. She headlines stages nationwide in Get Happy: Angela Ingersoll Sings Judy Garland, receiving an Emmy nomination for her performance in the concert's television broadcast on PBS. She also won acclaim starring as Judy Garland in several productions of End of the Rainbow, winning Chicago's Jeff Award, a BroadwayWorld 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 at The Grandel). Attracting the attention of Garland’s family, she collaborated onstage with Joey Luft, earning the title "heiress apparent to the Garland legacy."

She is the Artistic Director of Artists Lounge Live, creating and producing concerts nationwide. She co-founded the company with her husband, Executive Producer Michael Ingersoll. She writes and directs many of the company's offerings: casting, coaching, and creating concerts for singular talents celebrating Neil Diamond, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin, Bing Crosby, Stevie Wonder, Karen Carpenter, Dolly Parton, and more. Artists Lounge Live partner organizations include Marriott Theatre and Paramount Theatre (Chicago), Goodspeed Musicals and Westport Country Playhouse (Connecticut), La Mirada Theatre and Laguna Playhouse (Los Angeles), Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Phoenix Theatre Company, and many more.

Other theatre credits include Follies in concert (Sally Durant Plummer) Porchlight Music Theatre at The Studebaker; 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.

Other television credits include Chicago PD (Annie, recurring) NBC, and appearing as a jingle-singing spokesperson for Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

Other concert appearances include Chicago's yearly fundraiser Belting for Life, supporting AIDS Foundation Chicago, Showstoppers: Divas Do Broadway, Andrews Sisters harmonies in A Bing Crosby Christmas, and the annual star-studded Harry Shearer Judith Owen's Christmas Without Tears.

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.

She is a graduate of Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY), accepted in Opera Performance and earning a BFA in Acting. She spent her early professional years as a Young Company Member of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and a Company Member of Playhouse on the Square (Memphis, TN). Further training includes studying Improv with The Groundlings in Los Angeles. She is a proud union member, AEA and SAG/AFTRA.

Born in Indianapolis, IN, Ingersoll began performing at age five. As a teen she attended performing arts junior and high schools, Madame Walker Youth in Arts Program, Northwestern University's National High Institute Cherub Program in Theatre, received Honorable Mentions in Theatre and Music from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, a Prelude Award for Acting, was a National Shakespeare Competition finalist, and frequently sang the National Anthem for the NBA and NCAA.

---

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 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... the storied room  where Judy sang 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 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 television credits include commercials for 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.

Comedy credits include The Second City (Hollywood and Chicago), LA Improv Comedy Fest, Upright Citizens Brigade, iO West, Funny Or Die, College Humor, Hollywood Improv, and Comedy Central Stage.

Additional concert appearances include: hosting New Faces Sing Broadway 1956 for Porchlight; Belting for Life, 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.

Educational credits at Ithaca College 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 in performing arts high school 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.