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Career Highlights:
Her performance career began in the world
of local dinner theater when there were a number of these in the area, most
importantly for her Colony 7 Dinner Theatre in Maryland. Her rise to
regional attention came with her lengthy stint with revue "The Revenge of
Mrs. Foggybottom" which, in 1989, earned her the first of four Helen Hayes
Award nominations. A frequent performer at such venues as Round House (Pippin)
Signature (Putting It Together) and Interact (The Pirates of
Penzance) she became known as well as a cabaret performer with notable
appearances at the Washington Jewish Theatre and Signature's former cabaret
program "Paul's Pub." In the Spring of 2002 she went on for Christine
Baranski in the Kennedy Center's production of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd on a
night remembered by those lucky enough to have tickets as one of the most
exciting performances in recent memory.
The Potomac
Region has always been home to Pesci-Townsend who was born and raised in
Prince George's County. She attended the University of Maryland and has been a
teacher and administrator at Catholic University for the past eleven years. She and
her husband and their two children, George and Rosemary, live in Wheaton.
More
than ever she has had to carefully balance the demands of performing,
teaching and family responsibilities since a battle with cancer of the
kidney led to surgery last year. That was followed by a ruptured disk in her
neck, again requiring surgery, this time to fuse two vertebra. She wasn't
forced to give up performing altogether, however, and managed to do The
World Goes Round at the Round House in Bethesda just 8 weeks after the
Kidney surgery. But the health battles have required her to pull back
somewhat. "I couldn't do Carousel" she says of Olney Theatre Center's
production this winter.
The
answer has been to increase her schedule as a director. "Directing is
physically easier than performing" she says. Her record as a director goes
back to work with the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts and a number of
collegiate programs. In 2002 she combined directing and her work with the
students at the Institute for Teens to present Epiphanies: Revelations in
Revue at Source Theatre on 14th Street. Later this Spring she will be
directing Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years at MetroStage.
Potomac
Stages reviews of the work of Jane Pesci-Townsend as of 4-21-05:
Epiphanies: Revelations in Revue
- Source Theatre Company
Pippin
- Round House Theatre
The World Goes ‘Round
- Round House Theatre
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