Today we’d like to introduce you to Deborah Jean Templin.
Hi Deborah Jean, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I began my career as a vegetable, when I was cast as a Sweet Pea in Mr. McGregors garden in the second grade operetta PETER RABBIT.
You grow where you are planted.
My dairy farmer father Henry wanted four sons and he was blessed with four daughters. He found his bliss raising a herd of registered Holsteins with my mother Verda and singing in the church choir.
He would often regale us at dinner with stories of the Great Depression and I found find ways to bring humor into the dinner table conversation.
My grandmother Emma lived with us and made beautiful patchwork quilts for each one of her grandchildren on a quilting frame in the living room of our farmhouse. Piecing together the remnants of the clothing she and my mother sewed for us. Her creativity impressed me. We had a yellow rose bush in our garden next to the rhubarb and raspberry patch. Grandmother could always be found tending to the plants in the morning. Somehow I knew the vegetables and the rose bush were of equal importance.
What are the three most important things in your life? was the question the late director Adrian Hall asked me with I began my union apprenticeship at Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island. My answer: Peace of Mind, Theatre and Community. He told me a life in the theatre would mean I would get two of the three. And I have spent my life figuring just which ones he meant.
I make plays out of my life experiences on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
50 years of living here has made me a collector of people and I enjoy connecting people. I view myself as a life enhancer.
Auditions through my professional unions helped me secure work
in the entertainment industry. Nothing is secured without relationship.
Sometimes the most discouraging things that people told me were my impetus to try anyway.
Peace of Mind, Theatre and Community are still important to me.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I came to New York City in 1977 – challenging times. I sublet for the first month and then looked for an apartment to call home. I moved to the city without a job I knew it would be difficult, so I created a brochure for my work as Knudel Knock, a mime/clown! That brochure helped me to obtain the apartment that I now own. It was the day before Yom Kippur and my landlord said he should be home by now. I told him if he had a nice goy like me working for him he could be.
He laughed.
And I ended up working for my landlord for the next year and a half. Each day I worked for my landlord fielding calls; as a street performer creating skits in mime for quarters and attending union open call auditions when they were available.
I ended my street theatre career when I accepted the role of Grace Farrell in the national tour of ANNIE. The late director lyricist Martin Charnin liked what he saw at an open call at the Alvin Theatre. He cast me as Grace Farrell, Warbuck’s secretary in the Third National tour. I told him I would let him know after I had seen the show.
“You haven’t seen the show?” He asked.
I said “Who can afford $25 a ticket?”
He then said. “Yeah you can see the show.”
Ok I said once I see it I will let you know.
I saw it and the rest is history.
18 months on the road reopening former movies palaces as theatres across the United States, filming the national commercial of ANNIE and once returning to New York City working on the Columbia Pictures ANNIE directed by John Huston.
Get up. Dress up. Show up.
New York, truly if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.
Humor helps.
Community does as well.
And truly all the world is a stage!
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Get up. Dress up. Show up
I’ve written 20 plays and conducted playwriting workshops on how to “write your story”,
While on national tour of the musical TITANIC I was swing for seven women’s roles. I researched each character’s life, the tour gave me the opportunity for site specific research. After two years I wrote my own show!
UNSINKABLE WOMEN: Stories and Songs from the Titanic.
It is now published and licensed through Dramatic Publishing Company.
By choice I live with the 1912 steamer trunk and the period costumes I have toured with for 25 years and love it. (photo)
The community back in my home state of Minnesota still resonates with me. My autobiographical solo show SINGING FOR THE COWS homesteading a dream received a Minnesota heritage arts grant.
My productions have played at more than 160 venues throughout the United States and abroad including the International Jewish performing Arts Festival in Leeds, England and Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Concert Hall.
I’ve been inducted into the Glencoe High School Hall of Fame in Minnesota. I received Philadelphia’s Barrymore Award for my work in Nite Club Confidential and the New Hampshire Theatre Award for my work as Frau Blucher in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. I was delighted to have a photo opportunity with my friend book writer Tom Meehan, who gave me delicious lines as Grace in ANNIE. Tom worked with Mel Brooks on the book for the musical YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
My life in the theatre would not be possible without wonderful teachers and my fellow actors. I love teaching what I have learned with people needing to hone their skills. I have served as a professor at California State University Long Beach; Susquehanna University, Cornell University and New York’s School for Film and Television. I am a member of the Dramatist Guild, SAG-AFTRA and the Actors Equity Association.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.djtemplin.com
- Instagram: @deborahjeantemplin
- Facebook: Deborah Jean Templin
