ABOUT AMY SPANGER 

“Amy Spanger is a bit of a throwback.  She’s hardboiled, yet tender, like a Thirties Ginger Rogers showgirl, with a modern, Idina Menzel-like belt, hitting crescendos with a punch.” - Joel Benjamin, Theater Pizazz 

Amy Spanger is a Drama Desk-nominated Broadway star, television and film actress, solo artist, musical theater teacher, and vocal coach.  At twenty-one, she moved to New York City from a small town in Massachusetts, with a dream to become a Broadway star.  Her acting teacher told her that she could “make it”, so she gave herself three years to be on broadway.  It took her two years and ten months.  Singing sixteen bars of “And The World Goes Round” got her a callback a year later to read, sing, and dance for the understudy for the role of Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard. Vinnie Liff, a beloved casting director who is no longer with us, called her personally to tell her she got the job because she didn’t have an agent yet.  She was on Broadway and she was home.

She got herself an agent and got herself a spot in the original cast of the first national tour of Jonathan Larson’s Rent, where she was the third actress to ever play the role of Maureen. She left Rent to stand by for Roxie and Velma in Chicago on Broadway.  She went on to play Roxie in the national tour, and, more recently, on Broadway.  Next, she played Lois/Bianca in the Tony Award-winning ’99 revival of Kiss Me Kate.  Ben Brantley from The New York Times said:  

“It seems fitting that a backstage musical should have its fresh young star in the making, and this production's comes in the intensely centered person of Amy Spanger, who plays Lois Lane, the saucy cabaret performer making her theatrical debut as Bianca in ''Shrew.'' She gets three of the evening's best songs (''Why Can't You Behave?,'' ''Tom, Dick or Harry'' and ''Always True to You''), and she lands each of them with a sharp-edged sensuality that turns her gold-digging archetype into something newly minted.”

So far, she has appeared in eight Broadway musicals, creating roles in four of them; Kiss Me Kate, The Wedding Singer (Drama Desk Nomination), Rock Of Ages, Elf: The Musical, Chicago, Sunset Boulevard, Urinetown, and Matilda. She created the role of Susan in Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick… Boom off-Broadway.  Some of her other favorite roles include Gwendolyn in The Importance Of Being Earnest directed by David Hyde Pierce, and Allana O’Dell in Robin And The Seven Hoods at The Old Globe directed by Casey Nicolaw.  Her television credits include Six Feet Under, Bored To Death, Royal Pains, Law & Order: SVU, The Blacklist, and Chicago Med. She had the privilege of working on the film Synecdoche, NY directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Michelle Williams and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. She also starred as Sally DeBaines in the cult classic musical film Reefer Madness directed by Andy Fickman.  In 2015 she co-wrote with her husband, Brian Shepard, and starred in This Must Be The Place, an evening of stories and songs which she has since performed at 54 Below, Birdland, and Joe’s Pub.  

She recently moved with her husband from Brooklyn back to the upper west side of Manhattan, which feels like coming home.  Her goals are to keep creating roles on Broadway, television, and film; and to pass on to aspiring performers some of the things she has learned along the way.