![]() Later, at UCLA, she transferred from the Theater department to the World Arts and Cultures department, and wrote her senior thesis on American regional dialects. I came to realize that there was very little authentic source material.” We could take any elective, and I chose dialect. Schneider held off, but still, by age 12, she had her professional Actors Equity card, which she earned at the Geva Theatre Centre in Rochester, New York, at first playing the violin in a production of “A Christmas Carol,” and continuing to act in 2-3 plays per year, until she left for college.Īfter her junior year of high school, she attended the theater program at the Northwestern National High School Institute. In 8 th grade, Schneider auditioned for the touring company of “Annie.” She was cast, but her mother wouldn’t let her go. And all the kids who’d alienated her became totally caught up in the production.Īs she puts it, “I got acceptance through singing.” She told me I could do a play only if I did everything: wrote, produced, directed.” That was the same year she wrote her first play, a musical adaptation of Snow White. At the end, the whole audience stood up for me. Back at home, in 4 thgrade, two years after my camp debut, my parents went to a concert in which I had a solo. “Camp is where I became a performing artist,” Schneider says. She learned to play guitar in Reform Jewish youth groups: the North Eastern Lakes Federation of Temple Youth. She got her Jewish identity from her mother and her (kosher) summer camp – Camp Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes of New York, which she attended from age 7-20, first as camper, then as counselor. I have certain truths I hold to be self-evident – like giving back to the earth.” “I learned how to be a person on the reservation. When Eliza was 8, the family moved to upstate New York, but she carried the reservation with her. But I was the only one who talked a lot!” Now I identify as a fiddler because it gets me invited to more parties!”Īs a child, says Schneider, “I always thought I was Indian. I could look someone in the eye and play what they were playing. I was trained in classical violin, but I was around a lot of fiddlers at that time (the difference is a matter of style). All these Jewish klezmer tunes I’d never heard started coming out. Her grandfather also played the violin, and she was given his instrument as a young adult. This is a family where, if you get straight As, nobody notices!” Milton’s son, my uncle Mickey, went to Harvard at age 16 and graduated as Valedictorian at age 18. In 1937, my grandfather Milton was part of what was called ‘The Harvard Jew Crew,’ seven Jews that also included Joe Viertel, the father of Tom and Jack. My mother’s generation is all Harvard lawyers. “Our extended family went to Israel several times – in a pink Mercedes tour bus. Schneider’s other brother became a doctor (whew! something for a Jewish mother to cherish!). “He’d pick me up at Chippewa daycare and teach me songs he learned at the Jewish Center camp.” So she spent her early years on a Chippewa (or Ojibwe) reservation in Bimidji, Minnesota, with her parents and her “sociopathic adopted Vietnamese brother, Yo Binh Jacob Schneider. “My Dad taught at the Bug-O-Nay-Gee-Shig Native American high school. “Mom was an Indian Law Legal Aid attorney,” she continues. ![]() The location is ironic, since Schneider has voiced eight characters on the popular adult animated Comedy Central sitcom, “South Park.” She’s also played Liza on “Beakman’s World,” and has been seen or heard on Bravo’s “Arts & Minds,” “King of the Hill,” “Girlfriends” and in the films “What Women Want” and “Finding Nemo.” Her voice is used in a number of video games as well. ![]() “My Mom is your typical Jewish leftie lawyer,” says beautiful, whip-smart, humorous Eliza, as we sip specialty drinks in her favorite spot, Eclipse Chocolate in South Park. San Diegans will see how all those skills come together in “Freedom of Speech,” which is based in fact (on a series of wild American dialect-collecting road trips) and stems from hundreds of hours of verbatim transcripts of interviews with diverse people around the country. And I find that the various artistic pursuits tend to feed each other.” “But to me, music, voice, voices of the people, playwriting, dialect, language, violin – it all springs from the same well of fascination with sound. “Sometimes, it feels like it was a mistake not to choose a single specialty,” says the “woman of a thousand voices,” who’s bringing her acclaimed solo show, “Freedom of Speech,” to Moxie Theatre (through 8/11). ![]()
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