Jason Graae was born on 15 May 1958 and is an American musical theater actor, best known for his musical theater performances but with a varied career spanning Broadway, opera, television and film.
23 Facts About Jason Graae
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Jason Graae has won four Bistro Awards, two Ovation Awards, two New York Nightlife Awards, the Theatre Bay Area Award for Best Actor in a Musical and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Joel Hirschhorn Award for Outstanding Achievement in Musical Theatre.
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Jason Graae was a member of the Tulsa Youth Symphony for four years in high school as the principal oboist.
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Jason Graae transferred to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music only to have his previous instructor move there as well.
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Jason Graae's mother was a dancer in Broadway musicals who moved to Europe after marrying his father; they fled from the Nazis in World War II and returned to the United States.
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Jason Graae's father was musical, playing cello in a symphony outside Chicago in his spare time, and his sister is a classical pianist.
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Jason Graae described Victor Borge, who came to America on the same boat as his father as both fled the 1940 invasion of Denmark, as his main inspiration.
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Jason Graae made his off-Broadway debut in Godspell with Liz Callaway in 1980, forming a friendship which had them performing together in cabarets nearly 30 years later.
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In 1997, Jason Graae starred in the US premiere of Ragtime in the role of Houdini.
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Jason Graae was the English voice for the protagonist Barry in the 2011 French animated film Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms, co-starring Jane Lynch and David Bateson.
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Jason Graae has performed this show in numerous cities including New York, San Francisco, and Hollywood.
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Jason Graae has developed other eponymous shows, including Graae's Anatomy and 49.
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In 2004, Jason Graae took on the one-man play Fully Committed, which required him to perform 30 different roles in 80 minutes.
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The Joel Hirschhorn Award is given annually by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for "outstanding achievement in musical theatre"; Jason Graae was honoured with this award in 2007.
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Hyde Pierce and Jason Graae worked together as long-lost identical twin brothers in a 1999 production of The Boys from Syracuse.
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Prince and Jason Graae won the New York Nightlife Award for outstanding musical comedy performer in January 2013.
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Jason Graae performed in Little Me in its original form with 42nd Street Moon in San Francisco in 2013, under the direction of Eric Inman.
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Jason Graae performed Once In Love With Amy and The King's New Clothes and was described as having "scored strongly".
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Jason Graae gave a series of well-received performances in a concert version of the musical The Pajama Game at the Musical Theatre Guild in Los Angeles in 2016.
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Jason Graae made his operatic debut with the Metropolitan Opera in Twyla Tharp's Everlast in conjunction with the American Ballet Theatre.
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Jason Graae has sung with the Washington National Opera and the Boston Pops.
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Jason Graae has played the roles of Offenbach in The Grand Duchess with the Los Angeles Opera, and Frosch in Die Fledermaus with the San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Manhattan School of Music.
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Jason Graae married his partner, fashion designer Glen Fretwell in 2014.