Eliza Schneider

Eliza Jane Schneider, actress, songstress, oral historian, dialect researcher, and playwright, has been fascinated by sound all her life. At age 7, she was recognized as a violin virtuoso, studying the Suzuki ear-training method at the Eastman School of Music, where she also studied classical voice. She now sings, plays, and writes music for television and radio recording artists, and plays 11 instruments. She was raised on a Chippewa reservation by a German drama teacher/playwright and a Jewish legal aid attorney. By age twelve, she had gotten her Equity card playing an English role in "A Christmas Carol" and an American Southern role in "Inherit the Wind." She has traversed America ten times recording dialects, and distilled the enormous amount of information she accumulated into her critically acclaimed one-woman show, "Freedom Of Speech," in which she recreates 34 different dialect characters from all around the country. "Freedom Of Speech" premiered in the summer of 2003 at the Ne