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Jeffery Roberson (Varla Jean Merman) recently returned from Australia where his newest show Varla Jean Merman's Girl With A Pearl Necklace played the Sydney Opera House, the Perth International Arts Festival and the Forum Theatre in Melbourne. Jeffery shared the 2003 Outfest Film Festival "Best Actor" Award and the Aspen HBO Film Festival "Best Actress" Award for his featured performance as Varla in GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS (Sundance 2003) directed by Richard Day. Jeffery also made his network television debut on ABC's All My Children in the recurring role of lady of the evening Rosemary Chicken. This past November he appeared at the Long Wharf Theatre in Hartford Stage's production of THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP performing the roles originally made famous by Charles Ludlam. Jeffery has also appeared on Broadway in the role of "Mary Sunshine" in the revival of CHICAGO.
Other film and TV credits include HBO's Dragtime, E!'s Fashion Emergency, E! Goes to Cannes, MTV's True Life: Mardi Gras, and Francesca Page with Rossy DePalma.Jeffery has appeared in many TWEED Fraktured Classiks productions, including The Mailman Always Comes Twice, Screen Door and CAGED! with Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers and Isabella Rossellini, Lypsinka is Harriet Craig, The Miracle Worker (with Charles Busch) and Varla Jean Merman is The Bad Seedling. Jeffery has opened for Jennifer Holliday in Provincetown and has also shared the stage with Betty Buckley singing excerpts from the notorious Broadway flop Carrie as part of Ms. Buckley's cabaret act at the Bottom Line.
Jeffery wrote and starred in The Very Worst of Varla Jean Merman, which played at Joe's Pub at the New York Public Theater, The Soho Theatre in London and the Renberg and the Hudson Avenue Theaters in Los Angeles (Garland Award for Best Performance in a Musical Award). Jeffery also wrote and starred in the hit show (GLAAD nominated) Enough About Me: An Unauthorized Autobiography that ran Off-Broadway for five months and in San Francisco in 2000 - 2001. His critically acclaimed multi-media cabaret acts, I, Who Have Nothing and Peel Me A Grape (MAC and BISTRO awards) ran for fifteen sell-out months at Eighty Eights and he made his Carnegie Hall debut with Varla Jean Merman: A Christmas Concert.
Varla Jean Merman's Under A Big Top began in Provincetown and has played at Symphony Space in New York, the Renberg Theatre in Los Angeles, the City Theatre in Pittsburgh and the Dallas Out of the Loop Theatre Festival. His Christmas show Varla Jean Merman's Holiday Ham has played to sold-out crowds at Joe's Pub in New York.
Jeffery recently won rave reviews as Miriam in Hush Up Sweet Charlotte in San Francisco this past June at the Lorraine Hansbury Theatre. His brand new show Varla Jean Merman: I'm Not Paying For This! will premier in Provincetown this summer.
Visit www.varlaonline.com for more information.
Photo credit: Michael Wakefield
