Biografia
Mary-Jane is an actress, writer, voiceover artist and radio host, in happy collusion with the cult of Mary Well's that turn up as vocal performers (the motown singer, the Scottish opera singer, and the boozy 18th century star of Drury Lane).
This Mary Wells trained as an actress at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 1998, and began the regular back and forth to LA in 2009. She uses her full name, Mary-Jane Wells, for voice work which has been regular for 14 years in narration and commercial, and full time since 2012. Work in the UK also embraced a balance of classic and new work for theatre and many tours, and lead and supporting roles for film and TV.
Before leaving Scotland, she was in Jo Clifford's radical adaptation of Faust, parts One and Two at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, (nominated for 12 "CATS" awards - Critics Awards For Theatre In Scotland), the title role of Electra in David Hare's adaptation for a research project with The Voice Studio in London, and the Irish lead in Cuchulainn, Hound of Ulster with Cahoots Northern Ireland, performing at the Smithsonian, in Washington DC in 2007.
She performed Cyprus after its West End transfer to Trafalga Studios, and from there departed for sunnier shores for a residency with Honolulu theatre in Hawai'i for a year in 2008 - playing Aerial in The Little Mermaid. She returned to the UK for BBC drama - Half Moon Investigates, where she played series regular, the hapless Miss Heeley.
In 2009, she decided to make a home in LA after performing a solo show for a year and 2 Broadway tours of the Red Balloon and Martha across the United States and Canada. Both shows enjoyed successful runs at the New Victory theatre in New York, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kennedy Centre. She won the coveted Victor Audience Award for Best Play for her solo show Martha from the Annenberg Centre.
On arrival in LA she hosted the twice monthly Mary Wells Show aired to a cult following on KCLAFM which was described as a mixture of 'relevant irreverent feature and talk' and worked as an on-camera actress, winning an LA Comedy Award for Divine White's Introduction to Hollywood, and festival awards with indie film hit Elena Undone. Her next movie with John Heard, playing opposite Morgan Fairchild, A Perfect Ending launched in 2012, played at BFI in London on Valentine's day, and at Frameline, San Francisco. It broke all records for Wolfe Video in both the UK and the USA. It has been the highest selling movie ever for them in Pre-Orders alone. By March 1st 2013 it became the highest downloaded drama in the LGBT section for amazon UK and amazon USA. Mary Jane then starred in Jen Forster's music video for She4Me for marriage equality, filmed at the Andaz West Hollywood, and is in How To Train Your Dragon 2, which opens in june 2014 with Cate Blanchett and Gerard Butler, for Dreamworks. She is also in Crazy Bitches, as one of the 6 bitchy leads, for Film McQueen and HBO's The Newsroom, as Josie Marks.
Latterly, she was the series voice for BBC3's My Childhood which won a Scottish BAFTA, and has happily voiced many documentaries, animations and videogames in her own home studio, with an eye to developing motion and facial capture. She is beginning to write copy and score commercials and web promos also.
She is the voice of LinkedIn, Sunny Finance, Eharmony, Puma (Mobium). One videogame http://www.lifelessplanet.com/ comes out soon, but the other videogame which is out in the spring, she is sworn to secrecy on! She is repped By Atlas talent and managed by Kepler Entertainment.
She is interesting in training and in supporting the growth of other artists, and also works as a performance reviewer for the National Council for Drama training, London, and more informally with Dr Nadine George of The Voice Studio International., with whom she does intensive vocal training every year. Mary has just completed a research paper on the breakthrough vocal technique of Dr George with the artistic directors of The National Theatre Scotland and the Traverse theatre, led by Ros Steen, Head of Voice at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Scotland. This research is being written up for publication this year in association with the Centre for Voice in Performance, RSAMD, UK.
Mary is also a writer with a highly successful adaptation of Virginia Ironside's The Huge Bag of Worries which has run consistently since 2002 in Scotland with sponsorship from BBC's Children in Need and also the British Council. Her play for trapeze Hester and Jude was shortlisted by the Almeida Theatre, London and is now being adapted for screen. Her monologue from I Confess is also published with Fairplay press, after she was sponsored by the Jerwood Space and The Arts Council as lead artist on I Confess, a show for London.
In LA, she is writing her second one-woman show based on a woman in the US military, at www.heroinetheplay. com, and is pitching a pilot with mentoring help from Jessica Sharzer (American Horror Story). She is a member of Joan Scheckel's film collaborative, by invitation here in LA.
