Monkey Minds ~ On-Demand

     Jeffrey Shonert made his stage debut at age three in a Bible pageant and survived. At 16, he received his blessing when Mary Martin hugged him backstage at I Do, I Do, and all the histrionic angels in the cosmos beckoned him to enter the theatre. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he made his professional debut there as Feste, opposite a then unknown, named Glennie Close as Viola, in Twelfth Night....

      He finally made his Broadway debut in the 1978 Broadway revival of The King and I, starring his stage idol, Yul Brynner, as Luntha, the young lover. For twenty-five years he was penpals with Mary Martin who called herself his fairy-godmother. He appeared with Elaine Stritch in Sondheim Tonight, had a solo in Carnegie Hall with a giant Carol Channing puppet - which also appeared on TV in the Bravo special: Hello Dolly-Opening Night, and in the autobiography movie of cartoonist Al Hirschfeld called The Line King. He has appeared in movies with Madonna, Matt Dillon, and Randy Quaid (Bloodhounds on Broadway), Tim Matheson (A Little Sex), and soap operas (with Kevin Bacon on The Guiding Light). He has tap-danced twice on the stage of Carnegie Hall. Equally versatile in both musical and non-musical plays, he does many character voices. When he first arrived in Hollywood in 2005, he was cast in the world stage premiere of The Maltese Falcon in Peter Lorre's role Joel Cairo. Jeff has studied Meisner technique in New York City at the William Esper Studio with Maggie Flannigan and with Montgomery Clift's coach, Mira Rostova....