Which Actors Have Played Their Own Family Members on Broadway?

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This time, the reader question was: In The Shark is Broken, Ian Shaw portrays his father Robert Shaw on stage. Have other actors played their real-life family members on Broadway or off-Broadway?

This season, the Golden Theatre has welcomed The Shark is Broken, a play that chronicles the behind-the-scenes action on the set where the 1975 film Jaws is being filmed. Ian Shaw, Alex Brightman, and Colin Donnell play actors Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider, respectively. Ian Shaw also co- wrote the play, with Joseph Nixon.

The play holds a unique place in theatre history since Ian Shaw portrays his father Robert Shaw. The elder Shaw was a celebrated British actor of stage and screen, who gained fame from films in his later years. He is particularly remembered for his performance as Quint in the smash hit Jaws. He died of a heart attack at age 51, in 1978, when his son Ian was only 8 years old.

Having Ian Shaw portray his own father on stage adds a meaningful layer to The Shark is Broken. Have similar situations happened before on Broadway?

In 2022, when actress Joan Copeland passed away at the age of 99, she held this distinction, for an acclaimed performance. Copeland was the sister of legendary playwright Arthur Miller. For Miller’s 1981 play, The American Clock, he cast his sister, Copeland, as the character significantly based on their mother.

Copeland won a Drama Desk Award for portraying Rose Baum in the show, which was the second-to-last of her fourteen Broadway productions. (She also starred opposite Danny Kaye in Two By Two and stood by for Katharine Hepburn in Coco.) Incidentally, Copeland also appeared in a 1958 film called The Goddess, which was about her sister-in-law at the time, Marilyn Monroe. (She did not portray Marilyn.)

Copeland noted in interviews that The American Clock was the one time her brother, Miller, did not make her audition in order to be considered for one of his plays. She was cast as their mother without a formal audition! Her other Broadway appearance in a play by her brother was in 1968, where she was a standby for the original production of The Price.

When I interviewed Copeland for my Untold Stories of Broadway book series, she remembered how her mother, Augusta Miller, would sometimes turn to a stranger on the street or in a restaurant and make a quick beat of small talk before inquiring, “Do you know the work of Arthur Miller?” Then she would boast to the stranger all about her son and daughter.

More recently, Olivia Valli, who is currently playing Elphaba on the Wicked national tour, portrayed her own grandmother on stage. Valli is the granddaughter of Frankie Valli and Mary Delgado, whose stories are chronicled in the mega-hit jukebox musical Jersey Boys. Olivia Valli appeared in the show in 2019, during its off-Broadway stint at New World Stages. (The show played Broadway from 2005 to 2017 before moving to off-Broadway from 2017 to 2022.)

The musical about the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, depicting the music group’s personal lives as well as struggles and triumphs within the industry, features several moments about Frankie Valli’s courtship and marriage to Mary Delgado. Olivia Valli occupied a unique place in history when she shared her grandparents’ story in Jersey Boys by portraying her own grandmother.

Do you know of other times that actors have portrayed their own family members on Broadway or off-Broadway?