Andrea Arvanigian
Position(s): Company Member (Actor)
Contact: aarvanigian@xrtc.org
Education: Andrea became hooked to theatre and everything there was to do with it at the age of 11, when she went to drama camp over the summer in order to have “something to do”. She continued to pursue her new addiction through middle and high school by performing in back to back school musicals, attending the University of Michigan’s All-State Musical Theatre camp at Interlochen Center for the Arts, and performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in both 2002 and 2005. After high school, Andrea moved on to Western Michigan University’s Musical Theatre program, where she earned her BFA in Music Theatre Performance. While at WMU, her favorite roles were Maria in “West Side Story” and Maryamma in Christopher Durang’s “Miss Witherspoon”. She also performed as a member of the seven person ensemble show “Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”, which was taken over seas to be performed for bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference in Canturbury, England. When graduation came, she did one final show in her hometown (Red Light Winter), packed her bags and moved to Los Angeles. She is currently a member of XRT’s rep company, recording an album with Ark Music Production, and is constantly wondering what’s next.
Professional Experience: Andrea works for free far too often. However, she’s performed overseas with three separate productions, is a new company member at XRT and has an album dropping in spring 2011. She is more than willing to take your money to perform, put professional credits on her resume and gain union status.
XRT Acting Credits: Desire (A Streetcar Named Desire)
What the XRT Means To Me…: “Family” and “home”. XRT is the one place that I can go in Los Angeles and know that I’m surrounded by friends and completely accepted. In a city where a sense of community is hard to come by, XRT gives the comfort of a home away from home.
Why I Do What I Do…: I do this because I love it. I do this because I cannot NOT do this. As crazy as it is and as much as I am completely clueless as to how I’m supposed to proceed 99.8% of the time, I just can’t stop.
Did You Know? Andrea’s first role was a reindeer in her third grade class’s production of “Santa’s Gone Hip”. She cried when she wasn’t cast as Mrs. Claus and deemed it devastating enough to skip her piano lesson the day that the cast list went up. However, she didn’t really understand or become hooked on theatre until two years later.
