Rene Goodwin
Philadelphia-born Rene Goodwin is the consummate communicator through the written, spoken and musical word. Seizing the opportunity to study voice, dance and piano from age 11, Rene’s training continued at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and with Dolores Ferraro Cascarino. She has continued private voice work since 1990, she currently teaches voice, and has chosen to serve as a musical mentor for the Philly Pops, with whom she has performed. Ms. Goodwin has studied ballet and jazz dance, and she still studies tap. Goodwin credits her vibrant spontaneity to high school debate training and to her experience traveling with the Annenberg Children’s Theater Company. As an entertainer doing the Florida circuit as part of a standup duo (formerly with Michael Ryan and now with pianist husband Ed Hagopian), Ms. Goodwin fine-tuned the entertainer’s art of audience give-and-take.
In the 1980’s, Ms. Goodwin was cast in a brilliant murder mystery written and produced by William and Pamela Sommerfield, Founders of the American Historical Theatre, as well as Night Thoughts, a Sommerfield play commissioned by the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Later, the Sommerfields approached Rene to develop her Eleanor Roosevelt presentations. Ms. Goodwin has appeared at venues that include the white House Visitors Center, the Theodore Roosevelt Museum, National Archives, Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Society Hill Towers, performances for the Red Hat Society and presentations throughout New Jersey for the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Recently, she appeared on the television program, The People’s Court, as part of a recreation of an Alexander Hamilton trial.
Characters portrayed by Rene Goodwin: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Parker, Katharine Drexel