Artistic director, acting coach, act director, actress/singer, starred in the original production of Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris. She played leads such as Nellie in South Pacific, Luisa in The Fantasticks, Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera at Williamstown Summer Theater, and Constance in The Dialogues of the Carmelites for the Hartt Opera. Her own act ran at Peregrine's at the Manhattan Theater Club. Ellie has directed more than 100 acts in New York bistros.
In 1989, she started the much-heralded Cabaret Symposium with Betsy White at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center for which they received, in 1991, the Backstage Bistro Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cabaret. As artistic director of the Symposium, Ellie supervised a stellar team of 23 Master Teachers. To date 425 Cabaret performers have graduated from the Cabaret Symposium.
In 1977, Ellie Co-founded the Actors Institute in New York City to which came luminaries from Broadway, Hollywood, and network television to study. There she created workshops in cabaret, music theatre, acting for singers and songwriting. She also led classes and workshops in London, Paris, Dublin, Tel-Aviv, Geneva, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Chicago and Austin. Ellie has taught cabaret and performance workshops at Boston Conservatory, New York University, The Hartt School (University of Hartford), Lehigh University and O'Neill's National Theatre Institute.
She has directed many Broadway, Rock & Roll, Pop and Cabaret performers' acts including Peter Tork of The Monkees, George Merritt of Broadway's Jekyl & Hyde, Rob Evan of Les Miserables. In cabaret she has directed Barbara Brussell, Steve Lutvak, Tovah Feldshuh and Cynthia Scott. In the Concert venues she is directing the The Scarlett Blue Band as opening act for Ray Charles and, Ted B & The Weeds and Prudence Johnson to name a few.
She took her BA from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied composition and choral performance. She majored in Opera at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford and then in New York City she studied acting with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof.