le Clanché du Rand is what they call a triple talent. She is an actress, a playwright, and a drama therapist whose work is known and respected across the country in all these fields. She has enjoyed a 30-year acting career that includes many Broadway credits, national tours and leading roles in many of the nation's top regional theaters. Her nine feature film performances, especially in Awakenings (Magda, one of the patients who awoke), Sleepless In Seattle (as Meg Ryan's mother), and Isn't She Great, make her face familiar to many.
She is also a widely produced playwright. She has three plays for young people published by Dramatic Publishing Company which have been produced at more than 20 theaters, and four plays produced and toured by Lincoln Center Institute. Her published adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the only children's play selected to perform at the Sundance Festival in 1999. She is the author and performer of her highly acclaimed one-person show Hysterics which has been performed locally, and in regional theaters and at conferences. Her latest play, Transcendental Wild Oats, which is about Louisa May Alcott's family, premiered at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley in November 1999.
She is also a drama therapist with a private practice in Ulster County, N.Y., and has published articles in the field. At the University of California in Berkeley she did an M.A. in dramatic art during the turbulent '60s, and in the milder '80s she did an M.A. in drama therapy at New York University in Manhattan. The interaction of acting, playwriting, directing and drama therapy has made it possible for du Rand to claim a unique and privileged window into each of these forms of exploration. She has often felt like an anthropologist of the human psyche in its various and rich manifestations in these several worlds which call upon individual revelation. Only in the shared experience with an audience can these revelations find a universal home and personal enrichment.
