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Eliza Schneider

Eliza Jane Schneider is an American actress, singer, playwright, dialect coach and dialectologist. She has appeared on television and as a voice over actress on video games and animations. She also performs various musical and stage shows.

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Early life and television work

Schneider spent her formative years on a Chippewa reservation in Bemidji, Minnesota with her two older brothers in a mostly Jewish family. She moved to New York at the age of 8. Her father became a math and drama teacher at the School of Arts High School in Rochester, New York, where she graduated as salutatorian. Her mother was an attorney for the reservation. She started playing violin, which she learned from her grandfather, learning the Suzuki method, after seeing L Shenkar. When she was sixteen, she was in her first musical group, IT'S MY PARTY! From ages 7–20, she went to Jewish summer camp, becoming a counselor, and started performing on stage. By the time she was in the fourth grade she began writing and performing her own plays, because the teacher told her that she would only be allowed to stage a play if she "wrote, produced, directed." Four years later she was chosen for a part in Annie; Schneider's parents would not let her tour with the troupe after being cast. She participated in a theater program at Northwestern University's National High School Institute and graduated from UCLA in 1994 as a world arts and cultures major.

While in college she continued going to auditions and got the role of Sheila Brentwood in the television series The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. For the show she was allowed to cast the actors who played her parents. After the show got canceled, she replaced Alanna Ubach as the assistant and co-host for the second and third seasons of Beakman's World.

Dialect research and stage shows

For her college senior thesis, Schneider made a cross-country road tour in a former ambulance studying regional dialects. During her research into accents, she "visited all the English-speaking countries in the world, conducting more than 7,000 interviews over all." From the interviews she created a one-woman show called Freedom of Speech in which she tells the stories of 34 people in their voices. The various quotes are combined into a story. When interviewed about the shows by Western Washington University newspaper The Western Front, she explained that "People in America today are scared to speak up and tell their perspective on what our nation is or where it is going... I wanted to repeat the peoples' words verbatim so the audience could develop their own perspective." Using a semi-autobiographical approach, Schneider links the quotes and stories together, saying "it's really a love story about a petulant girl who starts out hating America for perpetuating hate. She begins collecting sounds and winds up falling in love with her country." The show won the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival award for "Best Solo Show".

Her ensuing solo show, Words of the Prophets, is composed partially of quotes from "homeless people all over the world."

Music and voiceover work

When explaining about her dialect and musical interest she said: "You know how they talk about a photographic memory? That's not actually how my mind works. It's aural. I remember what I hear...when I try to do a piece onstage, I hear the next words [they actually said]. I hear the rest of the monologue. It takes every bit of strength and intellect that I have to control that." In a 2013 interview, she explained that "to me, music, voice, voices of the people, play writing, dialect, language, violin – it all springs from the same well of fascination with sound."

Schneider also provided voice acting on the popular animated comedy South Park. Alongside Mona Marshall, she replaced Mary Kay Bergman in many roles following her death by suicide. In 2003, while Marshall continued to provide voices, Schneider left over the show's producers' refusal to extend her a union contract. She was replaced by April Stewart in 2004. During this time, Schneider was part of Honey Pig, an all-female country music trio.