Cydnee Welburn

Cydnee Welburn was born in Washington, DC and brought home to the suburb of Fort Washington, MD.  It was a neighbor with a dance studio that first introduced Cydnee to the world of performance.  At age three, Cydnee started with tap at Fran’s Studio of Dance in nearby Oxon Hill, adding ballet, jazz, and modern to the mix throughout the years.  At 10, she joined the studio’s competitive dance troupe, known in the dance community as the P.M. Dance Company, which participated in regional and national dance competitions with great success.  Cydnee traveled with the company from Las Vegas to Orlando, where the P.M. Dancers were regularly a competitive force to be reckoned with.  In addition to performing in the company’s award-winning group numbers, Cydnee herself was a popular soloist, earning national recognition for her musical theater-inspired tap and jazz performances.  Her first foray into dramatic arts was via the dance studio’s acting classes, so designed for large-scale dance and drama performances.

As a high-school student, Cydnee attended Bethesda, MD’s Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.  In addition to being on the tennis and swim teams, she also found an opportunity to continue to explore drama, at the all-boys school her brother had attended.  Gonzaga College High School had a drama program that invited girls from fellow schools in the D.C. area to participate in their productions.  In her sophomore year, Gonzaga produced the musical Guys and Dolls.  With her dance experience, Cydnee hoped she would do well, but as a newcomer to a group with established performers, any role would have satisfied her.  To her surprise (and everyone else’s) Cydnee was cast as Adelaide.  In the following years, she played Babe in The Pajama Game and Lola in Damn Yankees.  The summer before her senior year, Cydnee applied to the prestigious high school drama program run by Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.  Not only was she one of 130 students nationwide chosen for the program, but she was cast in the lead role of her company’s production of Black Snow ­­- her first casting in a non-musical role.  In the summer before heading off for college, Cydnee was the youngest person cast in a regional production of A Chorus Line, which was produced and directed by John Mirvish of the renowned Mirvish family, original producers of Phantom of the Opera.  That summer she also held an internship at the National Shakespeare Theater in Washington DC, teaching in their children’s theater camp and assisting the company’s professional productions.

While at Northwestern, she learned about the drama program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL, and after visiting the campus, she knew it would be a great fit for her college career.  Cydnee entered the program as a drama student, but as one of only 12 B.A. freshmen in the 600-strong program to be accepted into a concentrated acting class, she was encouraged to audition for the school’s more rigorous Bachelor of Fine Arts acting program.  As a sophomore, Cydnee joined six other classmates, including actors Jason Dubin and Cassandra Freeman, for the B.F.A. program.  While at Florida State, she was one of three non-musical theater students cast in the Mainstage performance of Hair, which broke F.S.U. box office records.  At the end of her sophomore year, Cydnee was awarded the School of Theater’s Performance Merit Scholarship. She played supporting and leading roles in the school’s productions in every semester, with the exception of the first semester of her senior year.  That fall, she traveled to London with the school’s sponsored program, spending four months studying with many of that city’s most respected teachers and performers, including Michael Thomas, Gary Yershon, and Eric Mallet, and participating in lectures and workshops with Dame Judi Dench, Alan Rickman, Adrian Lester, and Patsy Rodenburg.

After receiving her B.F.A. in 2002, Cydnee moved to New York, where she joined a children’s theater company. Theater Garden produced and performed educational children’s musicals and toured the region’s schools.  The company’s co-founder also invited her to join the staff of the Children’s Aid Society, which provides additional activity for public school students; Cydnee taught comedy improv, sketch writing, and filmmaking to urban middle-school students.  She also began hosting various on-camera programs for the WE channel, booking roles in independent films, and booking national commercials for Wendy’s, Bally’s Total Fitness, Papa John’s, and Maxwell House.  She was signed by Don Buchwald & Associates to their successful commercial board, and followed her theatrical agent from Talentworks, Craig Holzberg, to his new, bi-coastal Avalon Artists Agency.

In 2005, she joined Rob Keefe and Brooke Alexander as hosts for the award-winning lifestyle magazine Real Simple’s original program on PBS.  Cydnee brought her curiosity, creative spirit, youthful humor, and natural excitability to the show’s take on cooking, home and life management, decorating, family matters, and community service.  As an ambassador for the program, she traveled nationally for both Real Simple and PBS for over two years, hosting hands-on programs around the country and promoting the show to PBS’s numerous stations.  Even after the show finished production, she continued to participate in Real Simple’s consumer participation programs, greeting fans, hosting demonstrations, and bringing all she had learned into her own life.

While hosting was a natural fit for someone with her ability to connect to people and speak from the heart, Cydnee desired to continue to commit herself to a legit acting career.  In the summer of 2007 she was cast in the original production of My First Time, a new play created from real-life experiences posted to a website of the same name since 2006.  The show was conceived and directed by renowned producer Ken Davenport (Speed-the-Plow, Thirteen, You’re Welcome America, Altar Boyz) and has expanded to productions in over 10 countries.  As of Winter 2009, Cydnee continues to perform in the show at the popular New World Stages in midtown Manhattan.  She has also continued to add commercial credits for her resume, shooting for AT&T and National City Bank.  She has appeared on Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Dawson’s Creek, and will appear in the new season of Rescue Me premiering in the spring of 2009.

All of Cydnee’s personal life experiences have contributed greatly to her continued success in the entertainment field. Her family has been one of her strongest assets, and she works closely with her parents and brother on her career management. Her love of travel has taken her around the globe, teaching her about self-sufficiency, as well as the gifts and lessons of other cultures.  Her passion for social service was instilled in her early volunteer work for DC’s Martha’s Table soup kitchen, and has continued through the years with her work for special needs students, AIDS activism, and homelessness and hunger. 

Appearing in the fourth season of "Rescue Me" premiering in March 2009.  Check back for updates.