Melissa Dunphy

Born in Brisbane, Australia, to a Chinese mother and a Greek father, Melissa Dunphy moved to Pennsylvania in 2003 and has since been hailed as "unquestionably the city's leading Shakespeare ingénue" by the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2014 she performed in iHamlet, Robin Malan's one-person adaptation of Hamlet, for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, earning a Falstaff Award nomination from PlayShakespeare. She has also performed with the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theater (Puck, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Marina), the Lantern Theater (Ophelia), Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival (Ariel, Ophelia, Hotspur, Lear’s Fool), Theater of the Seventh Sister (Juliet, Perdita), People's Light, Plays and Players, and PlayPenn. Melissa has been a full-time company member of Gamut Theatre in Harrisburg, and has been featured on television, film, radio, and in print as a commercial actor and model.

Melissa began her music training on piano at age three, and took up violin lessons at seven; she has also dabbled in drum kit, French horn, and flute. Her major instrument during her Bachelor of Music was cello, however, her current instruments of choice are the viola and electric mandolin. At sixteen, she graduated high school with the highest marks in Queensland in music performance and an Associate Diploma of Music from the Australian Music Examination Board in viola, and toured to Asia and the United States with the Queensland Youth Symphony and Sydney Youth Orchestra. Melissa has played in orchestras and chamber groups, contributed to bands of all genres from folk to funk to cyberpunk (her latest outfit Up Your Cherry is a rock duo with husband Matt), recorded as a session musician, and been a conductor and musical director for several theater productions and organizations, including the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference.