Sweet Home in Altadena

“I followed my heart and came back to SoCal.”

Alison England landed in Altadena in early August just in time for a big family wedding.  She had just completed work in New York two weeks prior, where she appears as Susan Block opposite Dylan McDermott in the CBS series, FBI: Most Wanted.

Her move back to Southern California serves as the cherry on top of the sundae, the sundae being a wide-ranging creative odyssey. She’s an award-winning soprano, actor in theater, television and film, educator, speaker, Kundalini yogini, voice and vocal production coach, audition technique coach, and arts administrator whose journey has taken her from New York City and back again many times, with long creative interludes in France, Ghana, Trinidad, Colorado and not least of all, Altadena.

She’s appeared with the greats – as Paulette, with Ed Asner in 2017’s In Vino – and also alongside the great but less-known, including playing Lady Beckwith opposite Tony-nominated rock-god tenor Constantine Maroulis in the national touring company of “Jekyll and Hyde” in 2018.

In 2019, she appeared as Mrs. Fairfax in “Jane Eyre” with the Cleveland Musical Theatre, and throughout the 1990s, she appeared in multiple singing roles at the American Opera Center at Juilliard, including the American premiere of “Hugh the Drover” and “Falstaff,” the latter conducted by Zubin Mehta. She also sang as Donna Elvira in the Connecticut Lyric Opera’s 1992 production of “Don Giovanni,” who is perhaps opera’s most ferocious woman scorned, and as Musetta in “La Boheme” for Honolulu’s Hawaii Opera Theater in 1994.

For the first time in a very long time, she’s now face-to-face and in the flesh with her agents and managers who cast her in everything from television commercials to period dramas.

“I spent my formative years in Northridge,” she says as we settle against a vibrant fuchsia-pink wall at her favorite local hang, Altadena’s Café de Leche, over iced horchatas con espresso. Lithe in black leggings, she rocks a dazzlingly lofty rooster crest of vanilla hair, and the gems of her electric blue and turquoise jersey sparkle under the blazing August sun.

“I like that people in Altadena are friendly and chatty here,” she says, ensconced at this charming neighborhood coffee shop where she often takes meetings. The staff treat her like family.

She continues, “My father, with expertise in West African music, had worked at Columbia University and was recruited by CalArts. So I was here from seventh grade until I left for New York to attend Juilliard.” She’s returned to the Los Angeles area “for good,” she explains, to be near her daughter.

The other reason she’s back for good: “I loved doing those 5:30 AM audition calls in NYC, but now, I want to contribute in other ways!  I’m officially in my ‘crone’ phase and adore mentoring, directing and coaching talent.”

Her hearty laugh flusters a mourning dove that had roosted beside us among the coffee shop’s hanging succulents.

England – her friends call her Ali – refers to her present state of mind as “Letting go to get.” Unlike many of us who tend to cling to past patterns that we consider to be successful, or at least tolerable, predictable and therefore comfortable, England has just busted a leap of faith more typical of a young person at the beginning of a career.

She’s a metaphysician deeply connected to her faith and what she calls “infinite spirit.” Included in her skill set is helping performers loosen up and release their anxiety before an audition.

Invariably, she does it with humor.

“As much as I love the beauty of opera, I’m a natural comedian, and comedy is helpful when someone is struggling with something. Sometimes the absolutely straight, direct, on-the-nose approach to solving a problem is just too hard to face, so laughter can set a person free.”

“Sir Lawrence Olivier said it best. He believed that the greatest comics were actually talented dramatic actors because comedy is often rooted in sorrow.”

She cites the genius of the late Gene Wilder, Carl Reiner and the still-kickin’ Mel Brooks as enduring inspirations. American Jews born during the Nazi Holocaust are not lost on her, nor us. To quote a recent Jerry Seinfeld post, “What’s the deal…with anti-Semitism?” Except this one’s not about “nothing.”

Laughter may indeed be the best medicine, but personal loss and pain have also led England in other directions for peace and healing. She began her study of Kundalini yoga in 2008 following the death of her mother, and today, she finds peace in Nada or Nad yoga, the Indian metaphysical system that is based on the premise that the entire cosmos consists of vibrations called Nada. 

“Nad references the physical fact that sound never ends, that every conversation, every aria, every promise, every monologue, is still out there, all around us, and also inside us. This is why singing feels so good, especially when we sing with other people – we are aligning our breath and our resonance with the cosmos.” She pans the perfect blue sky with a slender arm, revealing a tattoo on her right wrist. It reads “Nappy,” stamped with a canine paw print.

“Nappy” was her dog, Napoleon, her cherished traveling companion for more than a decade, still missed. Her cherished feline elder familiar Zumba departed this life as we go to press, and her pets are immortalized in the children’s books she writes (not to be confused with the Christian adoption author by the same name).

At the other end of the age spectrum, she’s in the process of manifesting a theater company that would include a season performed exclusively by professional, senior actors who would finally get to play the plum roles that eluded them during their youth.  It’s a refreshing take on an industry that is notorious for discarding talent at the first sign of a gray hair or a laugh line, especially when the performer possesses two X chromosomes. 

While England wouldn’t turn up her nose at plum roles, the performer says that she’s also now expanding her professional repertoire by offering her expertise in the service of development and philanthropy for arts organizations seeking to add more meaning to their mission.

“All these aspects of my craft ultimately seem to point me in one direction, which is giving people their freedom,” she says. “Whether it’s helping someone master vocal technique for a singing role, or guiding someone out of their high anxiety – props to Mel Brooks there – it’s all about freedom from fear and claiming our natural inner power.”

“I show people how to take a deep breath in every way. When I’m teaching and coaching in the arts, it’s not only because someone wants to be an actor or a singer. It’s my way of showing them that working in the arts teaches us what it means to be human and alive and shows us our innate goodness. And that we are not alone in this large, beautiful Universe after all.”