Jana Robbins

Jana Robbins, née Marsha Eisenberg, is a Tony, Olivier and Drama Desk Award-winning American producer, actress, director, teacher, and speaker.

[3] Her father, a businessman and owner of Consolidated Vending Machine Company, also owned The Golden Key Restaurant and Lounge, where 16 year old Robbins could be found singing.

[2] In 1974, Robbins made her Broadway debut in Good News as Patricia Bingham and standby for Alice Fay as Professor Kenyon.

[13] She finished off the decade in the original cast of the 1989 Broadway revival of Gypsy, in which she played Mazeppa and served as a standby for Mama Rose.

Throughout the course of the decade, she had roles in Family Album, The Home Court, Bless This House, Mother, Roseanne, The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, Executive Target, Night Stand, and Babylon 5.

[15] She developed, directed, and produced The Participant in association with Chazz Palminteri, written by and starring Dayton Callie in Los Angeles which was nominated for a Best Solo Performance Award by LA Weekly.

[16] In 1997, she returned to the stage as Alda in a regional production of Death Takes a Holiday at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California.

[17] The following year, she reprised her role as Mazeppa in Gypsy at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey[18] and served as standby for Betty Buckley as Mama Rose.

In 2008, she began early development as executive producer on The Jazz Age, which had its first developmental production at 59E59th street in New York City.

[26] In 2010, Robbins received a Tony nomination for “Best Revival of a Musical" for her part in helping to transfer the Kennedy Center production of Ragtime to Broadway with producer Kevin McCollum.

[32] That same year, she produced and starred as Rita in Johnny Manhattan at the Meadow Brook Theater in Rochester Hills, New York.

[41] In 2019, Robbins directed and produced the UK premiere and Off-West End developmental production of The Jazz Age by Allan Knee at the Playground Theatre with partners Haley Swindal, Craig Haffner, and Sherry Wright.

[43] In addition to "Company"'s 2021 transfer from West End to Broadway,[44] Jana's award-winning show "Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish" returned to off-Broadway by popular demand for a limited engagement in 2022 and 2023 at New World Stages.