Rita Castagna is a singer-songwriter, actor, and comedian based in NYC.
The middle child of a musical family, Rita has been a singer-songwriter for the majority of her life. She played acoustic gigs on weekends in Philly bars as early as the eighth grade, and in college focused primarily on musical comedy. Since moving to New York in 2022, she has made music her primary focus, playing frequent gigs around the city with her band and producing and releasing original music.
Rita is a proud Temple University alum with a degree in Acting & Musical Theater and a certificate in American Sign Language. For all four years of college she was a member of Temple Smash, the school’s long-running sketch comedy show. She has done standup sporadically across multiple cities but frankly is too much of a coward to do it regularly.
Senior year was busy – Rita was the first ever non-classical singer to be awarded a Richard F. Gold Career Grant by NYC’s Shoshana Foundation, first awarded to Renee Fleming in 1987; she earned a dream role as Daisy Hilton in Side Show on Temple’s mainstage; and she won The American Pops Orchestra’s NextGen competition for emerging musical theater singers. APO invited her back to DC as a featured vocalist in Coat of Many Colors: The Music of Dolly Parton, alongside Morgan James, Nova Peyton, and other icons of the genre.
Her favorite roles to date include Bonnie Parker (Bonnie & Clyde), Lucy Harris (Jekyll & Hyde), and Heather Chandler (Heathers). She loves playing strong-yet-haunted characters with a comedic edge. Dream roles include Sally Bowles, Jenna Hunterson, and any (all) of the queens in Six.
In her free time, she enjoys yoga, environmentalism, Jeopardy marathons, and playing with other people’s cats. She is a double Cancer with a Taurus moon and a notoriously early bedtime.