Ivy Austin
American actress
Ivy Austin (born Ivy Lynn Epstein; January 19, 1958 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American actress and singer known for her performances on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and her Sesame Street voices. She also starred on Broadway as Raggedy Ann.
Biography
Early life and education
Ivy Austin is an alumna of NYC's High School of Performing Arts, has a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Colgate University, and a Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Manhattan College.
Career
Austin's stage career began with national tours of Hair (as Crissy) in 1976 and They're Playing Our Song (Alter Ego) in 1979. She made her New York City Opera debut in 1982's Candide (Pink Sheep) and remained on the guest artist roster through 1989. Other NYCO credits include Naughty Marietta (Lisette), The Merry Widow (Zozo), The Music Man (Ethel Toffelmier), The New Moon, The Desert Song, South Pacific, and Sweeney Todd (Beggar Woman). Austin's Broadway debut in 1986 was as the starring role in the Joe Raposo/William Gibson musical Raggedy Ann: The Musical Adventure, directed by Patricia Birch.
In 1989, Austin performed "The Story of Gloria" on American Radio Company (now known as A Prairie Home Companion). According to Time Magazine, "The show's funniest sketch, a serial, produced a new star, actress Ivy Austin." She also played the crusty-voiced French lady Babette, and sang with Rob Fisher and The Coffee Club Orchestra.
Austin has recorded countless songs for Sesame Street, and is the voice of Sesame Street characters Cereal Girl, Hammy Swinette, Sublime Miss M, Soo-ey Oinker of The Oinker Sisters, and Gloria Esta-worm.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ivy Austin” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6099791. VIAF identifies the subject as 79788094. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1976, 1979 and 1982.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Ivy Austin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.