A Free Man of Color's Veanne Cox on Her Magic Shoes and Dressing Room 'Pharma-copia'

Versatile Veanne Cox has jumped from La Cage aux Folles (in which she showed off an absolutely killer body in the finale as Mme. Dindon) to a trio of roles (one male!) in John Guare’s A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theater. Since her Tony-nominated performance as Amy in the 1995 revival of Company, the Virginia-born actress has been in demand in both plays and musicals, especially in roles that require a quirky comic sensibility. Backstage at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Cox finds serenity through art, Shakespeare, exotic teas and a very special pair of shoes.

Photo by Jenny Anderson for Broadway.com



“I call my tea box my ‘pharma-copia of healing and joy.’ People come into my dressing room and need healing and joy and I offer it to them. I have dandelion tea, I have nettleleaf, I have red clover and all the usual suspects—it really is a pharma-copia.”


“My two books are Shakespeare. I’m playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C. next fall, and I'm always memorizing sonnets. In the few moments when I’m able to sit down during this play, I do a little studying.”


“This orchid is the most important thing in my room, because it was an opening night gift from my La Cage cast. I’ve never left a show before, and it was really hard, even though A Free Man of Color was something I felt I had to do artistically. When I got that orchid, I burst out crying. Everybody had signed the card.”

“I always have art in my dressing room. This time, it’s [set designer] David Rockwell’s opening night gift, a stunning scarf with a gulf scene, a motif of the show. It’s a beautiful work of art. And my muse is Willem de Kooning’s ‘Woman and Bicycle.’ I gotten my inspiration from her for many, many, many years.”


“I can’t live without these shoes. They’re called Kenkoh massage sandals, but I call them my knobbly shoes because there are knobblies inside that press the soles of your feet like acupuncture. I turned Jan Maxwell on to them when we were in The Dinner Party and Elena Shaddow in La Cage. I want everyone to have a pair.”