June is busting out all over, especially at the Hofstra University John Cranford Adams Playhouse on June 9 and 10 when alumna Lainie Kazan puts on her high-energy, incomparable,one-woman musical show. The star of stage and screen, who conquered the nightclub scene and variety shows of the 70s and 80s, who knows the Broadway lights and has a passion for singing, says her Hofstra performance will include “great songs and relating some funny and warm and hopefully interesting stories about my life.”

During the two weeks following her performances, Kazan will join Hofstra’s Dr. Nancy Kaplan from the Department of Audio/Video/Film and Adjunct Assistant Professor Benjamin Moore from the Department of Drama and Dance as a “master teacher,” team teaching a series of classes. This unique occasion allows Kazan to combine the techniques she learned as an Education Minor at Hofstra with an outpouring of lessons learned throughout the breadth and depth of her professional career.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for our students,” says Dr. Kaplan. The classes will include scene work, video taping student performances, practicing the art of acting for television and film, and much more.

Hofstra student Brooklyn native Kazan entered Hofstra on a theater scholarship and majored in speech and drama. When her dad passed away during her freshman year, she recalls her Jewish mother saying “you’d better have something to fall back on later in life,” and so Kazan enrolled in speech therapy and education classes, too. No stranger to a Hofstra stage, she recalls her theater department endeavors, acting in Shakespearean comedies, the drama Blood Wedding, and stage-mainstays such as Best Foot Forward, As You Like It, and Once in a Lifetime. She remarks that fellow student Francis Ford Coppola wrote some theater productions for her.

Coincidentally, it was Coppola who is responsible for giving “Lainie Levine” the name she would use for the rest of her creative life. Kazan relates that she was sitting around the lunch table with Coppola and others and telling them that she was auditioning for summer stock, and was concerned that her name, Lainie Levine, sounded more like a stripper than an actor. Coppola suggested she use her mother’s maiden name, Kazan, saying “It’s an interesting name, a famous name and it’s yours.” She did. And following that rebirth, in her junior year, Lainie Kazan had her first Equity audition, got the job and her Equity card.

“Hofstra gave me an incredible foundation in my chosen field,” said Kazan in a recent interview with Networking® magazine. “It was a great experience and I learned my craft very well.”

Kazan has traveled to Hofstra from the West Coast before, working with students from the Theater Department in a performance of Mother Courage, and in 1992, she gave a concert that raised funds to establish the Lainie Kazan Endowed Scholarship annually awarded to qualified students majoring in music or drama.

Her big breaks
At 23 years old, Kazan landed on Broadway as Barbra Streisand’s understudy in Funny Girl. In her sultry, deep voice, she says, “A year-and-a-half as an understudy, and I never had a chance to go on…until, one fateful day, when I got the call.” Streisand had come down with a throat problem, and Kazan took the stage in two stirring performances that day.

“To date,” Kazan adds, “that was the most thrilling theatrical experience in my life to walk out on the Winter Garden stage, knowing all the great entertainers who had played there.” Speaking of Streisand, she continues, “It was an extraordinary time in my life. I had a front row seat in the making of one of the world’s greatest stars.”

Kazan worked another year-and-a-half in the role, and says her career then “shot through the roof.” She left Funny Girl to pursue a recording contract and was offered “gigs” singing in nightclubs, which was the hot ticket in Manhattan and other chic locations at the time. Kazan recalls the “supper clubs” at the fabulous hotels … the Persian Room at the Plaza, the Empire Room at the Waldorf. She made guest appearances on virtually every top variety and talk show in network television, including 26 appearances on the popular Dean Martin Show. She even hosted her own variety special and opened two cabarets, “Lainie’s Room” and “Lainie’s Room East” at the Los Angeles and New York Playboy Clubs respectively.

Ever the effervescent entertainer, Lainie’s versatile style easily glided from sexy, sensual melodies to sassy, brash blues. Working on the West Coast, she called San Francisco “a fabulous creative environment. I was there in the 70s and 80s when San Fran was a hotbed. While I performed in the elegant, conservative Fairmont Hotel, my heart was in the streets with the sit-ins and the love-ins.”

Then by chance, in 1981 she met her old friend Coppola. She says, “He came into the Fairmont with a group of people. They happened to all be from Hofstra and he called them his ‘Hofstra Nostra.’ He invited me out to where he was staying the next day and offered me a script. He wanted me to be in this movie, One from the Heart” — her break into film.

A career a-blaze
In 1983, Kazan received a Golden Globe nomination as “Best Supporting Actress” for her performance in Richard Benjamin’s My Favorite Year, starring Peter O’Toole. Her credits would soon unfold like a cascading waterfall…Lust in the Dusk with Tab Hunter, Delta Force with Chuck Norris, Beaches with Bette Midler, Harry and The Hendersons directed by Steven Speilberg. There would also be Disney films: The Cemetery Club with Diane Ladd and Ellen Burstyn, 29th Street with Dannie Aiello and Anthony LaPaglia, The Associate with Whoopi Goldberg, Love is All There Is with Renee Taylor, Angelina Jolie and Paul Sorvino, The Crew with Burt Reynolds, Richard Dreyfuss and Jennifer Tilly. And there was Gigli with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Kazan starred in the blockbuster comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which won a People’s Choice Award.

Kazan has also dazzled audiences through the lens of the television camera. She recreated her role in the CBS My Big Fat Greek Wedding Life television series. She received an Emmy Award nomination for St. Elsewhere and a Cable ACE Award nomination for The Paper Chase. She guest starred on Will and Grace as Grace’s Aunt Honey; was featured on Beverly Hills 90210, and had recurring roles as Aunt Freida on The Nanny and as Dottie on Veronica’s Closet.

On stage, Kazan received a Tony nomination for the recreation of her original role in the musical version of My Favorite Year at Lincoln Center. She produced and starred on Broadway with Bette Midler, Madeline Kahn, Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch and Andrea Martin in Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly – an all-star tribute to Ethel Merman, which benefited the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She has also appeared in regional productions of Man of La Mancha, The Rose Tattoo, Gypsy, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, and Plaza Suite, among others.

Prefers live performance
Kazan’s favorite performing art is singing, and her love is the live performance. She made her first record in 1967, hitting the Billboard singles chart with Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and throughout the years, she has performed in many symphonic concerts. She has sung with such symphonies as The Boston Pops, The Palm Beach Pops and The Cleveland Symphony, to name a few, and has appeared at Performing Arts Centers throughout the United States. She toured Europe and The Orient to sold-out houses, captivating audiences along the way. Her “Body and Soul” album is a collection of graceful sentiment, and her newest CD is “Lainie Kazan – In the Groove.”

“I love to feel the audience and have them have that intimate relationship with me. No matter how big the arena, there’s something very intimate for both the performer and the audience,” says Kazan. “I believe my basic talent is to make people aware of what they are truly feeling, so they can express it,” she continues. “I try to do that by expressing my feelings, and in some way, I think that’s contagious.”

In addition to song, she draws out that feeling on stage and in front of the camera. “I was at Hofstra the first time an audience laughed. It was in Once in a Lifetime. I said my lines and they laughed. It was a wave of something coming into my body. It was an amazing feeling.” Kazan adds that she would continue to seek that feeling for the rest of her life.

Giving back
Kazan serves on the board of directors of the Young Musicians Foundation, which sponsors talented musicians and conductors. “I feel it’s my duty in a way to give back and teach my technique to young people, especially voice. There’s such satisfaction in teaching and seeing amazing results.

“Entertaining and acting are hard work, even if it comes naturally, one still has to train. The gift is your emotions and your access to them. My teachers invested their time in me and their energy and love, and I want very much to give that back.”

In addition, Kazan serves on the boards of AIDS Project LA, B’nai Brith, Muscular Dystrophy and the Screen Actors Guild, and has graced the stage for AIDS benefits, telethons and nonprofit organizations throughout the country. She was honored as “Woman of the Year” by B’nai Brith, and in 1990 was presented “The Israeli Peace Award.”

On a trip to New York in 1997, Kazan was named “Queen of Brooklyn,” in recognition of her birthplace. She attended Erasmus Hall, as did Barbra Streisand. She says there’s a rumor that she may be honored again at a “Welcome Back to Brooklyn” this June. “My plaque will be on the Walk of Fame at the Botanical Gardens for all to see.”

Perennial mom and more
While Kazan may have played Ben Affleck’s and Kristy Alley’s mom, she’s the real life mom of Jennifer Bena, a singer artist herself and a recording engineer. She’s also the grandmom of Jennifer’s seven-year-old daughter Isabella Blue, who Kazan says, recently “starred in Annie and she sings her fanny off!” In addition to enjoying the antics of Isabella Blue, Kazan has practiced yoga for over 30 years and loves to read. Of course, she enjoys going to the theater with friends and dabbling in politics.

Her upcoming adventures include two films, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” with Jessica Beal, Kevin James, David Spade and Dan Aykroyd, and cameo roles in a “Brats” movie, and three episodes of King of Queens. Kazan says, “I’m also taking my hat and putting it on the other way by producing and acting in a little movie, a gritty love story with Marty Sader.”

While Kazan is “looking forward to coming to Hofstra,” she also confesses that she wouldn’t mind “coming back to Broadway, too.”