This mid-career performer is also an emerging writer! I’m kickin’ off the mid-20’s with my first full-length, multi-actor play. And a totally obsessive deep dive into everyone’s fave bot.

• 2023 Swallows (Play, forthcoming)
• 2023 Midjourney (Gallery)

The apocalypse set in and focus shifted to things that could be performed indoors and (in my case) in solitude. I became an online class junkie, mostly focusing on writing which resulted in a handful of finished screenplays. In response to the beloved community theater space wild project struggling to keep it’s door open, I organized a series of on-camera projects that could safely be performed and shot inside wild project theater under the new Covid-19 guidelines. Called Followspot, the series included my own solo performative comedy special, Low Vibrations, in which I finally dealt head-on with the topic everyone always asks me about: Being Adopted. With the help of Zoom, I was able to continue my accountability and production work supporting fellow artists.

• 2022 JW Anderson Promo (w/ Justin Vivian Bond)
• 2022 Anni Rossi’s Glaciers (Advisor/Producer)
• 2022 Kim Katzberg’s Whole K-Hole (Advisor)
• 2021 Jane Johnson: The Pilot (Co-Writer w/ Shane O’Neill)
• 2021 Low Vibrations (Solo Show for Camera)
• 2021 Followspot (Series Producer)
• 2020 Co-Signed Pilot (Co-Writer w/ Tyler Coates)

The late teens kicked off with the bang that was SKOTE’s much appreciated and fully embraced residency at Pioneer Works, an artist and scientist-led nonprofit cultural center in Red Hook. I unexpectedly landed an amazing role (Joyce Nawman) alongside an amazing friend (Justin Vivian Bond) for an amazing brand (JW Anderson) and continued to do select stand-up gigs (thank you to all the organizers for asking).

• 2019 Persisticon
• 2019 JWA-TV Bag Promo (w/ Justin Vivian Bond)
• 2018 Solo Project Fund (Grant Program)
• 2017 Pioneer Works Residency (w/ SKOTE/Alex P. White)

Realizing that jamming my square, alt-cabaret peg into the round, bottomless visual art scene hole wasn’t the only game going, I leaned further into formats and contexts that were closer to my original calling: character-based performance and digital content.

I continued my annual solo show a year quest with America’s Single Threat, Mediocre and Loving It, and Hope is Expensive. The coffee was clearly flowing freely in 2014 and 2015 as I also created, produced and acted in the the web-series Your Main Thing. Not one, but two collectives and a collab were born: Boob Tube, S.U.C.K., and Jane Johnson for the Stay at Home Shopper.

Endless nights were spent hacking away at the stand-up life and unpacking whether I was more interested in making people laugh or bringing shame upon myself. After explaining to an audience at Gotham that I had just retrieved my damp notebook from urine-filled toilet I had my answer. I still do stand-up, but strictly offer only ;)

• 2016 Mediocre & Loving It (Solo Show)
• 2016 S.U.C.K. (Stand-Up Collective/Monthly Series)
• 2016 Jane Johnson (Multimedia Performance w/ Shane O’Neill)
• 2015 America’s Single Threat (Solo Show)
• 2015 Boob Tube (Video Collective/Series)
• 2014 Your Main Thing (Web Series)
• 2014 People Are Tired of Being Human (Solo Photography Exhibit)
• 2014 Hope is Expensive (Solo Show)

Fully in Solo Show mode upon returning to NYC, I was thrilled to perform at and forge relationships with two (of the dwindling) downtown spaces, wild project and Dixon Place.

I finally got into Skowhegan on my fifth time applying. Even better, my SKOTE collaborator, Alex, got in too and we made a ton of work while there. At the same time I began to formalize my photography practice which informed my ongoing Las Vegas self-portraiture series.

There was also plenty of collaboration brewing, much of which crossed over with social/nightlife scenes including the infamous Woahmone at which I began DJ’ing with pal, Lori Scacco under the name DJ Hollyweird.

• 2013 Jason & Jill: Craft for Your Life (Collab w/ Jason Black)
• 2013 Unfollow (Solo Show)
• 2013 MASS Gallery Hotbox (Residency)
• 2012 The Way We Were (Ensemble Perf Series, Creator & Host)
• 2012 Happy Go Sad (Solo Show)
• 2012 Heaven or Las Vegas (Photography)
• 2012 R.A.I.E.L. (Performance Collab)
• 2010 Skowhegan (Residency)
• 2010 Nothing to Display (Solo Show)

In 2009 I received a grant from the City of Austin to present my very first solo show, a joyous and fond farewell gift from a town that treated me very well. Before I left, I squeaked out a digital shorts collab with one of the funniest people on the planet, Max Juren.

It was a bit of a rough transition moving back to New York, saying goodbye the amazing life/work balance in Austin, finding survival work, and trying to catch back up with what was happening in the downtown performance scene. Perhaps most difficult was figuring out how to straddle both the visual arts performance scene and the alternative cabaret scene. Ultimately, I would come to realize it didn’t matter to me, but at the time it felt very important to categorize myself.

• 2009 The Collections (digital series w/ Max Juren
• 2009 Let Me Entertain You (Texas Biennial, Austin)

In 2005, the ad agency announced my job would become redundant. Surprised, but also excited for the next adventure, I took the opportunity to run far away and on a whim I applied to the University of Texas at Austin. Unexpectedly, I got a recruitment scholarship to get my MFA, a three year program in which I studied under the iconic performance artist, Mike Smith. While I was at UT, I did my best to move away from the comedic characters and make “real art,” but they would always find ways to sneak back into my work. One of my old Atlanta pals, Alex White, was now in New York City also getting his MFA. We bonded remotely over the experience, eventually formalizing the 2.0 version of SKOTE in the form of a two-person movement collaboration.

• 2007 Note to Self (Multimedia Performance)
• 2007 The Darligans (Multimedia Performance)
• 2006 - 2009 Nohegan (Ensemble Event & Social Sculpture)
• 2006 SKOTE 2.0 (Collab w/ Alex P. White)
• 2006 2112 Flexagon Hills (Installation w/ Virginia Yount)
• 2006 The Nancy Project (Multimedia Performance)

My exploration of comedic cabaret continued with the formation of Hot Sausage, a “pop-fitness” (still not sure what we meant with that) trio who danced and sang poorly, but dressed thrillingly.

Still at the advertising job, I started making comedic videos with my co-workers, many of them artists, writers, actors themselves. Fun fact, our department, the Outdoor and Print Studio, took 1st Place in the annual office talent show which was held at the now defunct S.O.B.s.

• 2002 The Juice
• 2001 SKOTETV 1.0
• 2000 Hot Sausage (Collab w/ Roger Padilha & Wilson Chan)

Happy to take a break from the ad agency grind, I made my first feature film debut in my friend Hilary’s pre-reality, reality film, I Love My Movie, a story that (according to Sidewalk Film Festival) “chronicles the cross-country mission of a desperate interdependent filmmaker… which lands a posse of twenty-something women in some seedy places and outrageous situations.”

Soon after meeting while singing at Cathy’s annual birthday celebration, Cathyoke, The Hohos were born and we started performing once a month or so, mostly in the long-running tribute show, Losers Lounge. Our Stevie NIcks number got us noticed by the Mother crew who invited us to do our first Night of 1,000 Stevies in 1999. We did that show annually (except 2009) through 2015 and became “legendary” for our clever mashups, large dance numbers and overall Stevie Realness.

• 1998 The Hohos (Performance Collab w/ Cathy Cervenka)
• 1997 I Love My Movie (Actor, Feature Film)

After graduating from art school, I headed south to Atlanta where I knew there would be less competition. There was a wonderfully active music scene happening at the time which kept me busy trying to maintain energy for my day job putting together catalogs and mailers for an RV Parts and Accessories company (a daily reverse commute out of Atlanta to Douglasville, Georgia).

My inner performer continued to bubble to the surface in my deeply nostalgic 90s on 70s wardrobe and public stunts like handing out business cards claiming I was a model scout, going to hotel bars dressed up like a 1980s secretary, and producing marketing items for a non-existent break dancing troupe Two Corey’s Break.

Thinking there must be something more to life than great friends and affordable housing (spoiler, not really), I moved back to NYC and started working in advertising. There, the performance-urge mostly found outlets in dressing up and going out, something that I had conveniently perfected in college.

During my sophomore year at Parsons/Lang, I was alert enough to take a Theatre In Education class taught by a British guy during which we worked with actual high school students and used performance to teach them about feudalism. The whole experience made me ache to get back to the craft of acting.

One “exchange” year out in LA at Otis (when it still used to be attached to Parsons) reignited my interest in design and I ended up getting straight A’s! Extracurricular interests included documentary film making, raves, and Keanu Reeves. The time my schoolmates and I found three, fully intact Sizzler uniforms right before Halloween remains one of my fondest memories.

I moved back to New York and Max Fish in ‘92 and graduated the following year with a BFA in Communication Design, BA in Psychology and no idea what to do next.

• 1992 Curly (documentary short)

After a summer stint at Brown right before my Junior year, a whole TWO more years of high school in sunny California seemed unbearable (lol) and I decided to forgo my high school diploma in search of something more stimulating: the gorgeously gloomy East Coast.

Lacking the guts to go straight to New York City, I cut my teeth (and picked up some great, lifelong friends) at Boston University where, once again, I tried to study something productive instead of what I loved. I auditioned and got a job as a VJ on the local BU channel (wish I had that tape! Lots of Throwing Muses!) and also was involved in Writers Workshop, a comedy performance subsidiary of Stage Troupe, “BU’s oldest and largest extracurricular performing arts group for undergraduate students who are not majoring in theatre.” But no work that year, including school work, was more important then the work I did as a hair model for John Dellaria. Lots of orange and purple and blunt bangs.

Unable to envision myself excelling in the normcore environs of the giant B.U., I miraculously end up in New York City at art school (yay) for graphic design (not my passion). My continuing urge to perform channels itself in a deep dive into NYC nightlife culture, much of which involves seeing performance by some of the East Village downtown greats!

• 1989 B.U. Writers Workshop (Comedy Ensemble)
• 1988 John Dellaria Boston (Hair Modeling)

During high school I scratched my fashion itch by catering my Mom’s dinner parties in exchange for modeling school tuition. My brief stint as a low fashion model included runway shows for Contempo Casuals and mannequin modeling for a local furrier.

With a love and involvement in all thing High School Drama Dept., nothing held me back from being the International Thespian I knew I can be. Except for the insane impracticality of studying acting as a potential profession. Those who made it a real job were confident and impossibly good-looking aka something dangerous and unavailable to me. Thus, the act of performing situated itself in my life as something successful people do in their spare time.

I also worked as a library page which gave me ongoing access to the greatest biography of all time — if you were an alternative, Gen X teenager who liked fashion — Edie, an American Biography by Jean Stein.

I was born and adopted in Baltimore, Maryland thus beginning my most important role to date: Jill Catherine Pangallo. It has been reported that I made family members endlessly re-enact The Wizard of Oz.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of plays and dances performed under the overarching project title “routines.” Venues included Living Room, Carport, and, for the smaller audiences, Bathroom. Major influences included 321 Contact, Grease (movie AND soundtrack), Little House on the Prairie, the made for screen musicals Gypsy and Annie, Free to Be You and Me, ONJ’s Totally Hot, and Fantasy Island. Discovered my love of making combined with dressing up via annual halloween costumes including, but not limited to: Miss Piggy, Crayola Crayon, and cookie.