My Story

In 1984, I was Twinkle, the 4-year old clown, with a little red heart painted on my nose. Performing silk scarf tricks outdoors at the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous, it was the glow of the lights, the crowd while bundled up in parkas, their visible breath in the cold air, that made me know I wanted whatever kind of magic that was, forever.

I grew up painting with my mom, playing piano with my dad, and living deep in my imagination. Theatre carried me from middle school through college, and then I took some detours: studying Czech literature in Prague, building award-winning puppets that took me to London, playing keys and accordion in a Portland rock band, climbing sandstone in Moab, teaching kids, helping run a music festival, and spending time in Ecuador. My dad was a humanitarian adventurer - he worked in solar with communities around the world, and he brought me along: Guatemala, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Burma, Thailand. He taught me, though I didn't know it then, how to stay awake to a place. His life was cut short in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

That loss pulled me back to theatre, the place that has always felt like home, where I can escape and explore myself at once. Since then, I got married to my long time sweetheart, I’ve become a mom to the coolest kid on the planet, took to gardening, goats, chickens and herbalism. I’ve acted in a bunch of commercials, starred in an award-winning film, and returned fully to the stage, creating and collaborating in Portland since 2017.

Now I'm pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Point Park University, where I've finally stopped apologizing for working in five directions at once and started calling it the method.