I began acting in gradeschool - the critics loved my portrayal of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol - Sharon Jensen praised my performance in a review she wrote and posted on the fridge.
I acted in musicals and plays throughout highschool and college. My favorite part was the Devil in Damn Yankees. Or was it Judas in Godspell. Hmmm - noticing a theme here...
I graduated in 1990 from Bradley University with a Bachelors in Communications and a minor in Creative Writing.
Through college I was member of the Wheaton and Bradley Speech teams - as a performer and as a coach. I received a four-year scholarship for the Speech team at Bradley - eventually placing second in the nation in Informative Speaking, as well as reaching semi-finals in Prose, etc.
I acted for a few years out of college and then stopped to pursue other things, picking up my acting career again in late 2005.
In my younger years I also sang as often as I could. In addition to singing in the shower and in line at the grocery store, I frequently sang as a member of various legitimate choirs, etc.
I've been writing fiction my whole life, and spent a few years getting a Masters in English from Northwestern University. I pursued the degree in the evenings, while working first as an Advertising Copywriter and then as an IT Manager. The coursework for my Masters was split fairly evenly between studies of the novel and creative writing courses.
Most recently (in between acting) I directed a staged reading of a short film script for Chicago ScriptWorks. My short script, "Two Men" was also chosen to be read as part of the same festival and my monologue "Boarder" was a finalist in the Camenae Monomaniac competition.
