100 Lives I've Lived

I took a few months off from podcasting. And in that time new projects entered my life, which you will certainly hear about on the podcast, but not today. With September in the air, and as I prepared for a busy day ahead of me, I found myself thinking about the relationship between business and fun and was reminded about this podcast so I wanted to sit down and record an episode. This episode is a...

I began writing, producing, and directing film in 2016 in the summer after I graduated from my MFA. I wasn't crystal clear on what I wanted to share, but I began regardless, and I ended up making a couple of projects right away that summer, including "Girls Gone Mild" a satire on millenial married women. It's not something that I've shared publicly because it's not the be...

I started dancing ballet when I was three. All the women in my family have danced. My mom is 69 years old and she still dances ballet twice a week, so does my sister. I only danced for 15 years, once a week, and although I really enjoyed elements of it, I never loved it. I find it hard to spend so much time on the warm-up exercises, I just want to do floor work the whole time. Can you tell I'm...

One of my all time favorite roles was Masha in Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike". This was my thesis production in grad school in 2016, directed by Michael Blatt. We worked on this piece for an entire year, while we completed coursework in school and productions outside of school (and held down jobs, and relationships, and living in NYC). This role was a drea...

I performed as a part of the Box and Wine Festival in a show called "MacSpin" written by Seth Freeman. The show was directed by Micke Hayhurst, and featured Travis Stanton-Marrero, Blaine Mizer, and Julia Hays. This was a comedy mashup of Macbeth, and was all meant to be a little silly. And it was. Although it wasn't a huge production, we came second place for Audience Choice in the...

And then I got the call. The feature film was crowdfunded in 24 hours. And I was going to get to play Tagi one last time. Listen here about the experience, how it went by so quickly, and how I got to say goodbye to a character I'd known for 15 years, in the best way possible.

Have you ever peed your pants onstage? I have. But I was only 8 years old, and it was an end of year school play about baseball (I think). I was a candy seller, and I was wearing white jeans, and I was completely mortified. I had this memory of this show come back to me and I couldn't figure out why that memory, or why now? I still don't know the answer but I think it has something to do w...

I've had the pleasure of playing one of my favorite roles of all time, Cassie in "A Chorus Line". It played in 2004 for three weeks at Hart House Theatre in Toronto. We got rave reviews. Admittedly, I've been pretty shy about this experience and this role. I see now that I've had a really hard time accepting that I deserved to be the lead, believing that I was allowed to be e...

In 2010 I recorded two small songs for the Pure Pwnage: teh TV Series show (Showcase/ Hulu). I wasn't cast in the show, but I did get a chance to see one of the main set locations, hang out with the cast and meet Melanie, and record a couple of tracks that appeared on the television series. It was always a good time getting to create with Geoff, and I loved working on the music with him, and w...

Around Valentines Day 2007 we opened Nine the Musical at Hart House Theatre in Toronto. I played a named character, but mostly was a member of the glorious chorus in this show, alongside some of my future best friends and favorite people. This show included beautiful music, gorgeous costumes, highly thematic staging and set design, and hilarious performances from my friends. This show was a pure j...

In 2012 I began applying for an Acting MFA in NYC. My first time auditioning I did not get accepted (I did not even get a callback). But it began me on a year long training for the next year's audition. I studied weekly with Broadway and world renowned teachers and performers in NYC to get ready for the grad school auditions, and I learned more in that year of training than I had in the past 1...

In college I worked at a Lululemon. Of course I did. And I really liked it. I liked the people, I liked the products, and corporate seemed to care about us and our goals both inside and outside of the organization. I sold a lot of stretchy pants and made everyone's butt look good. I still love their pants. Did you know that you can exchange your old worn out pants at their store, because they...

In 2012 I joined the producing team for a one-man show called Tenderpits that performed at Dixon Place, 59E59, and then The Underbelly in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This was a pivotable experience for me. I learned so much throughout my time on the Tenderpits team, even if the lesson was ultimately that my talents were better suited elsewhere. But please, remember that the path to...

In my last year of university around 2007ish, I worked as a hostess and waitress at a cool restaurant in the heart of Toronto. It was busy, and the hours were late, and I'm pretty sure the whole place was run by the mafia. I'm deranged enough that I thought I could befriend the (mafia) owner of the restaurant, and also the rage-fueled chef. I can assure you neither of those things happened...

In the fall of 2011 I got my first stage play in NYC, in Misha Shulman's "Deathscape" at Theater For The New City. This was cool, this was avant-garde. Misha was an artist I admired and respected (and he had trained at the Crow's Theatre, so there was that Toronto-connection!). I loved going to the east village for rehearsals and finding new treats and artwork. It was such a beau...

In 2011 I walked into the Barnes and Noble in my neighborhood and asked to be the storytime reader. I thought, this is a great way to engage with an (appreciative - read: kids!) audience, and also work on some character voices since I liked doing character voicework. The head of the Children's Dept said no, but I could help. So I did. And I liked doing it so much I approached the South Street...

In 2013 I recorded the lead voice in a videogame I booked off of Voice123.com, and it was a non union job. I had to record the audio, buy the editing software, learn how to edit the audio tracks and convert them, and as a result I asked for a little more money from the producer. It was surprising for me to look back on this memory, because (yay for me!) I was able to self advocate and negotiate a...

And I had a jazz band with my best friend Claire Duncan. And we called ourselves Little Reds (I had red hair at the time, I forgot to mention that in the episode) and The Wolfson Brothers (aka Jeevan D'Souza and The Wolfson Brothers Band). This was a job that brought me so much joy: I got to make money with my best friend, doing what we loved, and we got to control what we sang, and how we dre...

In this episode I dive into the time I ended up in voiceover performing the lead role for a videogame ( Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale ), and then a motion comic ( Lost Girl: the Motion Comic Series ) with Bedlam Ink and my friend from university, Navid Khavari. This is beginning of a multi-part series about the voice overs I've done, where I trained, how I got my demos, and the gear I use a...

I got to don some old Hollywood garb and a transatlantic accent for my cameo role in the series Brotherhood of Leet: The 8 Bit Wars, created and produced by Davin Lengyel. In this series I played a starlet in the vein of Rita Hayworth alongside a Clark Gable style actor (played by Geoff Lapaire). It still shocks me that we got to film so much of both Pure Pwnage and this series in the rooms and re...

This episode talks more about my time volunteering as an Associate Producer at the Paprika Festival, and some of the incredible opportunities I got to work with professional artists, support youth artists, and perform new works on Tarragon's stages with some directors I idolized in Toronto theatre. That being said, I was doing too much. It was 2008. I was working myself into the ground because...

In the early 2000s I co-founded a theatre company with some bad ass female creatives called Theatre In Her Shoes. We were driven to tell stories by women, about women and advocate for female playwrights and actresses to tell stories from the uniquely female perspective. We produced multiple reading series, a full production at the Summerworks Festival, and launched our own creative careers. I'...

Now we delve into the more embarassing gigs that I've had, including playing the title role of Little Bunny Riding Hood in the small touring production of the same name. This role/ play was not a career changer for me (obviously) but it did give me the opportunity to face the challenge of doing a show with a cast mate when we weren't getting along. I don't ever want you to have to deal...

In 2009 I was cast as Caitlin O'Hare in "Over The River and Through The Woods" at the Rose Theatre alongside Dawn Wells (the actress who played Maryann in "Gilligan's Island"). This was a touching play about the love between grandparents and their grandkids, the traditions that keep families together and push them apart, and the generational expressions of love and how...

In 2009 I was sad and decided to channel my sadness into making other people laugh, so I signed up for an improv class at the Comedy Bar. Turns out, I actually had signed up for a Stand-Up Comedy class, that culminated in a 5 minute performance at the end of the four week session. So for one brief night in 2009, I performed a bunch of jokes I had written to an audience, and it was equal parts terr...