Me and Massage
     I've been an actor and a teacher of acting/improvisation for over 15 years in the Bay Area.  My interest in body work started about 12 years ago when I found out I had two crushed discs in my lower back.  I was told by an orthopedic doctor that I needed to get surgery...but there was only a 50% chance that things would improve and that there was a chance(he didn't give a percent for this one) that things could get worse.  I was not comforted and limped out of his office feeling very scared that my life as I knew it was quite done.   Months earlier I had been taking beginning ballet  in San Francisco and it so happened that the teacher (Augusta Moore) was a body worker (Feldenkrais).   I was able to work with her one on one and it really changed the way I moved. There is not a day that the memory of my back pain  and immobility does not inform my work as a massage therapist.  I avoided surgery and have been relatively pain free (with a few reminder episodes) ever since.   I started to work on people's shoulders and backs whenever I was cast in a production and became the defacto company masseur.  Cast mates would tell me, "Hey you should really do this!"   I enrolled at National Holistic Institute in Emeryville, California.  It was a great launching pad and covered not only  Western and Eastern training but had extensive course work in anatomy, physiology, pathology and kinesiology.  I graduated at the top of my class and immediately started working for Massage Envy in San Rafael,  later becoming their lead therapist (I  recently represented Massage Envy in a spot on the TV show "View From the Bay").  I've been doing 25 to 30 massage hours per week for  over two years now which has gained me experience working on every body type imaginable.  People ask me if I get tired.  I say, "You don't get tired when you really love what you do.  People are always happy to see me.  They leave relaxed, energized and feeling better." 

Me and Acting:
     When I was in junior high I had an English teacher (Norma Wright) who along with her husband (Fred Wright) took kids up to the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  I went one summer and got hooked and I returned the next 7 years in a row.  I owe Norma and Fred a huge debt of gratitude for those summers.   In college I tried not to be a theater person.  I was a biology major, English major, comparative literature major, etc...because I didn't like the insecure lifestyle that acting promised.  Invariably I would end up in a show. After coming to grips with the fact that I was an actor,  I graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelors in Theater.  Since then I  have worked in San Francisco/ Bay Area theater for many years, taught and performed improvisation and toured with an adaptation of Moby Dick as far as Australia.  I became a core member of Porchlight Theater Company in 2006 and have appeared with them in Heartbreak House by Shaw, Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, and Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.  The theaters I'll be funding are Porchlight Theater Company based out of Ross, and Alternative Theater Ensemble based in San Rafael.  Both are local nonprofits with great reputations for fantastic theater.