About Me

Life Upon the Wicked Stage

Play(wrights) Pen

Andi's Alters

The Institute of Film Cheddarology

Hooray for Bollywood

Hong Kong FU-EEE!

Celebrity Guest Book

Hot Links

Return to the Center of AndiWorld

Email me

Shop the AndiWorld Store
at CafePress


Read my AndiWorld Blog

Find me on MySpace

Life Upon the Wicked Stage
I stay busy with area theatre productions, as you can see below. And I've even won awards for acting, directing, choreography and sound design, and received some nice reviews over the years, so check out my Reviews Index.
One of my proudest theatrical achievements has been the success of my original script High School Hellcats in Heels. A critical and audience hit spoofing those bad "Juvie movies" from the 1950s, it was called the "funniest show of the year" in the Dallas Observer's 2003 Theater Winners wrap-up. Here's one of my favorite moments from the play... How often have you seen a Fuller Brush man spanked onstage?
I had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream, playing Glinda the Good Witch, when I directed Uptown Players' annual fundraiser Broadway Our Way: Valley of the Divas. I camped it up doing one of my operatic song parodies complete with wand and crown. The audience loved Glinda as well as many of the other comic numbers in the show, such as the women going hunting as we sang "Gay or European" from Legally Blonde.
I have had the chance to do the comedy musical revue Six Women with Brain Death twice. I appeared in the Fort Worth premiere in the 90s and when the opportunity was offered to do the show again in the new century at Richardson Theatre Centre, I jumped at the chance. The entire cast of 6 women play multiple roles and when I did the show the first time, I played Rambi and the Severed Head, but secretly desired to play the lead Diva in the Divas of Motown and Nashville songs. At Richardson, I got the chance to be the opera Diva! Here I am pictured with the rest of the RTC brain dead women.
So you want to be a nun? I finally had the chance to play one of my dream roles, Sister Mary Amnesia in ICT's Nunsense and garnered a great review. In a sad twist of fate, an accident during our tech week resulted in the death of a theater friend. We postponed the opening to mourn him and decide if we could even continue after the tragedy. After emotional soul-searching, all of us agreed Rudy would want the show to go on, so we opened belatedly in tribute to him. It was tough going back into the theater, but we did it and received tremendous support from Rudy's family and the whole theater community in carrying on the tradition of the show must go on.
"Mambo Barbie" gets a hug from her *evil twin* John de Los Santos on opening night of Uptown Players' Mambo Italiano. The show broke opening weekend box office records and the entire cast did an incredible job, making my job as director so easy.
Photos by Mark Oristano
Photo by Mark Oristano
Ruthless! set the opening weekend record for a musical at Uptown Players. This wicked musical parody was a great show with a great cast, great reviews and played to sold out houses. Ruthless earned DFW Critics Forum Awards for Coy as Best Actor and me for directing, and also received Rabin nominations for Best Musical, Best Director of a Musical (moi!), and Best Actress in a Musical for Stacia. It also made No. 5 on The Dallas Voice Top Ten Shows of 2003. Ruthless, indeed!
Sordid Lives had a great cast, a special guest at our preview, and another impromptu performance by yours truly the director when I had a hospitalized actress on opening night. Here the cast and I celebrate surviving opening night. Later in the year, we had much to celebrate when Ted won a Critic's Forum Award for Best Actor, Lisa won the Leon Rabin Award for Best Actress, Angela received a Rabin nomination, and the cast, show, and crew received numerous Column Awards.
The Lady in Question offered me the unique opportunity to channel Katherine Hepburn and a little Lucille Ball as the leading "Lady" in this 1940's movie spoof written by Charles Busch. We were a very 'close-knit' company as you can tell from the photo.
I'm guilty... Reefer Madness is not just a movie any more! The Pegasus production was a live theatrical version of the notoriously bad 1930s movie Reefer Madness. I played Blanche, a woman who seduces several teenagers into a life of debauchery and decadence by enticing them to smoke some dreaded marijuana cigarettes. In this photo, overcome by guilt, I am about to hurl myself out a window to the stage floor only 2 feet below me.
bbb Here I am with Robert Banks in Bikini Beach Bloodsuckers. I played Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a three hundred year-old vampiress whom I based on Hungary's real Blood Countess, purportedly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. The plot combined elements of Frankie and Annette beach party movies with Sunset Boulevard. This was the first full-length play that I wrote, and it was nominated for a Leon Rabin award for Outstanding New Play of 1996. I have since written a sequel entitled Zombie A-Go-Go!, as well as several other plays. All my scripts are available for performance. Check here or e-mail me for details—I'll be glad to help get my shows on stages everywhere!
Me (in the cheesy blonde wig), Stacia Goad, and Pam Peadon performing "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" in Lyric Stage's Leon Rabin Award-winning production of Sweet Charity. During rehearsals for this show-stopping song-and-dance number, I frequently muttered "I'm too old for this..." between gasps for oxygen. Still, I was thrilled to be dancing actual Fosse choreography for the first time, as he has been a major influence on my own style as a choreographer. sweetcharity
More info on my original plays See some of my other guises