How Modesto Revived My Acting Career

I Was 14 When Stage Fright During a New York Audition Foiled My Plans For the Future. A Thriving Arts Scene In California’s Central Valley Came To My Rescue.

As a child, I was always singing. I’d walk up and down my street in New Rochelle, New York, singing the crooner songs I heard at home: Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, and Sammy Davis, Jr. In 1967, when I was 8 years old, my sister, Sherille, took me to see the musical I Do! I Do! on Broadway. From that moment on, I started to emulate the big, powerful voices of the Broadway stage.

My mother enrolled me in the Stella Adler Acting Studio and voice …

Playing My Country Song in a Cineplex

How Life, Career, and Injury Led Me to Songwriting, and Gigs in Unusual Inland Empire Spaces

Have you been to the movies in Corona? If so, you may have heard me—performing not on the screen, but in the lobby of the Dos Lagos Stadium 15.

The crowds …

I’d Like Pepperoni and Poetry on That

How a Community College Student Started a Poetry Slam at a Visalia Pizzeria

If you want to hear poetry on a Friday night in the San Joaquin Valley, stop by Howie & Son’s Pizza Parlor in Visalia.

You’ll find us in the back room, …

My Hometown Opera

How a Young Woman Without Credentials Started Up an Opera Company in Visalia

How did I, of all people, end up starting an opera company? The answer has to do with being willing to forget about credentials and just take that first step. …

Coming Home Again to Make Art

When Husband-and-Wife Artists Went Back to Tulare County, They Discovered a Different Place

Can two artists, husband and wife, make a career and a life together in Tulare County?

We grew up together in the town of Dinuba, right in the middle of this …