Photo by Franklin Wagner
I come from North and South Dakota (to answer your question: Yes, I do like most casseroles. But I prefer the term "hotdish."). I grew up loving movie musicals, portraying Walter Farley's Black Stallion at recess, and creating epic stories with my dollhouse. From an early age, I was abysmal in sports and gravitated towards all things performing arts, including dance classes, clarinet, bassoon, and piano lessons, competitive speech, and various choirs. I was voted most likely in my high school class to win an Oscar. I just think that's prestigious enough that you should know.
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I attended a small liberal arts school in central Minnesota for undergrad. While in college, I participated in sketch comedy as well as many theatre department productions, and still somehow managed to graduate summa cum laude, which nobody in the theatre or film/TV world really needs to care about, but it reflected many late nights laboring over theatre history papers after rehearsal.
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Because my school was so focused on the liberal arts and on teaching students all aspects of theatre, I didn't have many acting classes in undergrad. I decided I wanted to learn basic acting technique and moved to Portland, Oregon, to study at The Actors Conservatory (then the Portland Actors Conservatory). I loved Portland so much that I stayed there for five years and appeared in two independent films and numerous plays, including The Alien Chicken Remembers Galatea, a feminist dystopian dark comedy that I co-created and co-produced for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which was an incredible experience.
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Portland was the first place I had ever lived that felt like Home. I loved the culture, the scrappy theatre scene, and, yes, the weirdness. But I eventually wanted to move to a bigger market, one that had film and TV as well as theatre, and I didn't feel ready professionally or artistically. I decided to take the leap and get my MFA in Acting. Fate brought this now West coast weirdo back to her midwestern roots when I was accepted to the University of Missouri-Kansas City's program, ranked by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the top 25 acting schools in the country. In my time there, I discovered that I am a writer/creator as well as an actor, and I am looking forward to creating more of my own projects in the future. I was lucky to have very supportive and generous fellow cohort members and teachers. I'm proud of my accomplishment and thankful that I chose to go back to school, but I couldn't have done it without their love. And after that, it was finally time to come to New York.
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I'm committed to Hamlet's idea of holding the mirror up to nature as an actor. I believe that can be done in any style, in any story, in any medium, whether we are laughing, raging, or crying. One of my grad school teachers studied with the great Morris Carnovsky, and my teacher once asked Mr. Carnovsky how many of his numerous performances as King Lear were really "there," in the zone, for him. Mr. Carnovsky, no doubt amazing whether he felt "there" or not, replied, "Two. No, three. No, two." I am always in pursuit of performances like those two.
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Thank you for taking the time to visit my site, and thank you for reading this. Feel free to reach out to me if there's more you want to know or see.
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Wishing you joy (and charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent),
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Shannon