BIOGRAPHY

My 30-year career as an actor and acting coach has taught me the importance of acting from one’s authentic self—and the techniques required to do it. I now share those techniques with lawyers, business leaders, and other people who want to develop clear, powerful presentation skills with the help of an acting coach.

My work in performance training draws from Linklater Voice Technique, Alexander and Feldenkrais body work, and the acting techniques of Stanislavski, Grotowski, Michael Chekhov, and British acting disciplines. I have learned much from Katherine James and Alan Blumenfeld of Act of Communication, which has been training attorneys and public speakers for 20 years. I am also indebted to the valuable insights of Joshua Karton, a respected trial consultant. Finally, I draw on lessons learned firsthand from working in front of audiences at the California Shakespeare Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Santa Fe, Atlanta’s Theater Emory, Berkeley’s Aurora Theater (where my work in The Persians earned me a 2004 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award), and many other venues.

I earned a B.A. in dramatic art from the University of California at Berkeley, a teaching credential from U.C. Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in theater education from Antioch International in conjunction with the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) and the London Drama Studio. I was a teacher at the Boston University Theater Institute and California Institute of the Arts and the founding director of the California Shakespeare Festival Conservatory, which I directed for twelve years. For the last fifteen years I’ve been the advanced acting teacher in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

I live in Berkeley with my husband of 27 years and our daughter Phoebe Zhilan, whom we adopted from China in 2002.

For information call 510-524-3676