Condemned To A Life is a solo show with puppets. It is dark, funny, personal, and built to say some of the things people are usually taught to keep quiet.

The show explores trauma, grief, addiction, PTSD, love, shame, survival, and the question of how we learn to love ourselves — and when we have to let other people go. It is also rooted in my family’s experience with severe mental illness and incarceration. The piece opens with a letter I wrote to the judge at my brother’s sentencing and wrestles with guilt, damage, love, and the way a single sentence can impact a person. My brother was sentenced in a courtroom. The show asks what happens to the rest of us.

I’m raising $8,000 to help fund the Chicago premiere of Condemned To A Life, including puppet builds, rehearsal labor, directing, stage management, and other essential production costs. The full Chicago production budget is approximately $18,000, and I am also putting my own money into the project as it moves from development into production.

The script is finished, I have secured a director and puppeteer, and I have been scouting venues for a premiere that will tentatively take place at The Second City.

I’m building the piece with director Vishaal Desai, puppet designer Noah Ginex, and puppet coach Stoph Scheer. The show has also been accepted into the United Solo Festival in New York for both the Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 sessions.

I’m a Chicago-based actress, journalist, writer, improviser, puppeteer, and brain injury survivor. I make work that uses humor to open up deep, strange, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations.

I trained in acting and improv in New York City at HB Studio, The Barrow Group, and the Peoples Improv Theater. In Chicago, I completed The Second City Conservatory program and the improv program at Home Comedy Theater, where I now perform regularly on the house team Grief Circle. I’ve also performed improv and musical improv across Chicago, including shows at The Second City, iO Theater, and The Den Theater.

I’ve studied on-camera acting and voice at Acting Studio Chicago, and I continue to train in puppetry through the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and regular work with a puppet coach. My improvised puppet show, Conversations We Can’t Have, has been presented in Chicago, at IMPRO Amsterdam, and will travel to Impronale in Germany. The show invites audience members to talk to anyone or anything through a puppet — a lost loved one, an ex, a dog, a boss--even a fire alarm.

I’m also a veteran health and science journalisl and have spent more than a decade explaining complex topics to general audiences, with a focus on digestive health, brain health, and invisible health conditions, including traumatic brain injury. I previously served as Executive Editor at Everyday Health and a News Editor at CBS News. My work has appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business, The Week, Newsweek, CBS News, Everyday Health, Discover, Scientific American, and Popular Science.

I write children’s books for Klutz, an imprint of Scholastic, and I teach improv to kids and adults throughout Chicago. I founded the improv-for-kids program at Home Comedy Theater and teach improv in both French and English at the Lycée Français de Chicago. I also lead improv workshops for journalists and parents, because journalism, parenting, and being a human being all require the same basic skill: listening carefully, staying present, and making the next honest choice.

I want Condemned To A Life to start conversations and chip away at the shame surrounding traumatic brain injury, drug and alcohol addiction, PTSD, severe mental illness, and the reality of having loved ones in the criminal justice system. Millions of people live with these things. We need to speak about them more honestly.

This show matters deeply to me because my work on brain health is personal. I survived a traumatic brain injury at sixteen, and I became interested in the long-term effects of brain injury not only as a journalist, but as a person living with one. I am a participant in the Late Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury study out of Mount Sinai and have agreed to donate my brain to science after I die so researchers can better understand what brain injury does over a lifetime.

The show also grew out of my family’s experience with mental illness, trauma, and the criminal justice system. But this story is not only about me or my family. I believe it can matter to audiences who have lived through brain injury, addiction, family trauma, abuse, mental illness, or the chaos and heartbreak of loving someone who is struggling. It is an ambitious, emotionally honest piece, and I hope it makes people feel less alone.

Your donation will help me pay artists, build the puppets, rehearse the show properly, and bring Condemned To A Life to the stage in Chicago and to the United Solo Festival in New York City.

If you are not able to donate right now, sharing this campaign also helps. Please post it on social media, send it to friends, or pass it along to anyone who cares about theater, puppetry, brain health, mental health, addiction, family trauma, criminal justice, or stories that make hard things easier to talk about.

Thank you for your support.