Dea started doing comedy as a child.  At the age of four, she performed her first one woman show  in her parents' garage.  She sold nickel tickets and then told jokes for three minutes before running out of material.  So she showed her cat to everyone.  The applause was deafening.  Those three related-by-blood people in the audience got her hooked.  Armed with fifteen cents and a desire for some new material, she went back to her entirely too pink bedroom and started writing.  Thanks to her courageous and patient mother, Dea had learned to read and write well before starting school. This caused some problems.  In second grade, she got in so much trouble for using the word "excrement" to describe a schoolmate that she found herself writing and illustrating a comic book (complete with hero Poop and sixteen pages of his trials and tribulations) to avoid having to stay after school in detention.  She learned at a tender age that being funny is an easy way out of punishment.  Pull her over for a traffic violation.  Go ahead.  Do it.  You'll see.

During her six years at The University of Texas at Austin, she started performing live for real audiences.  Sadly, her first paying  job was as a drag queen who sang live Marilyn Monroe impersonations at Club Deca in Austin.  The owner didn't know she wasn't a boy.  She didn't tell him. Everyone knew but him, so she figured there was no harm in living the, er, dream.  The real problem was not that she did not have a penis tucked away in a tight piece of spandex.  The real problem was that she was underrage in a bar in Central Texas. The owner eventually found out about his trickster performer, but by then she had graduated from the Drama Department and didn't need the, well, Drama of living Victor/Victoria every weekend.  

After moving to Dallas, Dea returned to school to get a film acting degree.  During that time, she shot many commercials and hooked up with some crazy cable access television people.  They had a comedy team of five men, but no women had ever been able to hang with those whackos for very long.  Dea came in as the new only female member of Free Beer and did an entire year of episodes playing every female character in every sketch.  She discovered she loved sketch comedy and could not get through the day without a wig.  Perhaps that is her drag queen roots showing, but wigs are still her favorite clothing item.

After graduation from KD Studio, she met an amazing piano player and composer, Michael Gott.  After harrassing him for a few months (she does that), he finally agreed to let her pitch her one woman show idea to him over dinner.  The agreement was simple.  He would make the dinner and she would eat it. Won over by her constant haranguing, begging, and whining, he reluctantly submitted to her and wrote the music and lyrics for Split Ends which they performed together for many years.  Split Ends began as some notes scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a gay bar with her hairdresser.  Another chance to wear wigs or a sociological piece of musical theatre debating the success of women who choose to change their hair rather than their lives? Who cares?  It sold out for years.  Thankfully, John S. Davies directed this show.  Only John could really control Dea's constant desire to change things, make them better, bigger, funnier.  He never had to actually slap her, but through sneaky physical cues like shaking his head woefully which caused her to stop and ask "What?," he finally got control and beat her into submission. John knew that Dea is just insecure enough to trust someone if they seem to know something she doesn't know.

Then some development people came to see the show and convinced Dea to move to Los Angeles.  She did.  When she arrived, she found those development people no longer working at the studio.  Suddenly, the big Hollywood agent she had met in Dallas wasn't interested because he "isn't sure what to do with you."  She agreed that he didn't know what to do with her and then spent the next few years showing him what to do with her by continuing to do Split Ends and sketch comedy as often as she could.  This resulted in quite a few jobs including character stints on General Hospital, America's Most Wanted, a few films, and many, many commercials.  That agent now represents Dea.  She learned that "no" doesn't mean anything really, even though it might hurt for an hour or so, or in this case a few years.

Looking over her closet full of wigs, she can think of all the women who came before her who were told "I don't know what to do with you."  Tracey Ullman, Carol Burnett, Phyllis Diller, Roseanne, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Bette Midler all went through the same thing.  Dea has found that the difference between a "no" and a "yes" is usually just a wig (and a few people who believe in her) away.

You can see Dea "getting wiggy wid it" on Sunday nights at the ACME Comedy Theatre, at the Celebration Theatre on January 21, on television in commercials, and in her new upcoming film version of Split Ends now in pre-production.

If you are the missing-in-action development people who made her move to L.A. in the first place, please e-mail her here and let her know you are alive.  You have been missed.  (Not really, but Dea likes to make people happy.) Any other development types, feel free to contact her through Meridian Artists Agency unless you are sending a love note which she would like to receive privately in the comfort of her own home.

Oh, jeez, shut up and take me back to the main page!