User:O-LanJones

O-Lan Jones Miz Jones is an award-winning actress, composer, sound designer and writer. The press has called her "...an uncategorizable legend."

Her work as an actress originating the female roles in the plays of Sam Shepard, Beth Henley, Murray Mednick, and John Steppling, among others, has made her something of a cultural icon.

Raised by a free-spirited Philosopher Queen in various ghettos across America (Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, New York) with stops in London and the jungles of Yucatan where they lived in a hut in a village of 80 Mayan Indians, Jones began her professional acting career at 16 in the hotbed of New York's off-off Broadway scene in the late '60s and early '70s. When she was 19 she married playwright Sam Shepard with whom she has a son, Jesse Shepard, author of Jubilee King, a collection of short stories published by Bloomsbury Press. Shepard and Jones divorced in 1983. Since that time, of the more than 80 plays she's acted in, only two have been performed prior to her involvement in them; part of her lot in life is as accomplice to new/experimental projects.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 1990 she has had a broad range of roles in film and television. Equally at home in comedy or drama she is often asked to walk the line between the two. In features she has worked with directors Tim Burton, Jonathan Demme, Ivan Reitman, Paul Schraeder, John Schlesinger, Oliver Stone, Peter Weir and Paul Bartel who directed Shelf Life a movie she wrote and starred in with Andrea Stein and Jim Turner.

Her screen credits include Mars Attacks!, Edward Scissorhands, Natural Born Killers, and The Truman Show. Her television credits include Lonesome Dove, Seinfeld, The X-Files; and a season as a series regular on CBS's Harts of the West which starred Beau Bridges and Lloyd Bridges.

Along with her best friend and writing partner, Kathleen Cramer, Miz Jones is also the founder and Artistic Director of Overtone Industries, an innovative group of composers, writers and performers who have been exploring new music theatre for over 20 years. Their work has been performed in S.F., L.A., and in New York at the Kurt Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. Dramalogue said of her work with this company, "Jones has, in fact, done as much to advance the cause of singing plays as Leonard Bernstein" and the L.A. Times calls Overtone's work "... audaciously experimental entertainment." She has composed three short operas; five musicals; created original music,  songs, and sound designs for more than 30 theatrical productions; and scored two short films. She was also the Musical Director and Arranger of Joel Lipman's rock-'n'-roll extravaganza Celebration of the Lizard which features 49 Doors songs.

As of 2004 Miz Jones is on sabbatical from screen-waitressing; devoting her time to Overtone Industries' new projects, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands and The Woman in the Wall. On August 24, 2003, with the extraordinary help and contribution of time and talent from family and many wonderful friends, Miz Jones married her long-time boyfriend Halldor Enard and they are now living Happily Ever After.

www.o-lanjones.com/bio.htm

www.o-lanjones.com www.overtoneindustries.org