User:Propaneonthesidewalk

My name is Nena St. Louis. I am an actor, sculptor and videographer. My major contributions to society have been: 1) performing autobiographical performance art dealing with mental illness for almost 20 years, mostly along the Pacific, but also on stages in New York, Chicago, Houston and Nebraska; 2) being active in the national arts community as a professionally represented as a sculptor (figurative woodcarvings, most of them torched and wrapped like mummies) most of the years beginning in 1986 - currently by Lacy Primitive and Fine Art in Los Angeles, CA; and certainly not least, 3) founding Jump! Theatre in San Francisco, CA in 2005. I transitioned from the career that supported my art (and Jump! for the first 4 years), which was paralegalling, to videographer. Ironically, after the training that I received in 2010 as an employee of a major player mental health care provider nonprofit, I realized that the best work I do paying it forward for my mentally ill peers is my blog, http://doyouwantobuymybrain.blogspot.com, the name of my most successful play, which recently was published in Jump! Theatre's first chapbook. My mother says "your blog is your most important work," and now that I have had the experience of being "the Man" at a mental health care facility event, and having had the experience of having to decide whether I was going to wear my staff ID or not, whether it was more offputting to the clients if the videographer had on her staff ID or not - I realize that my mother is right. I am very happy for the empowering of people like "us" that Jump! has provided and continues to provide, but I know that for most people "like us," just getting through the day is a real big deal, and most of us are just too burdened by life to go to the theatre.