 It
started in Chicago, where she wrote and sang original
musicals for her stuffed animals when she was very
young. Debra began an illustrious theatrical career
starring as Toto in a summer camp production of Wizard
of Oz. Barely surviving head-to-toe fur in sweltering
July heat, she already knew how to suffer for her art.
She studied acting at the nationally-acclaimed Piven
Theatre Workshop with such talents as John Cusack, Joan
Cusack, and Jeremy Piven. Her vocal training began at
the Northwestern University vocal department while still
attending high school. She declined an opera scholarship
to Oberlin Conservatory in order to study musical
theatre at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory
of Music (CCM.) She took a quarter off to work for a few
months in live theatre. Fifteen productions later, she
returned to school and graduated magna cum laude from
Tufts Universityand received a Masters of Fine Arts in
musical theatre from San Diego State University, where
she graduated Phi Kappa Phi as a Marion Ross Scholar.
 Debra
has performed in regional theatres and cabaret clubs
across the country, most frequently in Los Angeles, San
Diego, Boston, and South Florida. In Professionally
Speaking at the Off-Broadway, The Miami Herald hailed
her “a comic sparkplug.” Her role in Triumph of Love won
a KPBS-TV Patté award. Her one-woman show My Nights With
George, Kurt & Cole, (co-written and directed by comic
genius, Phil Johnson) was featured at various venues
throughout Southern California and won Best New Play and
Best Actress at the 2003 San Diego Actors Festival, and
the San Diego Playbill Billie Award for Best Actress in
a musical.
Debra took hiatus from performing to explore the
“other side of the table.” As a talent manager and at
Creative Artists Agency, under world-famous super-agent
Michael Ovitz, she helped to guide the careers of such
actors as Donald Sutherland, Patrick Dempsey, Halle
Berry, Alyssa Milano, and Antonio Banderas. Having been
yelled at by some of the most powerful players in
Hollywood, she decided that performing was just as
difficult, but a lot more fun.
 Her
diverse career has also included work as a director,
producer, professor, disc jockey, law intern, arranger,
choir director, radio producer, writer, announcer,
teacher, coach, housewife, last but exhaustingly not
least, mom. She plays the guitar, harp and piano and
spends any free-time (ha!) dabbling in cooking,
aromatherapy, yoga, interior decorating, and chocolate.
She lives in San Diego with her husband, their two
children & a black lab. |
