Born in London in the flight path of Heathrow airport which was, perhaps, no coincidence.  After 7 years of night school, my father qualified in a profession that allowed him to take a job overseas and we moved to Hong Kong, where I lived from the ages of 7-11.  Then back to England to boarding school from which I extricated myself at 15 by testing out so I could go with my family to live in Iran where my father had found another overseas job, this time working with an engineering firm.  From 16-18 and 21-25, worked full time acting, writing, etc. on ESL programs on Educational Television in Tehran, part of Iran's plan to make everyone bilingual so more young Iranians could go abroad to study, thereby strengthening the emerging middle class.  18-20 studied technical theatre at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,  London. 21-22 worked as head of the Prop Department at The Abbey, National Theatre of Ireland, Dublin.  Traveled back out to Iran via an 8 day train trip and only left that country in 1977 because the incipient Revolution made its presence clear with gun battles in the streets of Tehran.

After a year of living nomadically, traveling mostly by train and boat through South Asia, Europe, and North America, settled in SoCal to start a theatre company - a peripatetic one with no home of its own.  All programs take place out in schools and community organizations such as shelters, recovery programs, hospitals, prisons, and senior centers.

Although still in SoCal, it felt like a move to a new country to leave the world of non-profit arts management (and much of my identity) after 23 years of developing the theatre company, and then climb into academia to work on my MA in Art History.

And how has that influenced who I am?  I can't say that I belong to any one tribe and I find myself suspicious of those who do.  I am deeply attached to friends and family although I don't always know what some of them look like any more.  I tend to stand on the outside and observe before jumping in, although I work to interact differently in groups so that the observer becomes only one of the roles I might choose.  There are few things that make me happier than setting off on a  journey.  By putting myself in the way of exercises like this, I try to take stock of past experiences to plot the journey of the next few years.  I wonder where I will live in the future.