about me :)

Hi, my name is Gina! I am a genderqueer actor currently based in Chicago and my hometown of the S.F Bay Area.

As an artist from San Jose, CA, I’ve had opportunities to collaborate with some incredible Bay Area theatre artists.

I grew up taking classes and performing at California Theatre Center, which shut its doors in 2017 after 41 years. I took my arts education into my own hands to seek out performance opportunities in the midst of Silicon Valley, including interning with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, performing in the annual A Christmas Carol at Northside Theatre in San Jose, and joining the troupe of Upstage Theatre to complete The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Mountain View.

Fast forward a bit, and I am now in my final semester at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign pursuing a B.F.A in Acting and Minor in Psychology, expected to graduate in May 2025!

This semester, I am training to pass the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) Unarmed Skills Test in February, performance for Winter’s Tale in April, voiceover and on-camera work, continued dialect work, and the Class of 2025 showcase in April.

I’m excited for this busy final semester, and I’m equally excited and terrified for whatever artistic endeavors are waiting beyond graduation!

-G

For me, the performing arts have been a space to unmask and lead with the heart, so that young queer people understand that there is a place to explore large, explosive, emotion without consequence.

I bring my full self to rehearsal, and begin every process with the understanding that performance is one of few places that queer people can exist safely and fully. By exploring classics, revisions, and new work through this lens, I am able to advocate for myself and castmates in a consent-forward environment that is both playful, and protects performers from every background.

  • In 2019, I had the chance to see Ms. Blakk for President at Steppenwolf, by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau, and immediately knew that Chicago was the place to be. Queer visibility is expanding, and continuing to tell the stories of our past, present, and future, will protect the LGBTQIA+ community and its most vulnerable members.

  • If I could save one acting book/ memoir from my house on fire, it would be this one: Drama: An Actor’s Education, by John Lithgow. His honesty about his life as an actor and a person is so compelling, and it’s worth rereading every six months to revisit nuggets of wisdom that may have been missed from the previous 20 times you’ve read this book.

  • In addition to performance art, I love working on visual art as well! This piece, “Climate Change Giraffe,” is from a series of postcards I made that feature different animals in varying states of concern for political and environmental collapse, each with a simple design and a colorful background.