Bio

Joanna Rush is an Actor, Dancer, Playwright, Choreographer and Author. Her solo play, KICK – It’s not how high. It’s how strong!, enjoyed a critically acclaimed run Off-Broadway in the fall of 2015 and was nominated by the OFF BROADWAY ALLIANCE for Best Solo Performance

Writing:

Plays

  • Sex & Power
  • KICK (solo play, originally titled “Asking For It”). This play was chosen to be performed for “International Women’s Day” event sponsored by the United Nations Counsel on the Empowerment of Women and the Hunger Project.
  • Home Sweet Homeland, was work-shopped at Stocker Arts Center, Ohio under the direction of Lynne Taylor-Corbett (director) and was selected for the Best New Play Series readings at Gloucester Stage.
  • Accidental Mummies debuted at Stocker Arts Center https://joannarush.com/bio/?preview=true

Screenplays

  • Irish Whiskey – Winner of “Best Screenplay” at the Temecula Valley Film Festival,(co-author)
  • America’s Queen, Quoting from a recent UTA reader’s report, “The screenplay hits the road with all cylinders. There is humor, tragedy, and some truly lovely passages.” (co-authored with Candace Coakley).

Books

  • “KICK – It’s not how high. It’s how strong!”

Acting

Broadway

  • Pousse Café
  • Shirley MacLaine at the Palace.
  • A Chorus Line (Shubert Theater, Los Angeles.)

Off-Broadway

  • KICK (formerly titled “Asking For It”) was nominated for an Off-Broadway Alliance – OBA Award for “Best Performance in a Solo Play” in 2016. IT has been performed at:
    • Lincoln Center, Rubenstein Atrium
    • developed at the NY Society for Ethical Culture,
    • The Kirk Theater on Theater Row
    • Stocker Arts Center in Ohio
    • Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwright’s Horizons
    • Becket Arts Center
    • The New York International Theater Festival
    • The Yard Arts Center, Martha’s Vineyard
    • Gloucester Stage
    • Newburyport Actors Studio
    • colleges in Ohio and Massachusetts including Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State and UMass, Lowell.
  • Daughters
  • Inside Out
  • Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral
  • Broadway Scandals of 1928,
  • Options

Regional

  • Beyond Therapy
  • Fifth of July
  • Freedomland
  • Little Mahagony
  • Great White Hope
  • Women Who Steal (WHAT)
  • concert versions of Two by Two, and Minnie’s Boys at Jewish Rep.

Film

  • The Luckiest Man in the World,
  • Sunburn
  • On the Cliffs (winner Best Short Comedy 2004, Ohio Independent Film Festival)
  • Saying Goodbye

TV

  • Shannon
  • Archie Bunker’s Place
  • A Killing Affair
  • Cagney & Lacey
  • and the pilot Straight No Chaser as the inappropriate mother of Bronson Pinchot.