CHIMERA: A Shapeshifter’s Journey

Lisa is widely known for her work in the Portland area. Her portrayal of Violet Weston in Tracy Lett’s August: Osage Country at Good Theater in Portland earned her the 2011 Portland PEER Award for Best Performance. She received universal critical acclaim for Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class, also at Good Theatre. Lisa was a Spotlight Award nominee for Emily in Mike Kimball’s world premiere of The Secret of Comedy at NY Theatre Company in Portsmouth, NH. She played Anna in Louis Frederick’s adaptation of The Passion of Anna at Out of Cake and The Woman in Suze Allen’s adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper at Oak Street Theatre. She was featured in the premiere of Monica Wood’s Papermaker at the Portland Stage Company, where she also recently played Sharon in Jen Silverman’s The Roommate and the beloved Mrs. Rizzo in Withers’ String Around My Finger. 

Lisa has co-created several professional theatres in Portland, including Mad Horse Theatre, Maine Theater, Highwire Theater, and Portland Playback. She has also narrated many audiobooks for Audible.com and Hachette Audio. In 2019, she earned an Earphones Award from Audiofile Magazine.

Beyond theatre, Lisa is a certified Special Education teacher/case manager, specializing in emotional and behavioral disability. Post-certification, Lisa continued special education studies focusing on developmental disabilities and Autism, as well as conflict resolution and mediation. She has spent extensive time training with internationally acclaimed Dr. Ross Greene in his CPS (Collaborative and Proactive Solutions Model), while applying aspects of his methods to her own proactive/non-punitive program for high school students who struggle with behavioral challenges

Her book, Chimera, A Shapeshifter’s Journey – a “BookLife/Publisher’s Weekly semifinalist for the “BookLife Prize” – shares her personal and professional experience wrangling an inadequate mental health infrastructure in her attempt to save a loved one from the darkness that is their constant companion. Her story is told with signature irreverent wit, love, forgiveness, and her “crazy hope that, for those who don’t know the agony of an illness they cannot “see,” there will be insight, understand and much-needed change.”