Vicki Juditz

     The photo above goes with Independence Day, a monologue about her nightmarish wedding, but Vicki Juditz is best known for Teshuvah, Return about her journey to Judaism, for which she received a Drama-Logue Award. She performed this show for the opening of the new Jewish Community Center in Hong Kong and at the 1996 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
     Juditz performs her true life stories at storytelling festivals, Los Angeles theaters, universities, and high schools. Also a television actress, she played Hayden’s secretary on COACH and is featured in the PBS Series STORYTIME.
     Juditz’s daughter is only a year old, but already Vicki wonders if little Molly will one day write scathing monologues about her and perform them in front of thousands of people.

The following is an excerpt from Polymorphous Light Eruptions.

     And then my grandmother, Ruth, swung into action on the appetizer. We always had the Mile High Salad. Ruth had seen a picture of this salad once in a cookbook. Every Sunday, she cut bananas in half, stood each one on end in the lettuce leaf like a mountain peak, sprayed the top with a cloud of Ready Whip, topped each one with a cherry. But every Sunday, no matter how fast Ruth sprayed the Ready Whip and put on the cherry, by the time those salads got to the table, the bananas were down, drowning in a pool of their own Ready Whip, turning cherry red.
     I always called my grandmother by her first name, Ruth, and so did my mother, and this seemed right, because Ruth was not the gray-haired granny in storybooks. She wasn't that stout woman in the big white apron, cooking up pies and cakes and cookies from recipes found only in her head. No. Ruth thought man's greatest invention was the TV dinner.
     She was petite and slender, her hair dyed jet black, swept up on top of her head and held in place with diamond-studded, tortoise shell combs. She wore girlish pink rouge, peach knit dresses, cream hose, black pumps, gold clasped pocketbooks to match. She was almost never seen outside the house without her jet-black mink stole. She wore it even to take out the trash. She wasn't Grandma and Mom. She was Ruth.

If you're interested in hearing what Vicki is up to, contact her manager Jeannine Frank at frankent1@juno.com.