Meet Vancouver theatre artist and maker Tiffany Anderson.
Meet Tiffany Anderson
Tiffany Anderson has been exploring the art of story-telling since she can remember. While she began acting out narratives to her parent’s collection of “Disco Beethoven” in the living room, she now holds a diploma from Capilano University’s Musical Theatre Program, and a Bachelor of Performing Arts.
It was in her third year of University that she began to question if and where belonged in this broad world of Musical Theatre. She found the answer in her own writing, creating Oddity: a psychedelic coming of age story which premiered in the 2012 Vancouver Fringe Festival. From there she decided the mandate of her own work would be to create honest, raw, and relatable pieces that remind us how being a disgusting, humiliating, hilarious, and devastating human being is a beautiful thing. She explored this mandate in her second original work, Naked Love, which premiered at the Vancouver Fringe in 2013.
Now Tiffany is exploring new ways of story-telling, including directing Awkward Stage Production’s Reefer Madness, as well as continuing to write and perform her own works. Recent credits include Waiting for Ghostbusters (Genus Theatre), Ring Round the Moon (Exit 22), and ongoing as Sarah Briars in the Lost Souls of Gastown walking tour.
20 Questions with Tiffany Anderson
1. Your first job.
Selling and eating ice cream on the beach.
2. The job you always wanted as a child.
In order: Marine Biologist, Famous Pianist, and then … actor.
3. Your pet peeve.
Public spitting, ack!
4. Your hero.
Choosing one is difficult … I will give you three: David Bowie, Annie Clark, and my mum.
5. Your biggest indulgence.
Those giant bins of bulk candy at the grocery store.
6. One thing no one knows about you (and you’re willing to share).
On my way to my first day of grade 9 I was hurriedly peddling along, enjoying the wind in my hair, mulling over the prospects of new high school crushes, when I realized I was going way too fast down a winding hill to control my steering. In an attempt to not be hit by a car I swerved to the right, landing head over heels on my back in a ditch. I was fine a part from a few scratches and bruises … alas my ego, and my new jeans all the way from West Edmonton Mall, were not. I recall having an imaginary conversation on my giant cell phone, whilst still in the ditch, in an effort to conceal my misfortune from a passing jogger.
For a brief period of time when I first moved to Vancouver I bought a bike, and spoke lies of riding it around the city. Meanwhile, the bike seemed to laugh and hiss at me every time I opened the garage door.
Finally I sold the bike and gave in to my truth: I am scared of riding bikes.
7. Three things you would want with you on a deserted island.
A pen, a journal, and some sweet jams – music, that is – I do not care much for jellies.
8. The one word your best friend would use to describe you.
My hopes are that wise would be the front runner … but in truth it would probably be overly ambitious.
9. If you were not an actor/dancer what would you be doing right now?
I’d like to rehabilitate animals in shelters.
10. Hero or villain?
Villain.
11. Your life’s motto/mantra.
Acknowledge your flaws, and love yourself unconditionally.
12. Your favourite playwright or author.
Favourite … oh man …. Charles Bukowski … or perhaps Augusten Burrough, or Tolkien, or Neil LaBute, or James Lipton, or Mary McCarthy, or Sylvia Plath …this will all change in two weeks time.
13. The last book you read.
Drama by John Lithgow.
14. If you were a breakfast cereal what breakfast cereal would you be?
Peanut Butter Panda Puffs!
15. What will it say on your grave marker?
I learned to do a lot of things … and did them all.
16. Who would you most like to have dinner with?
James Lipton of “Inside the Actors Studio”.
17. Your idea of happiness.
Creation.
18. If you could go back in time, what would you tell your twenty year old self?
Don’t try so hard to be yourself.
19. The one thing in your life that makes you most proud.
I make stories.
20. To be or not to be?
Always be!