Jane Gennaro

Jane Gennaro was born in the Bronx to first generation Irish and Italian parents, grew up in Plainview and Rockville Centre, New York and moved into Manhattan at the age of twenty to pursue a career in the arts which began with a receptionist job at Famous Music, led to work as a freelance illustrator of children's music books and feminist greeting cards, and even features her singing on a record for Mad Magazine.("Makin Out" Rhino)

Gennaro began writing via performing stand-up comedy at The Comic Strip and The Original Improvisation in the late 70s and continued for seven years while a companion career acting on television and radio commercials and working as a voice-over artist took off and continues to this day. Book narrations include Goodnight Sleep Tight (Scholastic Book Clubs Softcover Book and Audiocassette Tape; Book & Cassette edition) and Boom Chicka Rock [Audio CD]

In the 1980s, Gennaro and her sisters Ellen and Mary Jo performed regularly at Caroline's Comedy Club as "Those Gennaro Sisters" until Jane went solo as a cabaret performer and then started doing singing impressions of rock stars at Catch A Rising Star. A song parody -"Can We Talk" (Rhino Records) written by Bill Scheft, in which Gennaro impersonated Joan Rivers sparring with Johnny Carson (Randy Credico), led to work on WNBC radio where she entertained "drive-time" audiences by impersonating celebrities in the news on The Joey Reynolds Show, "doing the traffic" (although she did not know how to drive) on Alan Colmes, and finally establishing herself as the sole woman comedy writer/performer to appear regularly on "The Imus in the Morning Program". "The show's "feminist" view point is presented by writer and performer Jane Gennaro. Gennaro as "Diane Sawyer" has formed a group called "Angry Anchorwomen" to rebut Imus's sexist teasing. "Yes, I'm Diane Sawyer", she says, "and on behalf of Anchor Women... you, Mr. Imus are a feminists nightmare! Oui, j'accuse!" -Dinitia Smith, New York Magazine.

Gennaro became a playwright with her first solo play, "The Boob Story" ("an ingenious conceit"..."Ms. Gennaro is an engaging storyteller" -NY Times) was directed by Wynn Handman and produced by The American Place Theatre in 1988. It was followed by "Reality Ranch" ("a clever mimic and comedy writer...the gaminesque Ms. Gennaro ...uses her disarmingly affable personality to make satiric stabs at quick-fading fads that tend to make one feel a step behind the times."-NY Times) directed by Peter Askin. These plays established Gennaro's reputation as a storyteller fascinated by the influence of society and pop culture on the human psyche and women's body image, a theme that would recur in a series of commentaries Gennaro wrote and performed for NPR's All Things Considered between 2002 and 2003 beginning with "Feed the Models".

"Feed the Models" later served as the title for Gennaro's traveling art show of sinuous scissor drawings cut from magazine images of fashion models, blown up as large scale prints on reflective surfaces, which culminated in an exhibition and performance at The Fashion Institute of Technology in 2011. "Those of us who work intimately inside the fashion industry have become immune to the fragile human forms that personify our favorite fashion brands. It takes an artist like Gennaro to reflect back to us the truth--the tension that lies underneath the beautiful mirage of carefully doctored aesthetics and loss of self-identity. Dominique Nahas is an art critic who comments on Gennaro's work and puts it best when he says, "Her work pertains to the oscillating appetite of the American psyche that veers between repulsion and desire that culminates in the objectification of the female body." -Baldev Duggal, Digital Photoplay Magazine

Gennaro's other monologues and art series include "Heebie Jeebies"(produced by Impact Festival/Culture Project) about her adventure down south with The World Art Project singing Christmas carols for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, "Shaking the Goose Egg" ("Both funny and tragic, the monologue is a vivid piece of confessional theater that reveals complex feelings of hope, guilt and responsibility." -D'art International) and "Journeys" a retrospective with Time & Space Ltd. co-founder Linda Mussman, composed of decades worth of each artist's illustrated journals, diaries and notebooks revealing the politics, process and obsessions of these two distinctive writer/artists.

Gennaro's recent essay "No Free Babysitter" appears in the critically acclaimed anthology "Just Kidding, Women Writers on Bypassing Parenthood edited by Henriette Mantel. (Seal Press)

www.janegennaro.com

www.feedthemodelsgallery.com