Actor | Filmmaker | Dancer | Writer

I was 5, wearing a stained polka dot shirt and ill-fitting kilt, when I was pulled from the audience to the stage by the great clown, Avner The Eccentric. Afraid but too proud to flee, I resorted to the only thing I knew that would keep me alive — I got sassy. And to my utter shock, I had the audience in stitches. The indescribable pleasure of being able to move people to laughter, to transform a space, to spark a collective emotion in a room full of strangers — I’d found my drug. Decades later, I’m still on the stuff. After Avner, it didn’t take long. My performance career started as a child, tap dancing professionally in jazz clubs and concert stages across the country.

When I moved to New York in 2000, I became a founding member of Savion Glover’s dance company Ti Dii with whom I toured nationally and internationally for the next 4 years while simultaneously attending Tisch School of the Arts’ Experimental Theater Wing at NYU. 

I immersed myself in the downtown theater world, collaborating with other creators in long term development processes. I’ve had the great honor to work alongside such theater luminaries as Taylor Mac, Julia Jonas, Tina Satter, Rachel Chavkin, and Heather Christian, to name a few.

I moved to France, where I studied clown and bouffon with the Master of Humanity, Phillipe Gaulier, completing his two year masterclass and fortifying me with the power of play. While there I worked for the city of Paris as a gardener where, though land bound, I also learned to curse like a sailor.

I appeared in a series of films directed by Janicza Bravo, many of which premiered at Sundance. These experiences turned my excitement to film, and I went on to create my first web series Morning Chardonnay, the-#1-non-network-affiliated-unsponsored-independent-morning-talk-show-in-all-of-central Brooklyn. But wait, there’s more—

With MacArthur Genius Michelle Dorrance and vernacular dance powerhouse Josette Wiggan, I co-created The Nutcracker Suite, a jazz, tap, and vernacular interpretation of the classic set to the eponymous score by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. We premiered at the Joyce Theater and will tour to the Kennedy Center this winter.

As a performer, I embrace anomalous characters — a dark humor somewhere between the poetic yet hazardous longing of a clown and the provocative and restless flirtation of a barroom hustler. I am an off menu cocktail of the noble and pathetic, forever resisting cynicism by way of innocent mischief.

My most recent project, Ursula, a dark comedy short I created and starred in alongside Martin Starr and D.C. Pierson, continues to play at film festivals around the world, and won Best Short at Boston Underground Film Festival.

The New York Times describes me as the following: “Hannah Heller was especially good.” Need I say more?