Little Tainted Blood (2010-2011)

Actor / Award-winning / Playwright

Little Tainted Blood is an autobiographical one-woman show about how shame passes in the bloodstream until it is confronted and challenged. It parallels the stories of Julia’s maternal grandmother and her dad; their secrets and their “tainted blood.” On a journey from Transylvania to Texas, over four generations and 60 years, using found text, family videos, illustrations, songs, boxing and more to explore the “lies she will not keep.”

San Francisco Fringe Festival – Winner: “Best Experimental Performer” (2010)

• 

• 

A Boy Called Noise (2006-2009)

Actor / Award-winning / Musician / Playwright

A Boy Called Noise is a one-woman rock theater show set in small-town East Texas. It tells the story of a fictional gay teenager called Noise, who is murdered and martyred. We meet his father, mother, sister, lover and best friend on the day of Noise’s funeral, as they confront themselves, Noise’s killers, and the memory of Noise himself.

• 

• 

Written and performed by: Julia Steele Allen
Live Music: drums, guitar, harmonica and additional vocals by Ray Rizzo
Directed by: Ian R. Crawford
Cover Image and Musical Support by: Dwayne Calizo

San Francisco Fringe Festival – Winner: “Best New Performer” (2006)
45th Street Theater, NYC
The Tank at Chashama, NYC
The Downtown Urban Theater Festival, HERE Arts Center, NYC – Winner: “Best Short Play” (2009)
Hot Fest, Dixon Place, NYC
Wise Fool, Santa Fe, NM
Motherlodge, Louisville, KY

Songs from A Boy Called Noise

In 2010, Ray and Julia recorded the song soundtrack of A Boy Called Noise at Saltlands Studios in Brooklyn. Recorded by Steve Salett and Jim Smith.

Sung by Julia Steele Allen and Ray Rizzo
Ray Rizzo on drums, guitar, harmonica
Additional guitar by Owen Taylor and Steve Salett

Songs:
Noise Was A Child Of Mine (Cindy Lou – Noise’s Mother)
Fishbone (Fishbone – Noise’s Boyfriend)
What Love Can Do (One-Eyed Jack – Noise’s Father)
Small Town (Hurricane Alicia – Noise’s Sister)
Sinner (Cindy Lou)
Stars (Beth-Ann – Noise’s Best Friend)
Last Stop

Actor

Julia began acting professionally as a child, studying at the Lee Strasberg Acting School in NYC and was in a variety of short films, an MTV rock video and commercial, but quit as a teenager when she began focusing on AIDS and anti-prison activist work.

In 2004 she returned to theater through a one-year B.A. completion program at the Experimental Performance Institute (EPI) of the New College of California in San Francisco with a focus on Performance Activism. Since graduating in 2005 she has written, performed and toured four different “political” one-woman shows.

Julia has also done a variety of acting jobs, performing in experimental theater around NYC, at the New Ohio Theater, the cell, Dixon Place, the Culture Project, La Mama Experimental Theater and others.

• 

• 

• 

Images: “Fletcher Gull” in “A Skate Play: An Ode to Johnathan Livingston Seagull,” Directed by Noelle Ghoussaini, 2013. “Blood of the Virgin” written and performed by Julia Steele Allen, Photo by Dwayne Calizo, 2007. “Seven Jewish Children” by Caryl Churchill, performed in response to the bombing of Gaza, 2014. With Una Osato, Michi Osato and Morgan Bassichis