Jo Ann Arpin

Jo Ann 's acting career peaked at the age of 8 with her notorious performance as "The Rock" in Washington School 's (Neenah, Wisconsin) 3rd grade theatrical offering of "Billy Gloat's Bluff. " Though confined to a non-speaking role and rendered invisible under a mud- brown chenille blanket costume, Jo stole the show, through a brilliant display of comic timing and improv blocking skills. Her unscripted onstage prancing, while engaging the hilarity of the youngsters in the audience, did set off a wave of protest among attending parents, whose offspring were hopelessly upstaged; their lines drowned out by kiddie squeals. Critical mutterings of " ham actress " were heard among the adult audience who, for obvious reasons, failed to recognize star quality when they saw it. Far less memorable theatre roles followed into and through her twenties in community, summer stock and university theatre venues, including the leads of " Girl " in " Hot L Baltimore", directed by the Puerto Rican cultural icon, Dean Zayas, for the Civic Theatre Company in San Juan and " Doña Francisca " in the classical Spanish play " El Sí de las Niñas " directed by Roberto Gonzalez. In 1980 Jo Ann moved from the United States to Barcelona, Spain where she founded and managed a corporate language and communication training company for thirty years, teaching business professionals to improve their presentation skills and public speaking through drama techniques. In 2011, Jo Ann returned to acting, taking a leading role of the antagonist, Elizabeta Goncharova in the feature film " Dancing Dogs " which premiered at the Sitges International Fantastic film festival. She acted in a number of independent film projects in Spain while studying acting for camera with the acclaimed British actress, coach and author, Mel Chucher; award winning Catalan film and TV director Esteve Rovira and a number of prestigious international casting directors, including Luci Lennox, Pep Armengol, Carla Hool and Andres Cuenca. Jo Ann also competed an intensive training program in film and television acting at TVI Actors Workshop in Los Angeles. While studying filmmaking at aFILM, a Barcelona based film school , Jo discovered a passion for visual story telling. She has written and directed several short films and competed two more film scripts now under revision. Jo Ann is now engaged in researching and writing a screenplay, titled "The Puerto Rican Interlude " based on her great- great uncle Arsene Louis Arpin's autobiographical account of his adventures as a plantation owner in Dorado, Puerto Rico following the Spanish American War. Jo Ann resides between San Juan, Puerto Rico and Barcelona Spain, where her daughter Alicia lives and works for a Spanish/ German automobile company. Jo Ann Arpin attended Tulane University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison and she speaks English, Spanish, Catalan and French.