Biography

Carla René:  bag lady.  Nooo.  Actress and Stand-up Comedienne.

Well, okay, almost the same thing. They make about the same amount of money.

She knew her life would include performing the day she was officially discovered as a child prodigy in music.

At the age of 10, a standard ear training test was given to those interested in joining the school band, and the odds of making a perfect score were 1 in 6,000. Carla made that perfect score.

Coming from a musically inclined family with a grandmother who taught her to play piano by ear, she developed her perfect pitch memory and soon discovered that she could play any of the orchestral instruments with little or no training. While young, she began singing country music at local hometown fairs, then moved on to writing and singing her own Contemporary Christian Music, where artists such as Brian Becker and Jamie Page were interested in her writing and recorded some of her early songs. This led to her college studies of music where she became a triple major in voice, piano and trumpet, with a minor in percussion, after a brief foray as a mathematics/physics major.

As a music major, she became involved in many performing groups. With a 4 ˝ octave vocal range, she joined the Davis & Elkins College Jazz Singers, where she played trumpet and arranged music for 6 voices. She served as president of her College Music Society, and president of the college choir, where she also was a featured soloist.

Along with her vocal performing, she played trumpet in the Elkins Community Brass Quartet where she also arranged music for 4 and 5 horns. In related experience, she sat fourth and solo chair in "The 1940's Radio Hour" and was chosen as the assistant musical director, rehearsal pianist, vocal coach for soloists and auxiliary percussionist for the college production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Shortly after this, she dropped the percussion minor, and took Theatre Arts as her minor.  Her original intent was to take a beginning acting class to become a better performer.  Little did she know, that taking that class would change her life forever.

In July of 1990, she was notified that she had been chosen from a national audition as a vocalist for the camp and tour, "On the Road".  8 were chosen.  It was here that she met critically acclaimed songwriters Geoff and Becky Thurman, and they expressed interest in her as a writer.  Geoff wrote and co-produced Glenn Campbell's recent gospel album, but his claim to fame came when he wrote the Grammy-winning song "Jehovah" which put Amy Grant on the charts.

In 1991, she was given a music scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, TN, where she concentrated on a Commercial Trumpet Performance degree. While there, she once again participated in musical groups, sitting first chair in the Belmont Concert Band, Belmont Jazz band (Under the direction of jazz great, Jeff Kirk) and the Belmont Student Brass Quartets and Quintets, where she once again did music arranging. Through a cooperative agreement with Vanderbilt University, she sat first chair trumpet in the Vandy Marching Band where she was also a soloist.

While in Nashville, her love of theatre came back to her, and an audition led to a 3-yr. job at the now defunct "Avant Garage Dinner Theatre", a theatre specializing in original comedies. It was here that she began honing her comedy skills and in her first year there, her first leading role got her a nomination as "Best Lead Actress in a Comedy" for the "Nashville First Night Awards".  

Since then she has done many productions in Professional and Community Theatres in her home base of Nashville, including ACT 1, Lakewood (where she was nominated "Best Character Actress in a Play" her first performance there), Performance Factory, Actor's Playhouse, Dennis Ewing's Theatre Horizons, and Backstage Studio, now revamped and reorganized under the name Razor's Edge, Actors' Bridge Ensemble Theatre under the Artistic Direction of Bill Feehely and most recently Encore Theatre in Mt. Juliet.

Her favorite form of theatre is improvisational comedy, so she began studying that as well as branching out into stand-up comedy. "I believe whether I'm wildly successful at it or not, stand-up will give me that edge that a lot of comedic actors lack. It teaches you timing, rhythm, how to write, and more importantly, how to die in front of live people." This area led to her working with "The Comedy Company", an improvisational theatre company that performed "Quarterback Comedy", based on the wildly popular "Theatre Sports" that originated in Canada, as well as One-Hand Clapping, an improv troupe (now defunct) that performed both long and short-form improv.

In the summer of 2001, she was awarded the "Musical! The Musical!" scholarship by founding member and Second City alum, Nancy Howland Walker, for the 2001 Funny Women Fest, which allowed her to work with Second City, as well as Cheryl King, an improv and stand-up comedy instructor.

She has branched out into film and TV, and is gaining widespread notoriety from fans, as well as peers in the industry.

In October 2002, she sold her first short-story to a now defunct internet writing company.  In September 2004, she sold Bitch, a flash-fiction to the Small Bites Anthology in honour of horror great Charles L. Grant.  Continuing her publishing trend, she's now got two full-length comedy and essay collections on Amazon and Shashwords, and is guest columnist for 1st Turning Point, SpeakWithoutInterruption, Gelati's Scoop and several others.  Her historical fiction novel, The Gaslight Journal is now being queried to authors and ready to was published on Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords in November 2010 in time for Christmas.  She's also nearly ready to release her second novel, this time a comedy entitled A Most Devout Coward.

She has several hours under her belt for her single-engine certification as a private pilot, she's fluent in German, is a faithful practitioner of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and is an award-winning artist in several mediums, with oils being her favorite.

She currently lives with her two cats Playdoh and Honeybump--two co-dependent, whiny and maniacal cats who she swears drops acid behind her back and treats her as if she's the hired help.  She also does a steady diet of web and graphics design to help her sate her desire for all things artistic.

She has won several awards for her graphic designs.

On June 6, 2011, she returned to University to complete study for double doctorates in Applied Mathematics and Astrophysics, but will continue to write and publish fiction, her comedic one-woman shows and perform live stand-up in the interim.

Carla's ultimate goal? "To be on David Letterman, and to find a sugar-free Pop-Tart". There you have it folks.