Faye Lane is a writer and performer living in New York City. But on the inside, she's still Rhonda Faye Gunnels, who grew up in her mama's beauty shop in Texas. Casa Vale Beauty Salon was an old A-Frame house that was converted into a salon, with big mirrors and swivel chairs in the front room and shampoo bowls in the old back bedroom. And on the front porch? A fat little girl in a glittered-up Burger King crown, practicing her beauty queen acceptance speech and dreaming of being a star of the stage!
Teased mercilessly at school for being fat, she spent most of her time daydreaming on the front porch with a MoonPie in hand or giving mandatory concerts for the ladies held captive under the dryers. Her mama had a long line of hood dryers on one wall, and she would wait until the ladies were assembled, grab a hairbrush to use as a microphone, and the show would begin!
Her shows were made up of stories and songs, mostly true and sometimes outrageous. She especially loved true stories, because her greatest wish was to be connected to other people, and even as a child she knew that our stories connect us to one another in a meaningful way.
Thanks to the thriving New York storytelling and comedy communities, Faye has told stories on a lot of great stages!
In New York, she has performed at Caroline's on Broadway, Comix, The Pulse Theater, Stage Left, The Time Out New York Lounge, 92nd Street Y Tribeca, and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater.
In 2007, one of her Beauty Shop Stories won the celebrated Moth StorySlam, hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “New York's hottest, hippest literary ticket.” And since winning the Los Angeles Moth StorySlam in 2008, she's been performing them regularly in Los Angeles as well. Faye has told stories in LA at King King, Tangier Lounge, Tongue and Groove, Hotel Cafe, BANG, El Cid, and the Hollywood Book Fair.
As a regular cast member of Andy Christie's wonderful The Liar Show, she's told her stories at The Improv in Washington DC, The Jewel Box Theater in Seattle, L'Etage in Philadelphia, The Skull Club in New Orleans, the Victoria Event Center in Victoria BC, and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she received a glowing four-star review from The Scotsman!
Faye's stories have also been broadcast on public radio, both locally on NPR's Cityscapes and nationally on The Moth Radio Hour. And thanks to the broad and generous public radio listening audience, she has had heartfelt emails from people all over the country telling me how much the stories resonate with them.
And how exciting to have one of them featured in a New York Times Best Seller!
Faye uses storytelling as the basis for corporate motivational presentations and writing and performing workshops. For more information, please visit www.FayeLane.com