Biografia
Jo Harvey Allen is an actress, playwright, poet, and a trailblazer for women in radio. She has appeared in numerous films, including prominent roles in David Byrne's cult classic True Stories (1986), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991, directed by John Avnet), and The Client (1994, directed by Joel Schumacher). Recently, she appeared in The Homesman (Cannes 2014, directed by Tommy Lee Jones), received the Women Film Critics Circle Best Ensemble award, and was nominated for Best Lead Actress at the International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema Berlin for her role in The Other Kind (2015, directed by Rosalyn Rosen). The film also earned an Honorable Mention for Best Feature Film from the Los Angeles Film Review.
Allen has written, performed, and toured her acclaimed one-woman shows across the US and internationally, including off-Broadway productions such as A Moment's Hesitation (Dance Theater Workshop & The New School, NYC), Counter Angel (The New School, NYC), and As It Is in Texas (St. Ann's Church, NYC). Her other solo plays include Hally Lou (originally produced by Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, CO, and MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), Duckblind (Cornet Theater, Los Angeles), and Homerun (Remembrance Through the Performing Arts, Austin, TX). She co-wrote and starred in Chippy...Diaries of a West Texas Hooker (American Music Theater Festival, Philadelphia, PA, and Lincoln Center, NYC).
Allen also co-wrote, starred in, and toured operatic works such as Pioneer (Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC), Do You Know What Your Children Are Tonight? (Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC; Theater Artaud, San Francisco), and Covenant (Ann Hamilton's Tower, Oliver Ranch Foundation, Geyserville, CA). She has been married to artist and singer/songwriter Terry Allen since 1962, starring in all of his radio and theater projects, including Juarez, The Embrace...Advanced To Fury, Anti-Rabbit Bleeder...A Biography, Reunion, Warboy (and the backboard blues), Ghost Ship Rodez, and MemWars Live.
She co-wrote the NPR radio play Every Three Minutes and hosted the radio program Rawhide and Roses on KPPC AM/FM in Pasadena, CA, from 1965 to 1969. Allen is the author of Cheek to Cheek, a poetry collection published by Duckdown Press, and Homerun, which she self-published. She co-hosted the inaugural Texas Funny Women's Symposium alongside Texas Governor Ann Richards and served as MC for Little Feat's Lowell George Tribute in Los Angeles and Terry Allen's "Lubbock (on Everything)" tribute in Lubbock, TX.
Her photography, lithographs, and installations have been exhibited recently at the National Museum of Peru, the Humboldt Museum in Havana, Cuba, and the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, CA. Allen is a recipient of fellowships from Art Matters and the National Endowment for the Arts and was inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame in 2015. She and Terry Allen have two sons and three grandsons and live and work in Santa Fe, NM, and Austin, TX.
