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Anna is a writer, actor, and director with a 30-year career spanning stage, film, television, and individual media. Her produced plays include "Our Dark Connection," "The Elegant Dinner," and "Searching for Mary Jane," commissioned for Theatre In The Dark at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles (2012-13) and nominated for the LA Weekly Theatre Award; LU/LOU (featuring Dorothy Lyman); The Beaver Suite (staged at Friends and Artists Theatre and Metropolitan Stage NYC); and Incunabula, which was performed on radio by Los Angeles Theatre Works and is available on Audible. Her plays have been showcased in reading series at Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Women's Theatre Project in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (2014), and Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles. Her play VILLA THRILLA is set for its world premiere at the Atwater Village Theatre in Fall 2014.
She wrote, produced, and directed the internationally award-winning film Univers'L (starring Tony Todd), a multilingual mockumentary about the 1992 LA riots, which was rebroadcast on PBS. Her short film The Big Bowling Ball, featuring James Remar, received a nomination for Best Live Action Short.
As an author, Nicholas penned the novels The Muffia—the first in a "chick lit" series published in 2013 by Water Street Press—and Homegrown: The Terror Within, written under the pseudonym Cialan Haasnic. She has contributed columns to Vine Times and Touring & Tasting Magazines, along with articles for the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of the Horse, and others. Her first nonfiction book, Royal Mack's Teeny Tiny Wine Guide (2005), was reissued in 2012, and her essay "On Wine and Men" appears in Penguin Books' In My Mother's Kitchen. She maintains a blog at themuffia.us.
As an actress, Nicholas was part of Theatre In The Dark at the Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles, earning a nomination for the 2013 LA Weekly Award for Best Ensemble. Notable roles include Lane in Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House (also at The Odyssey), Alice in A.R. Gurney's Post Mortem, Kate in Harold Pinter's Old Times (Ensemble Theatre), Shakespeare in Snoo Wilson's More Light, and Eva in Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular. Her film credits include Final Analysis, Cotton Club, Bloodstone, and Funny About Love. On television, she appeared as Sue Ellen's secretary on Dallas, Mike Hammer's sidekick, and Mary Tyler Moore's foil.
She has taught writing at the University of Oregon and has participated in the Ojai Playwrights Conference as both dramaturg and Managing Director (2010). She is a member of the Playwrights Unit at Ensemble Studio Theatre LA and the Dramatists Guild of America.
