Mary Jo McConnell, a veteran army nurse and professional actor and storyteller, joins TAWFT! Suzanne and MJ have a deep and meaningful conversation on the arts, the army, being a veteran, a nurse, and moreover, how the arts can heal and help veterans and those currently serving our country.
We thank her for her generosity and beautiful conversation and know you will adore this interview.
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About the Guest:
MJ is a proud veteran, having served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, specializing in Neonatal Intensive Care. She is honored to offer free guided meditation classes to veterans on the Veterans Arts Workshop-Online Portal. She serves as a De-Cruiter, using personal narrative and Shakespeare to promote healing in the veteran community as well as a facilitator and program developer for Poetic Theater’s “Veteran Voices”, where veterans and their family members craft and perform personal stories to ritualize and share the moral burden of war.
She is currently an actor with three-plus decades of professional experience buoyed by an MFA in Acting from American Conservatory Theatre. You might have seen her perform in the Broadway National Tours of The Phantom of the Opera, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Sister Act, and All Shook Up, as well as creating over fifty roles in regional & off-Broadway theatre. She co-wrote, produced, and starred in the short film Trumped as well as her one-woman show, Captain MJ’s Fantastic Adventure. On television, she appeared in One Life to Live, Masters of Sex, Pan Am, and loves working on NYC indie films. She is currently featured as Una, a “Nazi bombmaker on a mission” in Hunters on Amazon Prime. As a founding artist of New York’s Musical Theatre Factory, she is a recipient of their inaugural “Builder’s Award”.
MJ is a native New Yorker and thanks to her husband, Broadway musician John Johnson, for being her pandemic pod-mate and home studio gaffer.
Where to Find Mary Jo:
About the Show:
There’s a Word For That! is a weekly podcast that centers around a different word or expression for each episode. Host Suzanne Dressler believes in pushing the envelope to explore why and how we use words and the ways this impacts our lives. With a diverse assortment of intelligent, creative, and exciting guests, TAWFT! will force you to analyze and consider words in an entirely original and eye-opening way. Even better? NOTHING is off-limits.
Where to Find Me: