Rising Stars: Meet Vicki Juditz of Burbank

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vicki Juditz.

Hi Vicki, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
When I lived in NYC in the 80’s, I starred in over a hundred TV commercials as a young character actress. I was a 1950’s secretary with cat eye glasses in a Dragnet spoof for Bell Telephone, an angel on a hydraulic cloud for Heaven Ice Cream, a raging diva with twin beehives and twin poodles dyed pink for Kentucky Lottery. I was hired to look straight into the camera and say this detergent or this mayonnaise or this pop tart will change your life. I was also in a sketch comedy group that performed at a bar called The Dive. For the shows, I wrote short funny monologues as filler between sketches, my first personal stories.
In 1989, I moved to Los Angeles to join my boyfriend, later husband. A friend invited me to Community Storytellers, a gathering of eccentric adults who mostly told fairytales and folk tales. A few, like renowned storyteller Karen Golden, told personal stories. I crafted my first story for the group on the spot, recounting my trip to Florida to meet my grandfather who was a secret in the family. He loved to shock my sheltered teenage self by saying things like, “It’s hot as a nun’s dream in here.”
I wrote story after story after that and performed them at other story gatherings across the Southland, eventually meeting acclaimed storyteller Milbre Burch. She recommended me for a spot as a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. It was quite an honor to be invited to perform at that festival, attended by thousands of story fans, and quite a challenge as I had to present eight hours of material!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Back when I started out in the 90’s, the handful of people sharing personal stories on stage, especially at festivals, tended to focus on their childhoods. The tales always had happy endings. I wrote about my father dropping dead on a city street on Christmas Eve, about firing a gun for the first time, about traveling to Germany to ask my aunt why she and her family joined the Nazi party, about my child being carried by a surrogate mother. I had trouble fitting in! The answer for me was to start producing my own solo evenings here in LA.
The Moth has finally given personal storytelling something of a mainstream audience and highlights a range of themes. I have won many Moth StorySLAMs and a GrandSLAM. My story Dancing at Joe’s aired on The Moth Radio Hour. The story is about taking swing dancing lessons after my husband’s sudden death.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am proud of this quote from a reviewer at the LA TIMES: “Vicki Juditz is a born storyteller….What sets her writing, and her performance, apart is her sense of humor and an eye for the incongruous and ridiculous.”
I do not shy away from tough themes, and I try to capture the heightened anxiety of contemporary life. I have written about surviving the pandemic, about trying to save the planet, about fighting to protect my immigrant neighbors, about being overwhelmed by the constant barrage of notifications on my phone, about failing at therapy, about trying to be a good mom, about worrying about my kid’s future, about fires and blackouts and earthquakes. I have never understood how anyone could have writer’s block. Instead, I struggle to make time to get all my thoughts down on paper.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
Although I never met him, I saw every solo show written and performed by Spalding Gray, both in NYC and in LA. His real life observations were devastatingly hilarious, beginning with his brilliant solo work Swimming to Cambodia. He played himself, or a heightened version of himself perhaps, seated at a small table on a bare stage. No props or special effects. A marvel. A master storyteller. He has always been my inspiration.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @vickijuditz
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/VickiJuditz/
• Youtube: I don’t have a channel you can see many of my stories on youtube

Image Credits
the black and white personal photo is by Michael Hirabayashi