About the Creator

Donna Jo Thorndale is a writer, actress, and painter who celebrates her appetites through unique passion projects rooted in joy and love. Her work is illuminated by her deeply reflective exploration of subjects and themes; survival, love, risk, men, music, food, forgiveness, humor, acceptance, redemption, and death. Through her art, Donna Jo delivers the fullness of the human experience. 
 
“Donna Jo Thorndale is relentlessly funny, wholly political, and mildly controversial… wherever she goes, the audience follows.”

                                                - The Hollywood Reporter
 
Born and bred in the Bluegrass state, she was raised in a home where food equaled love and the music of Elvis, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis filled the rooms. Donna Jo moved to Los Angeles after 5 years as a radio DJ in Lexington, Kentucky, and a brief stint in Louisville. She joined The Actors’ Gang (Tim Robbins, Artistic Dir.) in 2004 where she performed and, for 12 years, taught their signature “style” (a highly emotional and physicalized form of theatre based in the Italian Commedia dell'Arte) in their acclaimed Prison Project. She conceived and created her original show, “All Cake, No File: The Johnny Cash Prison Tribute Cooking Show,” which was performed at The Actors’ Gang and at the CA State Prison in Norco, CA and directed by Shira Piven.  
 
She partnered with Funny or Die on her 12-episode web-series, “Year of The Rat: Nutritional Guidance for the 2008 Presidential Election,” also directed by Shira Piven. During the election cycle, she wrote for the Huffington Post as her alter-ego, Celebrity Chef Jewell Rae Jeffers, a Home Economist & Political Culinary Analyst. Recent poetry and prose publications includes Feckless Cunt – a feminist anthology and Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me – Women Over Forty Write on Aging.