Juli Crockett's life and career of provides certain proof that, in creative matters, the shortest distance between two points isn't necessarily a straight line, but that the crooked one is fascinating.
Alabama-born with a Canadian mother and raised through her teenage years in Central Florida, Juli attended the Pinellas County Center for the Arts where she majored in Theater. She transplanted briefly for her junior year in Bermuda, where she attended Catholic School for one memorable year, and was featured in several performances at the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society. Juli then moved to New York to continue her studies where she earned a BFA in theater at NYU's Tisch School.
While in New York, Juli directed several plays, including Brecht's "Jungle of Cities" at the Red Room, Enrique Buenaventura's "The Orgy", and adaptations of the radio drama "The Shadow" and Dylan Thomas' "Doctor in the Devils" at Tisch.
After a short stop in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala where Juli did voluntary theater workshops at a rural public school, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an MFA in Directing at California Institute of the Arts. At CalArts, her production of Strindberg's "Easter" was called "transportational" by Butoh master Dawn Saito, and her thesis project "[or, the whale]", an adaptation of Melville's Moby Dick, written and directed by Juli and composed by Jeremy Zuckerman (Track Team, Avatar: The Last Airbender), was a landmark production at the school.
The text of [or, the whale] was later presented in the Moby Dick 2001 conference at Hofstra University, and was also used as the foundation for the inaugural production of the TENT performance group in Portland, Maine.
Simultaneous with her entry into Graduate school, Juli began competing as an amateur boxer, winning the Los Angeles District title two years in a row, followed by the Blue & Gold National title. After graduation, she turned pro, enjoying a short but impressive undefeated boxing career of 3-0, two KOs in the 135 lb. lightweight division.
In 2003, after an injury during training, she reluctantly retired from boxing and started the art-county, hillbilly-funk, freak-folk band, The Evangenitals, for which she is lead vocalist and principal songwriter. Since then, the band has recorded three albums, toured the U.S. in a bus of dubious reliability with The 1 Second Film, appearing at scores of clubs from Los Angeles to Georgia, New Orleans to New York. Wherever the band has appeared, a cult following has sprouted like mushrooms after a soft but persistent rain.
Today Juli's exhaustive performing schedule is interwoven with her equally passionate attention to ongoing vocations as musician, playwright and stage director; she continues her education pursuing an advanced degree in philosophy at the European Graduate School; and at the same time she performs regularly as the "June Carter Cash" for the world's premier Johnny Cash tribute band "Cash'd Out".
Juli's original work, "Dawn of Quixote: Chapter the First", inspired by the writings of philosopher Unamuno y Jugo, was featured two years in a row in Los Angeles' cutting edge theater festival "Edgefest" and was the grand opener for the Saturday Explorer Series at the 24th Street Theater in Los Angeles.
In August of 2009, "Dawn of Quixote" will be featured in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, featuring Shaughn Buchholz (Scrubs) as Quixote, Christopher Goodson (Cold Case) as Sancho, and Lisa Dee (Evangenitals, Killsonic) as Dulcinea. Live original score is performed by The Evangenitals.
Juli's writing is the central theme of her varied interests. Her band keeps her creating continuously, with many of the lyrics derived from her poetry and stories. Her writings have been republished in various e-zines & print magazines. Currently, Juli is working on a collection of short stories for strange children, a screenplay based on the Book of Job, the outline of a fictional autobiography, and theatrical adaptations of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, the Fausts, the Orpheus myth, and the life and sufferings of Saint Simone Weil.
