Susanna Brisk

Susanna Brisk was born in Estonia in the former Soviet Union, and moved to Australia with her family at the age of 4. She started modeling at the age of 16, performing stand-up comedy at the age of 17 and did her first televised stand-up spot live on Australian national television at the age of 19. Over the next four years, Brisk performed stand-up and sketch comedy on every Australian television network including The Australian Comedians in Concert (twice) at the Melbourne Concert Hall in front of 2,500 people. In addition, she wrote and performed characters for FOX Breakfast Radio, was featured in many national TV commercials and wrote, produced and performed numerous shows. Brisk produced and performed her one-woman show Megababe, a send-up of models and the fashion industry, when she was twenty, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The show took place at the Universal Theatre, using a chorus of models which Brisk choreographed, and which attracted national publicity on television, radio and print media. Her next multi-character show, JAP - Jewish Australian Princess, sold out the season in its first week and gained excellent reviews. In 1997, Susanna headed to New York City to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory for the summer. Immediately, she landed a role in the indie feature Some Fish Can Fly (1999) and began performing extensively on the new York stand-up circuit. In New York, she booked lead roles in NYU films, several indie shorts, the interactive CD-Rom The 24-7 and performed Off-Broadway in "The Cleansing of George Cuthbert". She shot two pilots for VH-1 (Couch Potato and Rock n' Roll Stand-Up) and became a stand-up regular at the Comic Strip, Stand-Up New York, the New York Comedy Club and Caroline's NYC, as well as downtown venues such as Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious. In 1999, Brisk returned to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with JAP 2. The season involved twenty-four shows in twenty-five days in Melbourne, with two additional sold-out shows at a 350-seat venue in Sydney. Brisk returned to NYC to produce and perform JAP - Princess in the City for a four-month season to packed houses at The Duplex in historic Greenwich Village. She played 17 different characters and the piano, received a rave review in Time Out New York and was invited to perform the show at the HBO Workspace in LA. Once in Los Angeles, she booked a guest principal role on JAG, and hosted The Kisser, the first pilot for POP.com for Dreamworks/Imagine. She performs stand-up regularly at the Improv, the Comedy Store, Dublin's and the Laugh Factory. Stand-up gigs include her headlining tour with the Star Spangled Girls of US Military Bases in the Balkans, including Bosnia, Hungary, Macedonia, Sarajevo and Kosovo and opening for international acts at The Riviera in Los Vegas. She recently screened "Whim", a short film which she wrote, produced, directed and starred in. She has also produced and performed a workshop reading of a new show Waiting to Breed, at the Larry Moss Studio. In 2002 Susanna became part of The Actors' Gang theater company in Hollywood, taking part over many months in Commedia del Arte workshops with Tim Robbins and other veteran Gang members and playing the piano in the late night show "Alagazam." She is happily married to Barry Katz.