Heather Gold is a passionate and hilarious comedian, speaker, interactive solo performer and social artist. A voice for authenticity, she says what usually goes unsaid and through humor and audience involvement creates an example of what she calls our greatest collective need: a way, as Heather puts it, “to be ourselves together.”
Her latest talk looks at gay marriage - I Didn't Know How Much I Loved You
Till Ken Starr Filed to Divorce Us - a romantic and funny Proposition 8-inspired story of her own unlikely courtship, marriage, family acceptance and political engagemet. This energizing talk provides a model for the larger Coming Out that America is now dealing with as it becomes clear that GLBT rights movement is one of the moral civil rights issues of our time.
Gold can also perform her award-winning one-woman show I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie. In this “interactive baking comedy,” she whips up a fury of ideas, along with a batch of cookies. In “Cookie,” Gold offers her smart, witty takes on coming of age – from growing up in a small Jewish community in Niagara Falls to her experiences in the San Francisco queer scene. She brings the audience together through food, humor, shared experience and Air Supply slow dancing. And yes, at the end, everyone gets cookies!
Curve magazine honored “Cookie” with its 2004 Lesbian Theatre Award. Gold was invited to discuss her comic innovations at the 2004 Playwright’s Horizon Conference. The Oakland Tribune credits her with “breathing new life into the solo show format” and selected the show as “Best of the Bay Area.”
Gold gets audiences laughing, thinking and literally involved through her disarming conversational style. boingboing calls her “one of our favorite comedians.” Driven to comedy by law school, Gold continues to mix mind with matter, never doing the same set twice. Her unique style is a reflection of her unorthodox artistic path, reflecting studies at Yale and Northwestern Law, SNL training ground Groundlings and years working in Hollywood and the geek culture of Silicon Valley.
Gold has the unique ability to quickly make connections between the most unlikely things, from politics and family to business, sex and the U.S. Constitution. Genuine and warm-hearted, she creates an immediate intimacy with any audience. Her monologues and riffing stand-up fuse personal stories, social observation and conversation.
Gold hosted Austin Gay Pride, has written for Alan Cumming and has shared the stage with artists like Margaret Cho, Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford and Tony winner Bill Irwin.
She also has her own talk show podcast, The Heather Gold Show, which features bold conversations about politics, relationships and big life questions, mingling web celebrities with the avant-garde, with guests including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, blogger Merlin Mann, and twitter founder Ev Williams. Using this format, she also can create a lively and engaging campus "show" around a relevant topic.
Gold speaks and performs for venues and colleges across North America and contributes to media like The San Jose Mercury News, Tech TV, The Learning Channel, The Toronto Globe & Mail and CBC Radio. She's been quoted and covered in places like WIRED, Salon, WHERE, Curve and featured on NPR.
Her recent marriage was recognized, for now, by California and, more enduringly, by Marie Claire.
