Heather Gold

Heather Gold is an innovative comedian, performer and thinker. A web veteran, Heather was part of Apple’s first web music group (1996), at the forefront of the creation of webcasting. She later worked with many start ups, including Fuse, which created some of the experience incorporated into the iPod and iTunes. In 1999, Gold began applying interactive elements to live performance, constructing forms which are both expressive and participatory.

Her solo show “I Look Like An Egg, but I Identify As A Cookie” won Curve’s National Lesbian Theatre Award and was named Best of the Bay by the Oakland Tribune. So far Gold has baked over 50,000 chocolate chip cookies with audiences in this interactive comedy. Heather’s next work, The Law Project, which teaches law with the audience, workshopped at Dixon Place’s Hot Festival. Her talk show, the Heather Gold Show, mashed up diverse, doers, performers with the audience in large scale conversations that get past the surface at venues like SF Sketchfest and SXSW. Boing Boing calls her “brilliant” and she contributes and appears in media like the San Jose Mercury News, a pilot for LOGO, Wired, TWIT, and CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera. She co-founded and hosted the podcast Tummelvision.tv.

Heather’s a leading authority in tummeling (the practice of social engagement in a networked environment). Her work is focussed on public intimacy: creating space and platforms that allow us to connect as our whole, different selves together in public. She performs and speaks internationally at venues, events and schools including: Ontario College of Art and Design, Kenyon, Google, Web 2.0 and YLE Finland’s CBC.

Gold received a BA from Yale College and a JD from the Northwestern University School of Law. She’s a Fellow at the University of Toronto, Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies and taught at the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab.

Photo by Rebecca Steele

Find out more about Heather’s work at http://www.heathergold.com