Wheatley grad moves to silver screen

Richard Tedesco

Christina Ames has picked up in college with the kind of success she enjoyed at The Wheatley School with stage acting and singing – and then some.

Ames, a sophomore at Brown University, has now added film acting to her resume and is planning to work on comedy sketch writing.

“I do think I ultimately want to go into film and TV when I graduate. It’s a totally different way of working and acting,” Ames said.

In one of the two student-produced films Ames acted in recently, she played an other-worldly lawyer in a piece entitled “After Life Sentence”, the winner of Brown TV’s (BTV) 2013 Spring Films Screenplay Competition. BTV is intended to provide aspiring student actors, directors and film production technicians practical experience in their respective crafts. 

“It’s a really fun, cute comedy. I get to play the devil,” Ames said.

Ames also had a role in “Forget Me Not,” which she described as an “upscale” modernized version of the Peter Pan story. She said “Forget Me Not” is currently in post-production and will debut at Brown before being submitted for consideration at film festivals yet to be determined.

She also acted in an original short independent film produced last spring by a Rhode Island School of Design student. 

“It’s hard to act for film and something that I’m definitely trying to get better at,” Ames said.

Last summer, she did an internship at the production company Steve Carrell, star of NBC’s “The Office,” runs in Los Angeles.

While in Los Angeles, Ames played a part in an independent film, “Black Tulip,” co-directed by Aaron Schmidt, a creative executive at Langley Park Pictures, and Ben Mears. The film is a surrealistic tale about a professor who grows tulips out of women’s mouths. She said she played a graduate student goes on date with the professor and becomes one of his macabre research subjects.

“It’s a dark, short film,” Ames said. “It was kind of creepy. I had to sit in a flower pot of soil for four hours.”

This summer she said she’s doing an internship with UCB – Upright Citizens Brigade – an improvisational sketch theater company in New York City. She’ll be taking classes there as she works as an intern for the group’s touring company.

“I’m hoping to develop my comedy writing,” Ames said.

She’s performed in several musicals this year, most recently performing as Martha in Brown’s Production Workshop version of “Company”. She is pursuing a double major in theater arts and economics and said she’s found the performance options at Brown to be an enriching experience.

“Right now I’m just picking up things while I’m in school. I’ve learned so much here. They have an incredible theater program,” Ames said.

She credits her experience at Wheatley, where she appeared in eight theater productions, with providing the basis for her theater and film efforts.

“I was involved in theater in Wheatley and it was a great environment for that,” she said. “I also got involved with jazz in Wheatley.”

Ames was the lead vocalist in the high school’s jazz ensemble. She also performed in the invitation-only Nassau-Suffolk Jazz Ensemble and has performed with her father, guitarist Mitchell Ames in his R&B band, Johnny Volume.

She has recently performed with Portuguese jazz guitarist and composer Francisco Pais, an adjunct teacher at Brown, and his band. She performed at a recent album release party with Pais in Massachusetts. She also hopes to be performing as a singer in Providence in the near future.

“So much is happening here. I’m completely busy, just  as I was in high school,” Amews said. “It’s a lot to keep up with and do school.”

Share this Article