Viaggio in Islanda

Born in the Downriver suburbs of Detroit, actress and singer Valerie Meachum grew up an Air Force brat, logging fifteen addresses by age twelve. She taught herself to read at three and was identified early as an academically gifted child. Dance, music and drama presented the challenges missing in her regular schoolwork, and by her teens she was determined to pursue a performing career. She made her professional theatre debut as Sarah in Female Transport during a semester break from college, and has pursued her dream through all the ups and downs since.

She made her movie debut as the heroic Dr. Tami Bark in the Japanese-style monster feature Raki II: Raki vs. Nemesis, which has been featured at G-Fest, the leading American festival celebrating the kaiju genre.  Recently she has kept busy in front of the camera with a variety of roles for up-and-coming Chicago filmmakers, and is now venturing into the evolving world of new media, with a leading role in the supernatural action-drama webseries Scarlet X and involvement in the development of the ambitious sci-fi transmedia project Resonance.

Valerie's stage career has ranged from children's theatre to Shakespeare to musicals to new plays, with favorite roles including Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth, the Fox in Pinocchio, Caroline Neville in Titanic, and Lucy Hale in the world premiere of These Honorable Men: The Life and Death of John Wilkes Booth. She has also worked behind the scenes of numerous plays as a costume designer and fight choreographer, and has directed successful productions of The Crucible, Macbeth, and Cymbeline.

Now based in the Chicago area, Valerie finds time between acting gigs to sing regularly with Elgin Opera and in casual cabaret evenings at Villa Verone Ristorante Italiano. She is developing a one-woman show about Pre-Raphaelite artist and model Elizabeth Siddal, and the century-old farmhouse she shares with her husband is a work perpetually in progress.