Meet Dev Ross. Dev is a Super Creative Sedona Personality…. a performer, writer, director, producer… and much more!
Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to your current career?
A: I started very young as an actress, right out of college. I was lucky that I got hired at Echo Theater Company. They did theater for young audiences, and I immediately hated what they did. I had been an enormous fan of Viola Spolin (anybody in the theater will know her, she was just an icon), and I would run and get her coffee. I took what I had learned from Viola and brought it to this theater company. We went from a four-person touring company in three cities to touring all over the United States and ended up doing a T.V. show. We won a NAMI, and I won the Actions and Children Television Award. We were also doing a PBS-TV Series. I wrote a play; it was a musical co-written by Stephanie Mathison(sister of acclaimed Melissa Mathison, who wrote E.T.). I also worked at Disney. I never worked in animation, but I worked with some of the most iconic people. I learned from the best and brightest. Universal Cartoon Studios asked to borrow me, and I ended up doing their first direct video movie. It was a big hit and won Humanitas Award (for writers, it’s like the Academy Awards). My husband’s wife was Debra Walley, who passed on. She was a big actress in the 60s or 70s and appeared in movies like Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Beach Blanket Bingo, and others. She lived here in Sedona and invited me to visit. I just fell in love with Sedona. I felt my creativity bloomed here. At that time, Disney was getting more corporate, and I felt like everything I was doing was becoming very generic, so I decided to come here to write a play. I commuted to Disney 5 days a week, and it was a horrible experience. I had to decide whether to move back to Los Angeles permanently or stay here. I chose here, my kids, my husband, and I didn’t choose my career. Sometimes I want to beat myself, but I got a quality of life that I couldn’t even imagine. I began working freelance, which I still am doing now.
Q: How long have you lived or worked in Sedona?
A: I moved here in 1991, so 30 years.
Q: What age would you be again, and why?
A: I am okay with where I am, but I would like to be a young woman, maybe in my late 20s or late 30s. I mentor many women in writing, and I’m seeing opportunities open up for them that I never had. I was among the first – breaking into the studios, especially as a series writer. There are so many more opportunities now, and it’s so exciting. I want to be part of it, and I don’t know if I will be, but I would like to.
Q: How would your closest friends describe you?
A: Shondra is my best friend, and she would say that I am irreverently funny. She says that I have ruined her mind forever.
Q: What would you consider your greatest accomplishment?
A: I want to say my marriage and my kids. I love them. I’m career-driven, and I would be nothing without my family. But my most significant accomplishment was touring this little theater company around and expanding it. We performed all over the United States for millions of kids.
Q: Choosing anyone, who would you love to have lunch with and why?
A: I’d like to have lunch with my dad. He got Alzheimer’s, and everything that I wanted to say to him I didn’t get to because he didn’t understand. He was just the best person in the world. I want one more time with him to thank him for everything that he did for me.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: That I am helping to change the game. I want to be known as a writer who got people to pause and think. I want to open the doors of the mind (not with drugs) but with my content. Ha-ha.
From the interview with Jonelle Klein
