The moment Vanessa hits the stage, she hits her audience with her insatiable love of what she does. She'll talk with them and joke with them by telling stories from her life and through the lens of her incredibly larger than-life, poignant hysterical characters she's met a long the way.   Vanessa's need to perform came partly from the way she grew up. The daughter of two drug-addicted, alcoholic, hippy parents, her British Dad was the first person to bring LSD to the States and was closer to Timothy Leary than he was to her while her Mom always told her 'the three most important people in my life are me, myself, and I!" setting the stage for some serious, and now funny low self-esteem issues.    By the end of Vanessa's show, her audience who was once full of strangers, she is able to turn into new best friends and extended family. While Vanessa's real family was out there busy getting high, Vanessa was out there busy getting laughs.  Vanessa is  an accomplished actor, performance artist, and writer with a TV pilot currently in the works called, Take My Life, Please!