Barbara Ann Michaels, Jester of the Peace, makes a career of the interplay of love, art, and comedy. She is an award-winning wedding officiant in New York City, specializing in highly personalized weddings, including costume and adventure ceremonies. She has been featured on The Learning Channel’s Four Weddings and CNN, in the New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Daily News, New York Magazine, and Huffington Post. She is an Interfaith Minister.
Artistically, Ms. Michaels specializes in audience-interactive and improvisational theater as a clown, dancer, actor, and writer. Her company, Ripple Affection, engages the public, often in streets, using savvy antics to create a current of happiness. She also creates theatrical characters to entertain and educate at corporate and community events across the USA, through Applied Theatrics. She has performed at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the New York Clown Theater Festival, San Francisco Fringe Festival, ImprovBoston, First Night Boston, and on the Discovery Channel.
She holds a BA with honors in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and an MFA in performance art from Massachusetts College of Art.
Her motto is "Love is Art. Art is Love." Her other motto is "Have Fun. Be True."