Mocha Jean Herrup’s award winning films have screened in festivals around the world, on the Sundance Channel, Northwest Airlines, and at the Walker Art Center. Using performative strategies craftily identified in her doctoral dissertation as “parodic premise and the subjectification of the insider outsider,” Mocha Jean’s films employ humor and theoretical inquiry to explore outsider gender roles from an “impossible” insider perspective. Maintaining this approach in the commercial world, her unconventional television spot for Celis Brewery won a gold Addy award from the Austin Ad Federation. Often described as provocative and highly entertaining, Mocha Jean’s works are, in the words of one critic, “never boring.”
Mocha Jean has long been interested in the relationships among gender, performance and representation. Her early publications in the anthology To Be Real and the journal Women & Performance examine the performative nature of gender and sexuality in the context of emerging communication technologies. A current resident of Austin, Texas, Mocha Jean co-founded the gender based performance troupe, Kings N Things, in 2002 and, most recently, The Austin Gender Conspiracy. Her breakthrough role in front of the camera occurred in 2003 when she played the title character in Jenn Garrison’s THE LANCEBIAN, a short film about a Lance Bass look-a-like looking for love.
Mocha Jean is an Associate Professor in the Radio-TV-Film Department at the Austin Community College and a correspondent for the Film Festival Channel.
She’s not a girl, but not a tough guy.