After graduating from WestConn Vanessa pursed her acting career. She originated the role of Sadako in Ron Destro and Yoko Ono's Kennedy Center Award winning play Hiroshima at Theatre for the New City in New York. She also performed in A Cup of Coffee at Yale Repertory Theatre, As You Like It and A Midsummer Nights Dream with Shakespeare on the Sound and An Absolute Turkey, A Little Family Business, Hound of the Baskervilles and You Can't Take It With You at Pioneer Playhouse. She has also appeared in numerous shows at The Spinning Wheel Inn and with The Downtown Cabaret Children's Company. She received the Square One Subscribers Outstanding Actress Award for her work in Educating Rita .

Vanessa is also a playwright. Pie and the Sky is in the Smith and Kraus anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2007, 2 Actors . Early Dismissal is in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2007, 3 or More Actors . Current Season and The Answer are also published by Smith and Kraus in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2008, 3 or More Actors . Resolution #9, a New Year's play about new families and old traditions, was published by JAC Publishing and Promotions. Her plays have been produced in New York, Boston, Connecticut and Portland, Oregon. Her full-length play Vermipostal has had a number of readings and was a semi-finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference (2006) and Play Penn (2009). Her full-length play CCD had its premiere reading with SquareWrights at the Stratford Library. Her newest play Connect Couples (dot) Com [http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136714473071105]  premiere at the first ever Dinner Theatre Night at the Piedmont Club in Darien, CT on July 23, 2011.

Currently Vanessa is entertaining the World Wide Web as The Headbanging Hostess, combining her theatre background with food and local music. You can read her blog at www.headbanginghostess.blogspot.com and watch her food porn at www.youtube.com/headbanginghostess.

She may be contacted at Dvanes@aol.com