Donna Caruso
Donna Caruso is the daughter of immigrant Italian parents, who came from southern Italy to settle in the New York/ New Jersey area. Donna was born there in order to be close to her mother. But as soon as she could, she moved directly from New Jersey to Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, and has lived there everafter, raising her two sons, Jason and Elliot. Jason and Elliot are full-grown men now with families of their own. Donna is truly amazed that her children are so old, while she remains so young.
In 1980, Donna, newly separated from her husband and, raising two children on minimum wage, needed some extra money to pay for fire insurance. She worried and worried. Happily, fate intervened when an ad in the Regina Leader Post caught Donna’s eye….a talent competition offered a cash prize….Donna entered and won, paid her fire insurance, and launched a new career.
Donna has worked as a stand up comedian, and a children’s performer ever since; she started writing for radio in 1983, her comic skits, songs, and radio plays heard on CBC both locally and nationally. Donna also began writing children’s musical comedies in 1987, and has written and toured a new original show each year in the Regina district since then.
She also began writing short stories, which have been read on CBC radio, and which have been published in several literary anthologies. Donna has won several awards for her work, including an award for Erotic Literature from Prairie Fire Magazine in Manitoba. Her award winning story was entitled, A Woman’s Guide To Personal Hygiene. Donna thought it was a funny story, and no one was more surprised than she that it was thought to be so sexy. That , however, should not surprise Donna, as people always seem to be laughing at her.
But, never one to be pigeonholed, Donna also produces very serious video documentaries. Working in film and video since 1988, Donna formed her company, Incandescent Films in 1992. Since then she has produced numerous documentaries for broadcast on CBC, BBS, and STV, Vision TV, WTN, the Discovery Channel, and several educational channels across Canada.
Her subject matter is usually people, although she has spent an inordinant amount of time most recently in doing a show about the Swainson’s Hawk. But usually it’s people……her work including Chasing The Cure (the story of Fort San as a Tuberculosis sanitorium), and profiles of Saskatchewan seniors such as Alice Jenner and Sr. Yvonne Toucanne. Her 1998 documentary, TOP BRASS, about the Regina Lions Junior Band, won a national award recently at the Can-Pro festival in Toronto.
All that’s fine and dandy, but, what everyone really wants to know first and foremost about Donna Caruso, is that yes, Enrico IS her uncle.
Donna Caruso
502 Broadway Box 1477
Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan
Canada, SOG 1SO