Andy hails from Cape Cod, Massachusetts where she began performing at the Harwich Junior Theater when she was 10 years old. She traveled internationally through Europe and Russia in an original duet performance piece called Eggs in a Briar Patch, as well as created and performed a one-woman show, The Cry of the Children. Andy has participated in international performance workshops in Paris, Iceland, Amsterdam, and Moscow intensely exploring the work of Jerzy Grotowski, Jacques Lecoq, Joseph Chaikin, Bertolt Brecht, and Commedia dell’Arte. She spent a year in residence with Théâtre du Soleil in Paris in conjunction with the Experimental Theatre Wing, NYU. She received her BFA in drama from the Experimental Theater Wing, New York University and her MFA in directing from Rutgers University. Andy has devoted her life to exploring the power of theatrical storytelling and the question of what makes theater a vital link to our humanity in modern society. Maintaining her belief that theater has the possibility of transforming a community, she is committed to challenging and moving people beyond their everyday realities.

Andy is a certified Executive Presence Senior Consultant with The Ariel Group facilitating programs for clients including Royal Bank of Scotland, Capital One, American Express, General Electric, and United States governmental agencies. She is an Artist-In-Residence at the Somerset County Performing Arts Conservatory where she conceived and directed new works including Exploding Shakespeare, Hamartia’s Children, Alice Underground, Lord of the Flies, and Rivers. She is a certified Feldenkrais “Awareness-Through-Movement” teacher. She was a featured teaching artist in the Annenberg Foundation/CPB channel “The Art of Teaching the Arts” video series. As a teacher, Andy is committed to sparking curiosity in her students to explore the many landscapes of the theatre and to support them in their discovery of themselves as artists and as human beings in the world. Above all else, she believes in creating the safe space in which students are allowed to take giant leaps into the creative unknown.

She continued her actor training at Mason Gross School of the Arts where she studied the Meisner Technique and received her M.F.A. in Acting from Rutgers University. Upon graduating she has worked continuously both on stage, television and in commercials. Roles include: Nina in The Nina Variations at Primary Stages, Helen of Troy in Goethe’s Faust at the Blue Heron Arts Center, Jill in The Drove Theatre Co.’s The Big Funk, Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Women: Under the Corset produced by her own company The Wake Up Artists and Miss Julie in Andrea Arden’s JULIE produced for Theatre LILA's inaugural season. As an actress she has also appeared as a principal in several national network spots for V-8 Juice, Lowes, Kraft, Tylenol, K-Mart and many more.

As a director & choreographer she has continually explored the synthesizing of movement and storytelling. Her passion for modern dance mixed with her experience as an actor has driven her to explore furthur the possibility of fusing the two mediums to create a physical, spontaneous Artuadian style experience. In her piece The Waltz of Elementary Particles she worked with the company’s Meisner trained actors on a new kind of script, a physical script. It is the mixing of psychological truth and specific physical expression that she continues to investigate. She has taught numerous classes including the B.F.A Actor Movement Training at Rutgers University, the Meisner Technique (1st and 2nd year) at Piero Dusa’s Acting Conservatory in Los Angeles, Workshops in Anne Bogart’s The Viewpoints at Columbia University summer program, Rutgers University and the Somerset County Peforming Arts Conservatory.

She continues her training as a teacher and actor at the SITI Company & Maggie Flanigan Studios (Meisner Teacher Training program). Theatre LILA’s first venture was an actor's lab at DTW to explore new possibilities in movement based theatre using the Viewpoints, Chekhov and Grotowski work. In the fall of 2004 Arden & Lanius formally merged their theatre companies to create Theatre Lila. Their inaugural season included JULIE directed by Andrea Arden and The Waltz of Elementary Particles choreographed & directed by Jessica Lanius.

Jessica is a member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild.