An Interview with Joy Saxton, Producer, Director, and Actress

I met up with Joy Saxton at the Girl Scouts National Convention in Houston, TX the week of November 8-13, 2011.  Among other things, Joy operates a performing arts school, "Joy Kids Downtown."  We visited about how her involvement in acting has shaped her life. 

Here is a bit more about her:   Joy anchored a kids television show called Kids TV Express beginning at eight years old for over ten years. Joy's mother Gray Hawn, world re-nowned photographer, created and produced the show. The program was written, directed and filmed by kids for kids. The show won two national awards with ACTV and was aired Nationally, ran specials on the classroom channel, Channel 1, aired on PBS Austin and KVC-13 Austin. They did specials on Just Say No to Drugs Campaign, Aids Awareness, Sunshine Kids with Cancer, NASA space missions and more. Joy grew up in local community theater and toured with Peace Child in Russia at age fourteen.  At age seventeen, she started her own performing arts troop called A Little Laughter Productions and recruited forty young people to produce and perform in a play that toured nursing homes, children’s homes, homes for the mentally handicapped, and hospitals. She attended the O’Neill National Theater Institute, which worked with world-renowned theatrical directors. 

In her early twenties she started a program called J.O.Y. International, a non-profit organization, and developed and implemented an educational curriculum for elementary schools in Texas. The curriculum taught children to give back by doing penny drives through out the school to help kids in India and Mexico get school supplies. Joy produced a television pilot, called J.O.Y. Agents that addressed issues regarding children around the world. The TV shows received rave reviews, and celebrity child actors from the Disney Channel helped to promote the program.

Joy teaches at Page Parkes Modeling and Talent Agency, the largest agency in the Southwest.

She has served on several boards and raised over a million dollars for charities including an orphange in India and Africa, Dell Children's Hospital, United Way and J.O.Y. International.