"It was terrifying," says the Paradise, Ind., native. "I made my friend promise that if no one laughed, she would play a tape that had crickets chirping.

A year after her debut at Garage Comedy in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood, the Castle High School and University of Evansville alumna is bringing her act back to her home state, as part of the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival.

Billed as Jaci Denning (she uses her grandmother's maiden name on stage because "Pund is such an unusual name, and nobody can pronounce it"), Pund will play a dozen characters in "Taking Orders, Making Change," her hourlong, one-woman show making its world premiere in the Indianapolis Theatre on the Square.

Between Saturday and Sept. 3, she'll present "Taking Orders, Making Change" five times in the course of the 10-day festival, which will bring 48 acts and 216 performances to five theaters in the Massachusetts Avenue Arts District.

The show brings together a dozen characters she's portrayed in shorter stage pieces, Pund explains in a telephone interview from her home in Los Angeles. They include a nervous young woman on a blind date, a tourist stalking an actor from "Days of Our Lives," and an inept "sixth-runner-up Miss Newburgh with dreams of stardom," says Pund.

She has played them at Garage Comedy and the M-Bar in Hollywood, and she portrayed a sampling of the show's characters to win LA's 15 Minutes of Fem, a solo show competition judged by audiences, "but the Indy Fringe will be the first time I actually have done the full-length show," says Pund.

Stand-up comedy is a leap from the drama, comedy and musical theater she did at Castle and at UE, where she graduated with a theater degree in 1993.

Pund worked with other actors to create their own theater in Chicago, where she lived for a couple of years before moving to Los Angeles a decade ago. Since then she's shifted her sights from theater to character-driven, stand-up comedy.

Along the way she's worked a variety of day jobs, including providing discreet "after-care" services for cosmetic surgery patients ("I met quite a few celebrities and politicians whose names I cannot reveal," she says); designing lingerie for a Rodeo Drive boutique; and doing "temp work" in offices "where my name was always 'The Girl.'"

These days she has "a nice job with a software company" working as a business analyst. "It requires that I still use my head every day, but (her schedule) is very flexible," she says, allowing her to perform in Indianapolis.

She's received lots of support from fellow UE Theatre graduates in Chicago and Los Angeles. Two of them, David Vegh and Elizabeth Klaviter, have helped her stage "Taking Orders, Making Change."

"I carry a little tape recorder around in my purse, and if someone says something I think is funny, I ask them to repeat it into the recorder for material later."

"When I first moved out here (to Los Angeles), I got very caught up in trying to be what other people wanted, hoping they'd give me a part in something they'd written and they cared about.

"Today I'm much more excited about telling my own story and doing my own thing. If that leads to work, that's wonderful, but I'm doing this because it's who I am."

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