Artist BIOGRAPHY

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Based in New York City, I am a dual performing artist - a director of predominantly new works for the theater, and a stage and screen actor specializing in classics and comedy.

Audiences go to the theater, rather than the movies, to marvel at the human ingenuity of how a story can be presented in real time. I embrace this in my productions - for every budget I seek clever things that can be done to bring wonder, to kindle the imagination.

A performer-based director, I focus heavily on the actor’s process and presence in the world of the play - cultivating community in the cast, and utilizing actors creatively in the design and broader storytelling. I lean toward ensemble pieces where I can to entwine actors into the physical creation of the world - interacting with or literally becoming the set. I am attracted to plays where actors can be on stage the whole time; the cast becomes its own design element, imbuing the experience with the constant presence of community.

The greatest gift theater gives is an empathy and understanding of others, and I seek plays outside my own experience, so I can grow and inspire growth in others. I’m drawn to stories with a feminist agenda, and stories of the extraordinary in ‘ordinary’ lives.

Also a theater leader and administrator, for five years I was co-founder and the Producing Artistic Director of The Navigators, a New York based feminist sci-fi theater company. By empowering women playwrights, producers, directors, designers, and actors in their productions, The Navigators are dedicated to elevating female driven stories in a genre dominated by men. I am also a director in the devising ensemble Tier5, whose mission is to create plays that uncover the three-dimensional person within queer and/or female historical figures, and advance the bonds between the past and the present by connecting our stories to theirs. I was also on staff at Planet Connections Festivity as Associate Managing Director.

I graduated from The University of Iowa with an MFA in Directing, achieved in conjunction with the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and from the University of Southern Maine with a BA in Acting. My credits span the country, with work in New York, Chicago, LA, DC, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Indiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, in the genres of plays, operas, musicals, and devised theater.