I'm actually not quite this serious.
really.
no, really.
c'mon.
I do smile from time to time.
I just wanted to look badass.
did I just blow it?
(uh oh I did, right.)
I am a theater-maker. Most often I direct and write original productions developed with ensembles over the course of a year or more. I bring together different performance languages (dance-theater, clown-theater, circus-theater, puppet-theater … you get the idea). As both a theater-maker and audience member I enjoy the unexpected ways in which story emerges from bringing different performance languages together.
On this website I've included devised work, new plays and other projects. I’ve also included courses I teach (I’m an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago) and curatorial projects (from 2011 – 2016, I was the curator of the Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry at the University of Chicago, a forum for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars).
What’s not included is an important precursor to all this work – being an actor with NYC’s Elevator Repair Service from 1996 – 2000, which has been highly influential to my aesthetic sensibility and my understanding of how to be in a rehearsal room with an ensemble for a long time creating original complicated smart funny unexpected shows. I am grateful for those inspiring years.
As for education and training, I received a BA from Brown University where I did theater nonstop but created an independent major combining Womens Studies and International Relations, and a PhD in Performance Studies at Northwestern University where I focused on gender and physical theater and the how-tos and histories of clown-theater. I was very fortunate to train (with necessary humility, lots of it) in physical theater at Écoles Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier.