My favorite moments as a director often occur during conversation with collaborators. As a young student director of Gruesome Playground Injuries, I remember discussing with the lighting designer how we could use lighting during transitions to help illustrate the relationship of the characters as they changed costumes and prepared the stage for the upcoming scene. Years later following a challenging rehearsal for a new work, The Pleiades, I sat across from the playwright and brainstormed how to best activate the poetic language with devised movement work during the climax. During a site-specific rehearsal, an actor and I perched on patio barstools and contemplated how to best adapt Edgar Allen Poe’s language to resonate with a modern audience. Last year I sat with an MFA playwright and dramaturg from my program to discuss how we could use rice as live foley to create a soundscape for a new play, after finding out our production would not have a sound designer. These moments illuminate what I most enjoy about directing: everyone intently focused on collaborating to support the artistic vision and story.
My experience as director was primarily nurtured by three different theatrical homes: the Wilbury Theatre Group (Providence, RI), Portland Stage (Portland, ME), and the University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA). My love for new plays blossomed at the Wilbury Theatre Group where I was given the agency and opportunity to work with local playwrights on their scripts. Our conversations began with questions, which allowed us to make discoveries and dream about the show in its next stages. At Portland Stage, I sharpened my dramaturgical skills. I learned how to assist, how to view the play through someone else’s lens, and how to support their artistic vision. Over the past three years in my MFA Directing Program, I have seen playwrights discover their artistic voices and have strengthened my own. I have grounded myself in an artistic process that supports a collaborative approach to direction.
My rehearsal rooms are a place for shared experimentation and growth. I begin and end each rehearsal with a designated group check-ins with everyone in the room. This allows the full team to be fully present, and to release any stressors that might have followed them into the space. I encourage designers to participate in rehearsals as the vision evolves and grows, because I know that in this work the best revelations come when the entire team is working towards the same clear goal. I love thinking specifically about the needs of the particular play and the particular people when crafting my processes and I am equally comfortable speaking about subtext as I am leading physical exercises to stimulate discovery.
When I direct, I enjoy finding the shifts between realism and more heightened theatricality. I love exploring the spaces that exist in dreams and adjacent realities and having conversations about how these fantastical spaces impact more grounded scenes. I excel at taking deep dramaturgical dives that help me build the specific world of the play from the ground up, whether that is researching distinct styles of shadow puppetry or browsing Taylor Swift Reddit boards. My Spotify Wrapped is often populated with music that has inspired me during my different theatrical processes over the year.
I believe in the strength of collaboration and the necessity of storytelling. I build plays and worlds and mysterious places with my creative teams. I am a director and developer of new and contemporary works.