Hello.
I’ve always described myself as a hyphenate: theatre director-producer-teaching artist-playwright-scholar. What holds true across all those identities, however, is that I am passionate about the possibilities that theatre has to be an arena for provocations to our empathy and our humanity. I believe in a hopeful theatre – a theatre that can show us the challenges we face, and inspire us to action. At its best, the theatre will challenge us to remake the world.
In the middle of a career in arts leadership in the States, I took a professional pause. Needing to re-center myself in my practice and wanting to expand my understanding about the potential and possibilities of how that practice can live in the world, I made the decision to return to higher education. And so in 2018 I moved to Scotland to undertake my MLitt in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. My studies there awakened in me a deep curiosity about how theatre can participate in work combatting the climate crisis, and I have spent this strange pandemic year pursuing an MSc in Climate Justice at Glasgow Caledonian University.
As a director…
I seek out plays that go after your heart by way of your brain – smart, poetic texts that leave space in the writing for staging as lyrical as the text itself. I believe in a hopeful theatre – a theatre that can show us the challenges we face, and inspire us to action – to reach for a better world. At its best, the theatre will challenge us to remake the world.
As a director, my work has focused on plays that blends a deeply personal examination of the world with a strong political viewpoint, including Caryl Churchill's Far Away and Fen, Biljana Srbljanovic's Family Stories, Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare, Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson's An Iliad, a new adaptation of Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid, and Nicolas Billon's Greenland. I have also worked as a playwright, most recently completing an adaptation of Down East Maine author Ruth Moore's short stories, I Have Seen Horizons: Ruth Moore's Stories from Maine.
As a producer…
My work starts a belief that access to and participation in the arts can change lives.
From 2015-2018, I served as Producing Artistic Director for Opera House Arts, a community gathering space in Stonington, Maine. From 2005-2014, I was Artistic Director for Whistler in the Dark Theatre, a small ensemble theatre in Boston, MA producing highly theatrical and physically inventive plays that question and challenge our assumptions about the world in which we live and the rules we live by.
Also in Boston, I was part of the founding of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston, where I served as the inaugural President of the Board. I have also served on the board of StageSource, the theatre service organization of Boston.
As a researcher…
I am interested in theatre practice, community, sustainability, hope, utopias, rewilding, permaculture.
Most importantly…
I believe in collaboration, experimentation, and making bold impossible choices.
I am always more excited by the seemingly impossible than by the easily achieved.
I live in Glasgow with the best dog in the world.