Photo by Lee Rayment.
I’m a working-class artist committed to greater equity in the arts. I write plays that transform what's ridiculous about oppressive systems like wealth inequality, ecocide, toxic masculinity, White supremacy, and more, into something sublime and useful. I am an educator, a cultural organizer, a playwright, and a theatre-maker.
ARTISTIC IDENTITY
I first learned of the term "theatre-maker" in my undergraduate actor training. My professor introduced it to me as an ideal - a model and expectation that any person in the company had either done every job possible in the art form or would eventually accumulate this body of knowledge. For the past two decades, I’ve done almost every job you can in the theatre: I’ve stage-managed at BAM (twice), driven trucks for The Public, swept and mopped the deck at New York Theatre Workshop, produced my work at Judson, assistant-directed Shakespeare in Oregon and opera in South Carolina, fundraised for Oye Group, and managed tours to New England universities and Las Vegas showrooms. Live performance is a wonderful art form for theatre-makers because it can engage so many diverse skill sets, but after a decade of lending my talents to others’ productions and festivals while producing my work in New York City, I knew no one would grant me an artistic identity. And so in 2021 I went back to school, bent on proving that I was both a jack-of-all-trades and a good playwright, too. At Brooklyn College, I wrote plays about odd jobs, charlatans, the American daydream, sclerotic bureaucracies, class warfare, the heroism of artists, eco-psychosis, the careless language of buffoons, all underpinned by the transformation of the ridiculous into the sublime. The sublime ridiculous - and the ridiculous sublime - are vital. If we can’t recognize the ridiculous (and implicate ourselves in it), we become susceptible to imperiousness, self-importance, and superiority.
MY LINEAGE
American Theatre Wing awardee The Rogue Theatre let me complete my 10K hours of self-producing. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival gave me my moral marching orders to create productions that reflect and respect the diversity of the communities in which I work. My internship at Elevator Repair Service taught me to milk the inside joke for all it’s worth, while playwright Sibyl Kempson showed me how to start a religion through your writing. A half year working at Sleep No More gave me a respect for myth-building before Target Margin taught me how to collage on stage. Nights at the DIY punk club The Silent Barn taught me to iterate and scale my work. Theresa Buchheister from The Exponential Festival showed me there’s always more you can give to your artistic community. Modesto “Flako” Jimenez showed me how to throw a party to change people’s consciousness, and playwrights Eliza Bent and Bailey Williams reminded me that it’s easier to make serious work when you have a sense of humor.
BIO
My work has been presented at Life World F.K.A. We Are Here Brooklyn Studios, Judson Memorial Church, Joe's Pub, The Bushwick Starr (presented by Target Margin), JACK, and The Brick, among other venues, and by The BEAT Festival (at the Brooklyn Museum), The Performing Garage Presents (presented by Oye Group), and The Exponential Festival. Residencies and fellowships include Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup, Mercury Store (upcoming), Mercury Store's Producers Group, the Woodward Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, IRT Theater, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. My work has been commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts and Mind Dream Theater, and supported by the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust, the City Artist Corps, and IndieSpace's Emergency Grant.
Since '17, I have served as the de facto Executive Director of The Exponential Festival. FUCKED AND JOLLY, a book of artist interviews from Exponential’s first decade featuring Alex Tatarsky, Cristina Pitter, Lisa Fagan, and more, edited by me, was published by 53rd State Press in '24. My short play, Grief Leash, is represented by Tiny Scripted, and my poetry is published online at B O D Y Literature.
BA in theatre arts from the University of Arizona ('12). MFA in playwriting under the direction of Dennis A. Allen II, Elana Greenfield, and Haruna Lee, Brooklyn College ('23).
In addition to my work with Exponential, I work as an adjunct professor of English at CUNY campuses, teaching classes in composition, climate change literature, and creative writing.