director - producer-writer...
I describe my career as expansionist, rather than linear. I am an actor (SAG-AFTRA, Equity), voice-over artist, director, producer, writer, creator of devised pieces, occasional theater critic and a classical music administrator. I’ve participated in professional groups as an arts administrator and sat on funding panels. I received a BFA from New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing and an M.S. in Non-Profit Management from The New School’s Milano School. I have performed with experimental artists and companies including Target Margin, Andrea Kleine, Gorilla Rep and in venues including LaMaMa, PS 122, Theater for a New City, and the Red Eye (MN); but I have also appeared at Caroline's with a comedy dance troupe and in Tony 'N'Tina's Wedding in Philadelphia. As a performer I have focused on experimental new works, Shakespeare and improv. In all of my work, I examine issues that make both traditional and experimental theater relevant and accessible to contemporary and varied audiences; particularly using structure, subject matter, theme and character to examine ideas about what it is to be a working woman and artist; what is and isn’t celebrated; what is and isn’t permissible. Examples of my approach include:
RAMPAGE
A devised work created with Raquel Cion that playfully compares the Cold War suppression of sexual and political expression of the McCarthy and Kefauver Senate hearings via reimagining the fetish films and stills of 1950s pin-up Betty Page as if she were a cold war spy; the images and sequences taken out of context to hide her work on behalf of the government.
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daydream |
Daydream” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” for young audiences. The content was not overtly examining women’s issues; but the structure did. Under the auspices of PLG Arts, as director/adapter and co-producer, I created a rehearsal and performance process that allowed members of the cast and team who were also parents of young children to be able to participate. The daytime performances geared toward young children meant the company’s own children were able to be present at all performances and many rehearsals. Community engagement was part of the mission, and over the course of our six seasons, thousands of Brooklyn’s children and their families. “Can’t miss children’s theatre that Shakespeare lovers will truly appreciate," NYTheatre.com http://plgarts.org/daydream-shakespeare-in-the-playground/
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47 secrets to a younger you
Co-writer/producer/star, with Laura Frenzer, of this ward-winning web series about working moms, everyday disasters and middle-aging not so gracefully. The fictional comedy examines my role as a working actor and mother both thematically and structurally; kids were allowed to be present at production meetings and we shot the season in 9 days in the summer over Fridays and weekends, and included our own family members in the cast. Neil Genzlinger writing for the New York Times wrote, “two of the most amusing moms to be found lately are on 47 Secrets To A Younger You” Web Vee guide describes the show as “like watching Broad City in the future.” www.47SecretsToAYoungerYou.com
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THE BOTTOM
Co-creator and lead writer of “The Bottom” a devised work produced by Target Margin that borrowed elements from Homer’s Odyssey, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm (non-fiction account of a crew of long-line sword fishers lost at sea during a storm) and Melville’s Moby Dick to examine gender roles, sexuality and other issues throughout history in the context of seafaring communities.