I’ve had a thing for new plays for as long as I can remember.
I devise and create work from the ground up, like MILLENNIA, a dismantling of millennial representation for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Coney Island Avenue, an immersive soundwalk from Prospect Park to the Brighton Beach boardwalk in Brooklyn, New York.
I collaborate with playwrights to help them develop their work and sometimes premiere it. In New York City, I directed the American premiere of Rosie Kellet’s Mörker as part of the Samuel French OOB Festival at Classic Stage Company, and I assistant directed the world premiere of Charles Mee’s soot and spit (New York Times Critic's Pick) with Our Voices at the New Ohio Theater. As producer, I’ve supported the development of new plays by Yide Cai, Sam Chanse, Christina Franklin, Lindsey Kraft, Andrew Leeds, Anna Moench, Seth Moore, Tommy Smith, Rachel Yong, and more. As curator and producer of Irvington Theater’s Arts Incubator Short Play Fest for 5 years, I collaborated with 28 different playwrights, composers, and lyricists from the greater NYC area and across the country.
I shepherd new plays and musicals in my parallel freelance work as a graphic designer and marketing specialist, shaping the way high-profile productions – like the Off-Broadway world premieres of Adam Gwon’s All the World’s a Stage and Kia Corthron’s Fish – look, sound, and exist in the world for the very first time. This is deep, dramaturgical work that both benefits from and serves my decades of work as a director.
In my early career as an actor, I took part in the development of countless new theatrical works including The Orchard Play, P. Seth Bauer’s adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and the world premiere of Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj’s Little Rock at Passage Theatre Company in Trenton, New Jersey, for which the cast and I were recognized with the 2015 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Play.
My penchant for new plays emerged well before my professional career. While training at University of the Arts, I directed for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and started a new play development club with friends. Before that, I wrote and directed 10 world premieres with a theater group I created and ran in my hometown of Bucks County, Pennsylvania from seventh grade through my sophomore year of college – a foundational, eight-year crash course in wearing every hat necessary to bring new plays to life.