Director, Graduate Theatre
BA, Sarah Lawrence College. Performances in New York at Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, La MaMa E.T.C., Danspace, The Kitchen, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and at alternative presenters throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Recipient of a Village Voice OBIE Award in 1990 for solo adaptation of Nathanael West’s A Cool Million and the 2000 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for Everyday Uses for Sight, Nos. 3 & 7. Recipient of fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and Guggenheim (2002–2003) and of grants from Creative Capital, Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Mary Cary Flagler Charitable Trust, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, 2004. Former teacher at Bowdoin, Bennington, Barnard, and Princeton. SLC, 1997–
Previous Courses
Graduate Lab
Component—Year
Required for all 1st- and 2nd-year theatre graduate students. This class meets once a week.
Taught by a rotating series of Sarah Lawrence faculty and guest artists, this course focuses on developing the skills needed for a wide variety of techniques for the creation and development of new work in theatre. Ensemble acting, movement, design and fabrication, playwriting, devised work, and music performance are all explored. The class is a forum for workshops, master classes, and open rehearsals, with a focus on the development of critical skills. In addition, students in Grad Lab are expected to generate a new piece of theatre to be performed each month for the Sarah Lawrence community. These performances may include graduate and undergraduate students alike.
Faculty
Thesis Project
Component—Year
This class is required for all second-year theatre graduate students.
This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original theatre with a focus on conducting research in a variety of ways, including historical and artistic research, workshops, improvisations, experiments, and conversation. Each student will focus on creating one original project—typically, but not limited to, a solo—over the course of the full year. During the class, students will show works in progress. During conference, students and faculty will meet to discuss these showings and any relevant artistic and practical problems that may arise.
Faculty
Directing, Devising, and Performance
Intermediate , Component—Year
This class meets once a week.
This class is a laboratory, where students will explore (on their feet) a range of methodologies, philosophies, and approaches to creating performance and theatre. How do you direct a theatre piece without starting with a play? Alongside a broad survey of artists and art movements of the 20th century that continue to influence theatre artists today, students will practice a variety of ways of staging, with and without text and always in relation to being a “live event.” Following a trajectory from the Dadaists to Fluxus, from the surrealists to John Cage (and beyond), we will wrangle with these “postdramatic” artists and explore how their ideas can lead us in finding our own unique theatrical voice. Students will be given reading and creative assignments outside of class and will be expected to work collaboratively throughout the term.