The instinct to tell stories is as old as humanity itself. I am driven by a never-ending effort to ensure that the canon of American Theater is as diverse as the world is and as hospitable as I want the world to be, whether that's developing new works, exploring established stories, expanding what we consider "the Classics," or even expanding what we define as "theater."

As an artist, I am drawn to stories focusing on identity: who am I, who are we to each other, who are we as a society, and how does that affect how we communicate onstage and off?

As a director, I am guided by three principles: collaboration, research, and experimentation.

My background in theater is holistic; in addition to being trained as a director, I've been educated as an actor and a designer. This has given me a natural vocabulary for collaborating on various aspects of a production and truly lets me lead from within my team. I fully trust that my designers and actors were hired because they are experts in what they do. My job is not to tell them what to do; instead, my job is to work WITH them and give them space to be vulnerable and excited and experiment while keeping all elements in cohesion.

With a background in dramaturgy, every production must be backed by research. I don't limit this to historical context; what does this script want to be? What is the reality and logic of the world in this script? There are many conventions at play in theatre; once you define the rules of the world, then you can decide what rules to follow and what rules to break. I'm interested in creating a rigorous, well-defined environment-- then, you can watch that world safely spin into chaos.

Artists can experiment and do their best work in that perfectly defined chaos. Miss Frizzle put it better than I ever could: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Do your homework, and then don't be afraid to fail. No one has impulses by accident—it's vital to mine every choice, especially mistakes, for their kernel of truth. Making mistakes shows what intrinsically works in a performance and what elements are more variable.  

Through those principles, I create spaces primed for artists to be vulnerable and create athletic, beautiful, unfamiliar, and human work.