Relief Grant & Commission for The Kaleidoscapes

I am thrilled to announce that I have been awarded The Kaleidoscapes Covid-19 Artist Relief Grant.

The Kaleidoscapes is a non-profit ecotheatre troupe committed to 1) utilizing theatre, comedy, song, movement, puppetry, and original writing to tell stories about a diversity of creatures on earth, 2) responsibly creating, producing, and performing these stories with minimum ecological impact, 3) supplementing existing programming at National Parks and other public spaces, 4) creating a sense of environmental responsibility to the land that is our shared home, 5) using scientific research as a creative foundation for characters and subject material, and 6) offering creative solutions to the climate crisis.

In addition to the award, after a successful meeting with The Kaleidoscapes Board of Directors, I have been commissioned for a new project — an eco-theatre dance-film entitled Trace. Stay tuned for more information.

Madloba Physical Theatre Conference @ Synetic Theater

Synetic Theater will convene physical theater artists, designers, administrators, and aficionados in a pay-what-you-will virtual conference. The Madloba Physical Theater Conference programming includes artist and designer workshops, panel discussions for artistic leaders, access to globally-sourced technique-driven classes and informations essions, including workshops with Synetic co-founders and Georgian natives Paata & Irina Tsikurishvili among other industry leaders. Madloba is Georgian for “Thank You.”

I am thrilled to have assisted on programming this event alongside Katherine Dubois. I will be moderating a panel entitled "Remastering Techniques" with a thrilling lineup of all female-identifying physical theatre artistic directors: Dody DiSanto (center for movement theatre), Joan Schirle (Dell'Arte International), Becky Baumwoll (Broken Box Mime Theatre), & Francesca Chilcote (Faction of Fools). I have aided in assembling the lineups for two other panels — "Designers in Conversation" and "Multimedia - Theater of Tomorrow" — featuring Andrew Schneider, Dan Hasse, Sandro Kereselidze, Jared Mezzocchi, Natsu Onoda Power, and Reid Farrington, among others. For the asynchronous workshops, I will be offering a Laban exploration workshop, alongside several former colleagues: Shubhangi Kuchibhotla (Intro to Kathak), Max Beckman (Intro to Balinese Mask), & Malena Pennycook (Intro to Grotowski). Register for the conference here.

Envision the Future Panel w/ Peter Marks @ Olney Theatre Center

This Saturday May 23 at 5pm, I will be participating in a panel entitled “Actors & Stage Managers: Envision the Future”, moderated by Peter Marks of The Washington Post, and produced by Olney Theatre Center. Other panelists include Evan Casey, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Karen Currie, & Jade Jones.

“Making a living in the theater has never been easy, but COVID-19 has thrown an unprecedented challenge at the feet of working actors and stage managers. What are our panel of DC-artists expecting and hoping for when theatre returns? How will they manage the tension between practicing their craft and staying safe?”

Tune in here.

Dial-a-Docent @ Hirshhorn

Reuniting with key members of the Hirshhorn Museum docent team, I am happy to be a founding member and lead interface designer of Dial-a-Docent.

Do you miss going to museums? Do you miss the excitement of seeing a new exhibition or the comfort of seeing a much-loved painting or sculpture? Docents share these feelings. We miss giving tours and discussing art. Dial-a-Docent is a group of museum docents who love to talk about art. We are offering free one-on-one & small group conversations about modern and contemporary art, and virtual tours of the works of the institutions we represent. Each conversation is unique, and designed according to your particular interests. Dial-a-Docent is ongoing! Schedule a conversation on our website.

We’ve already successfully offered hundreds of online conversations about modern and contemporary art during the pandemic, and continue to offer more. Learn more here.

The Decameron @ Synetic

I am thrilled to join the team behind The Decameron at Synetic Theater, under the mentorship of Synetic veteran Ben Cunis, as the actor-director adapting Day 9, Story 3 — Master Simone makes Calandrino believe that he is pregnant. The piece will feature myself and Jared Graham.

The Decameron is a collection of novellas that celebrates the human impulse to connect through storytelling in a time of despair and isolation. The book is structured as a collection of 100 tales told by a group of young people sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the epidemic. The tales the group tells each other in The Decameron range from life lessons and tongue-in-cheek commentary, to erotic and tragic love stories. In this virtual play, artists are adapting one story each remotely while being mentored by other Synetic company members and artistic leadership to prepare the work for streaming. Choose your own experience through individual selections, pre-created playlists, or tune in beginning July 10 to experience the work serially over 10 days, in honor of the source material. Streaming will continue through September. As we prepare for our 20th Anniversary Season this fall, The Decameron has united Synetic veterans, founding company members, and new performers, ensuring this virtual collaborative work will reflect our 20-year theatrical history that has now spread around the globe.

Lab B @ Performance Interface Lab

Following the immense success of the Lab A series, Performance Interface Lab, dedicated to creating live, interactive, tech-centered, at-home pieces of microtheatre for audiences of one, announces it’s Lab B series. Lab B features 3 new works: Love Story: A Meal in Five Courses, SNAP CRACKLE PROP, and The Other City.

Love Story: A Meal In Five Courses uses the five senses to conjure both a meal and a love story. How do the senses inspire memory? Is touch possible through a computer screen? How do you taste the memory of love? Can you experience love by something other than emotion? Culinarily crafted by Rachel Hynes and Anastasia Wilson, this piece invites you to a communal meal of memory.

In The Other City, an urban planner with a special vision wants to build a world with you. Kathleen Akerley & Em Whitworth share a fascination with the spaces in which we live - the mental and emotional spaces. We each live in a city to which we currently have limited access: our homes have become our cities; our bodies are the only constant cities. Have we built them all with more love than vigilance? More vigilance than love?

Created by Philip Kenner and Matt Meyers, SNAP CRACKLE PROP is an interactive radio play about children's cereal, sound effects, and the crunchy caves of our imagination. SNAP CRACKLE PROP will give you a chance to step into the shoes of a Foley artist, where you will create sound effects for children's cereal commercials using the objects in your own home. You will meet Jason: a voice actor who can get a little lost in the work. If you're looking for a laugh and an auditory obstacle course, this journey will delight you.

Lab B runs May 8 through 24, Friday through Sunday evenings, and Saturday/Sunday afternoons, in half-hour time slots. All pieces are to be experienced from within your home, and thus require a basic technical interface and WiFi through which to communicate. The interfaces (phone, Zoom, website, etc.) being used by each piece are specified on the website. Please visit the company website here to purchase Pay-What-You-Will tickets and learn more, and follow us on Facebook to stay updated on future lab cycles or to submit a proposal.

Much Ado About Nothing @ Pandemic Theatre

I am joyed to be contributing to Pandemic Theatre’s virtual, serialized, vignette production of Much Ado About Nothing, helmed by DC theatremaker Acacia Danielson in conjunction with over thirty local actors. You may recognize Acacia from our collaboration in Synetic’s Snow Queen last holiday season. The play’s five acts will be released weekly beginning at 7pm on Friday, May 15, and thereafter every Friday until June 12. As actor and director, I will be contributing three scenes: Act 1, Scene 2; Act 3, Scene 5; Act 5, Scene 1. Tickets available here, with all proceeds supporting out-of-work freelance artists in our community. Learn more about Pandemic Theatre here.

Edward the Second @ Brave Spirits

I have been cast as the title character in Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe, the second installment in Brave Spirits Theatre’s eight-part summer staged reading festival celebrating the (non-Shakespearean) history plays of the English early modern stage. The reading directed by Jon Jon Johnson, complete with intimacy and fight choreography and followed by a Q&A, features a 28-person cast of DC professional actors that is 96% people of color and nonbinary folx — a sight not often seen on early modern-focused stages. I am absolutely exhilarated to be in the company of some DC legends, and I hope you will join us. The reading will take place on Tuesday, May 12, at 7:30pm here. Learn more about Brave Spirits and their continued Shakespeare’s Histories season here.

Ronald Reagan Murdered My Mentors @ the Lark

I am overjoyed to be reunited in collaboration with playwright J. Julian Christopher. Our last collaboration occurred over four consecutive projects back in 2017, and I have been eager for an opportunity to work on his texts since that time. The Lark will be hosting a closed developmental Roundtable reading of his newest work Ronald Reagan Murdered My Mentors on Monday, May 11, and I am over the moon to be joining the cast playing the protagonistic, dual roles of Lost & Ronald Reagan. This reading comes as a culmination to his 2019-2020 Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop Fellowship, where he was a fellow alongside Kilroys List-featured Sam Chanse & C.A. Johnson, Obie Award winner Abe Koogler, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.