Are you a rising High School Junior or Senior and interested in unleashing your creativity by making theater this summer? Join me between July 8 and 14th for my Explorations of Acting and Playwriting workshop at Pre-College Summer @ UCONN! Theater brings you face to face with what it means to be human, engaging your
My friend, colleague and fellow artist, Jerry Rojo passed away on February 27, 2018. He was a soulful man with an enormous heart who floated through the corridors of the UCONN drama department spreading love and dispensing wisdom. Sometimes he would drop by my rehearsals, watch closely and then quickly solve a problem, without judgement.
This is the story of how an idea became a play. A simple What If? question ten years ago became The Parkville Project, a new play about identity, hope and immigration. Created from community interviews and new historical research, The Parkville Project weaves physical theatre, music, and puppetry into a story about a love that
Eurydice runs from March 23 – April 2 2017 at Connecticut Repertory Theater. Here are my Director’s Notes for the program. Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is written in movements – a poetic symphony of love, loss, memory and rhythm. It is elemental, grounded in earth with two movements set in the Underworld, home of the Stones.
I have the great honor of teaching Acting to select group of BFA and MFA students at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Dramatic Arts. Many of them are now making great strides in the film and television industries, as well as in theater. This month, I had the pleasure of catching up
The development of a theatrical piece is an act of faith that never ceases to amaze me. Artists come together with hope, excitement, some trepidation, a few words and a lot of wondering. With Together, the question was not: What we will bring to life? But more: How can we help the playwright with her
Look around you right now. Try to make eye contact. You can’t because everyone is staring, zombified, into a tiny black screen, their smartphones. This is what MIT professor Sherry Turkle calls being “alone together.” Nowadays, we seek connections through our devices. We are uncomfortable with solitude. We are in danger of losing the very
Apparently some can get the same dopamine rush from the sound of a tweet as they can from an orgasm. This may explain the addictive nature of texting and twitter. And it is this response that we often try to generate in our theatre audience when we write, direct or act. As artists we want
Push and pull. Action and Reaction. The rhythm and measure of breath. In and Out. The inhalation and exhalation separated by a point of transition, the point of tension, the point of change, the connection between two states, between life and death. It is a millisecond that separates us from earth and the unknown, the
Harping back to the founding fathers to legitimize a conservative worldview is a tried and tested political tactic in the United States. Inevitably it requires some retrofitting to make 18th century ideals make sense in our 21st century context, but this approach gains traction because a familiar story is comforting. Suddenly the public has yet
