My personal life deeply feeds into my work and desire for vulnerability on stage. Having experienced deep grief and loss, I find myself drawn to work that explores self in relationship to other and the loss of control. Often, I have found the immediacy of grief lacks open discussion in the communities I have been in. There is a sort of beat-around-the-bush way of talking about it when in fact, the complexities of loss and searching can only be summed up in the simplest of ways. Consequently, I have discovered true joy to be the same. This is why children’s authors such as Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, and Bill Watterson majorly influence my work. It is the simple, exposed process of not knowing the answers that I believe creates the most moving art. 

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Since I was 3 and listening to “There’s a Song in My Tummy and it Wants to Come Out”, art has always created movement within me. The melding of perceived reality with desired imagination elicits so much emotion inside all of us—in my opinion, the purest and most global form of communication. For me, feeling is a very kinesthetic response. Motion is inherent in the word eMOTION. Human kind is meant to move and be moved by what we feel. 

 

Driven by guided collaboration, trial and error, and collective exploration, my work aims to expose the process. Society tells us to “process our emotions”, so why can that processing not be vulnerable and in real time on stage?  I deeply believe in the sincerity and truth-seeking of characters, and I believe it is my job as a director to uplift the truth an actor is searching for. Then, together, we can explore each character’s journey towards peace.

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My mission as an artist is to ask what emotions look like expanded through our whole selves, possibly moving others in response. How do we make the term “feelings” an actual, tangible thing to feel? And within these tides of experiencing our surroundings, where can we discover we all share the same air?