Producing
I have curated and produced over 20 new play workshops in New York and Chicago. I am the co-founder, literary manager, and artistic producer of Freshly Brewed, a new play development series dedicated to emerging Chicago playwrights, along with a New Play Festival at Subtext Studio Theatre Company in Chicago and the Whale Watch Reading Series in NYC. I was most recently contracted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) where I remounted a decades-long development program, the Black Swan Lab, which had been on hiatus for the last 5 years.
During my time at in Oregon I crafted an OSF LAB producer’s manual with extensive archival notes and completed multiple “Capstone” projects beyond my work assignments (directing two new play workshops and facilitating a monologue writing class) to deepen my community building impact.
I have since built similar process manuals for producing and directing for Freshly Brewed and for the New Play Festival at Subtext Studio Theatre Company!
Freshly Brewed
A new play development series hosted by The Understudy Coffee and Books
Centering The Understudy's core values: collaboration, community, and discovery. Freshly Brewed provides an accessible pathway for emerging Chicago artists to meet new collaborators and lean into process over product, all while speaking to our local community and connecting playwrights with avenues for further production.
COLLABORATION
In programming our plays, we intend to operate as active collaborators, providing abundant new opportunities for emerging playwrights and directors while empowering them to self-advocate and to dream. While this program does not represent the final step in developing these stories, our goal is to use the tools available to us to help move these visions along.
COMMUNITY
Because The Understudy is a community space and hub for creative expression, we recognize our responsibility to distribute our resources equitably amongst Chicago’s vibrant and diverse community of BIPOC, queer, and disabled artists. Freshly Brewed is an opportunity to forge career-long connections between emerging artists (playwrights, directors, actors, dramaturgs).
DISCOVERY
At The Understudy, we celebrate the joy of work in progress. We seek to platform artists in the process of discovering their own unique voices and vantage points, and seek to expand the curiosities of our audiences. As producers, we work to experiment with new facets of our programming, pursuing new avenues for inspiration and connection.