Who am I?

Great-er question! At my core, I am a high school theatre kid who never stopped. I act because it is fun. At the same time, I am a member of a generation that is coming of age with a much more pessimistic view of the future than those in the past. It is easy to lose that sense of fun in this environment, so the theatre I want to create always has an element of fun in it. Sometimes that takes the form of escapism and joy. But even in more "serious," "political" plays, I believe that the story dies if the sense of fun is lost. I wouldn't be participating in theatre if it didn't have some element of joy. That's why I'm here, and that's what I want to share with other people.

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I believe that this sense of fun spans every genre of theatre. I was trained to act on Shakespeare, and I often find that the support from layers of the text makes Shakespeare easier than most modern texts. But if anyone tries telling me that Shakespeare is a higher form of art than contemporary musical theatre, there's gonna be a debate. I love Shakespeare. I love musicals. I love rewrites of Molière farces. I think that doing one genre makes me better on another. I want my career to span genres, because it helps me act better, think better, and it's just that much more fun.

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One thing that is certainly overrepresented in my work is music. I've played cello since elementary school, and the skills it develops (rhythm, phrasing, listening to an ensemble) often carry right over into my acting. One way or another, my cello (his name is Roger) often ends up making his way into the show. I've played in a full pit orchestra, used Roger onstage to underscore scenes, accompanied myself live, and several times I've made up tunes on the spot in rehearsal that were then used for songs in the show. I love to sing as often as I can, and I've been known to pick up new instruments for whatever show I'm working on, including harmonica, melodica, and most recently the banjolele.