Original Courses and Curricula
In my early career, I taught classes and developed courses at a number of colleges and universities. But I’ve been rooted at Northwestern University for over twenty years now, and it's the Northwestern Theater Department within the School of Communication that serves as my primary educational home. I direct the Directing Program, where I teach a variety of fundamental and core courses as well as offering mentorship. Most significantly, I develop unusual courses for directors and designers.
My central teaching philosophy is displayed here: rigor and playfulness are not opposed but must be partnered; intimacy and spectacle can be co-explored; and we should always seek to learn to surprise both ourselves and the audience.
Toy Theater for Big Artists
curriculum creator and professor
Toy Theater is a magical form of puppetry — both traditional and contemporary. Because it is in miniature with a specific range of artistic constraints, it’s a perfect landscape for directors and designers to explore their unique voices. This is why I use Toy Theater as a signature training method for theater artists.
Quite literally anything can happen within the frame—characters can fly, melt, transform. Furniture can bleed, buildings can sing, clouds can come to life. In the face of this much creative freedom, the artist has to be rigorous with their vision and look carefully at every single aspect of the visual world they are creating and how their story unfolds within it.
How to Know the Wild Flowers and Flight of the Phoenix were both performative responses to the global pandemic of COVID-19, and thus were unique to their moment. They were, however, great examples of the type of performance work that is always possible when based in original exploration, visual spectacle, authentic emotional experience, and community gathering.
These were exciting curricular experiments in how to use performance and the tools of theater to address real-world situations and challenges.
How to Know the Wild Flowers: A Map
co-creator, director
A theatrical ritual of communal healing, this multi-disciplinary piece is inspired by the first field guide for flowers in America, called How to Know the Wild Flowers by Mrs. William Starr Dana (Frances Theodora Parsons). It was published in 1893, three years after the Russian flu pandemic of 1890 took the life of Frances’s husband. Frances’s long walks in the woods cataloging wildflowers allowed her to heal her grief. Surrounding her story is the modern-day story of four young adults and their own personal journeys through the timeless beauty of the prairie toward peace and rejuvenation. Drawing from Frances’s life story, the rich poetic language of her guidebook, and contemporary stories and songs of nature, this is a buoyant celebration of the beauty surrounding and sustaining us as we all journey toward healing.
Read the student review of Wildflowers in The Daily Northwestern
Flight of the Phoenix
co-director
Directed alongside Dassia Posner, designed by members of the MFA Design cohort, and featuring NU’s undergraduate performers, Flight of the Phoenix celebrates our indomitable spirit in a festival of furious flames and fantastical feathers. Emerging at the end of the isolation of the 2020-2021 academic year, Flight of the Phoenix is a magical story of resilience, transformation, and artistic rebirth.
Students on campus created a large-scale puppet spectacle, filmed on Northwestern’s glorious lakefront and soaring above communities across the globe. Members of the NU community, both near and scattered in isolation across many locales, all created videos, culminating in a massive migratory flock of blue and gold bird puppets. Together, they reenacted the journey of the mythical beast perishing dramatically in flames, only to burst forth from the fire, reborn to frolic across the sky and begin a new life.
Leadership Workshops
curriculum designer and leader
In addition to teaching and directing, I am available to design workshop sequences to address specific issues among working teams, such as how to manage change, how to use crafted story to represent your work, and how to deepen physical intuition to expand the vitality of a creative work culture.
These workshops typically last two to four hours and hold 20-30 participants, who may or may not know each other at the outset. Having said that, though, this kind of work can be adapted to many scenarios. The truth that underlies all these professional engagement workshops is that exploring Story, the Body, and Emotional Resonance supports any and all kinds of collaborative work.
I have enjoyed working with the Civic Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, and the Park District of the City of Chicago as a few long-term and repeat examples of client participants.