Artist Statement
I believe my job as a theater artists is to remind my audience of the range of their humanity. I do this by using theatrical traditions and established styles and forms (which allow the audience to recognize what they’re experiencing) and injecting them with as much imagination and personal perspective as I can (which creates surprise). Surprise (not to be confused with shock) is the way I get audiences to feel. When they feel they’re reminded of their humanity.
I believe the more personal risk I take in the work the more the audience will relate and see the whole of their humanity reflected back at them. So, through art, I try to be as masculine, feminine, ugly, beautiful, intelligent, base, chaotic, graceful, joyful, sorrowful, perfect and flawed as I am in real life.
I believe theater is about intimacy and try to make theater that shrinks the distance between the user and the maker (between the audience and the players). Theater is theatrical so I strive to imbue my plays and performances with a heightened reality that includes ideas, breadth, possibility, care, poetry, and craft. Most of all I believe theater is community and think of myself as a community activist: someone whose job it is to bring people together, give them a shared experience and remind them of what it means to be human.