Educator
I enjoy teaching and directing everything from Chekhov to Pinter but my food, my sustenance, is Shakespeare. When I was twelve years old, my parents took me to a production of JULIUS CAESAR at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. I was utterly mesmerized. The pre-show singing and selling of oranges, the way the actors moved their bodies and spoke, the passion of the storytelling, even the spit flying across the stage! I sat in the third row and I knew I had to be part of this world.
While I was working toward my MFA, each summer I directed for the esteemed American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp. These teens understand the power of the language and how to use and work this glorious space. I actually think it was those students who taught me how to direct.
Productions
American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp
Blackfriars Playhouse
Staunton, VA
DIDO QUEEN OF CARTHAGE
by Christopher Marlowe
A KING NO KING
by Beaumont and Fletcher
VOLPONE
by Ben Jonson
Classroom Work
New York Film Academy
Burbank, California
I teach several levels of Shakespeare at NYFA and I instigated a yearly Black Box production of his plays. With minimal D&P support in our simple empty space, we bring Shakespeare to many students who have never seen one of his plays performed. For most of my students, this is their first outing as a Shakespearean actor. I am proud to say that every one of my productions yields at least one student who confesses to me that they have a new addiction.
George C. Wolfe said, “An actor’s truth must be big enough to fill the space in which they are playing.” My students at NYFA are film actors, trained to fit their truth into a rather intimate space. I like exploding that -- and, it turns out, so do they -- with Jacques Lecoq-Inspired mask work, styles study, and Shakespeare. It opens a channel to their creativity, and it deepens their understanding of what they are playing.
NYFA is a unique campus. Our students literally hail from around the globe. I learn from their rich and diverse backgrounds every time I step into the classroom. Many of our students have English as a second, third, or even fourth language. Bringing those actors into the same realm of storytelling ability in heightened text is indeed challenging. In my production of MERCHANT OF VENICE, my Portia was from Turkey, the Merchant was Italian, my Bassanio was from Kazakhstan, Graziano from Persia, and my (female) Shylock was Iranian-born and grew up in Australia. An international cast in a play about “the other.” The students grew in leaps and bounds and we told our unique story, our truth.
My prime interest in teaching is to give skills to my students. When they leave my fold, I want them to know how to rehearse, how to analyze and serve a script, how to make dynamic and personal choices. And I want them to know how to tell the truth in their work.