Educator
19/02/2025
Overview
Theatre Teacher Community Engagement Specialist Engaging teacher who brings advanced teaching skills and leadership experience from non-profit, professional and academic settings. Goal and standard oriented to improve teaching, and diversify courses—extensive background in equitable and accessible teaching practices, professional directing, and dramaturgy. Teaching Specific Resume Available Upon Request
Select Production Photos
Including Shakespeare in Love, Finding Nemo Jr., Radium Girls, Tartuffe, The Ghosts of Sleepy Hollow, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Odyssey. Photos by Wilson Freeman
Teaching Philosophy
Every student is a vital part of the classroom and theatre community. They deserve a supportive, challenging, and stimulating atmosphere that allows them to grow to their full potential and, in turn, improve our world. If you talk to my students, they will tell you three things about how I teach: I am passionate, continuously innovative, and their fiercest advocate in and outside of the classroom. I foster a space that is diverse, deeply anti-racist, anti-ableist, and gender-inclusive, and I am always open to listening while maintaining everyone's boundaries for physical and emotional safety. My students know that I have high expectations for them while taking the same steps; they experience me authentically sharing my access support needs, fluid pronouns, and honesty and that we are all a work in progress. I charge myself and my students to respect the dignity of everyone we create theatre with and for. It is my great honor to mentor artists in telling their stories as individual artists while broadening their perspectives to authentic belonging in the broader world. A professor's role is to facilitate learning rather than see themselves as the primary auteur source of information. Teaching, for me, is not about who I am as an artist or a person. It is about offering my experiences, allowing my students to discover what they are capable of, and encouraging them to do more. Especially in the theater, students learn by listening, asking questions, and searching for their potential. I approach directing and acting from the perspective of a deviser. Devised theatre is about creating a story not as the self in isolation but as a part of the community. It requires active listening, curiosity about our world's present and past, and the ability to connect ideas across disciplines and ways of thinking. My students walk out of our process with the ability to collaborate with anyone that comes their way and a commitment to curiosity about themselves and others. I live for those lightbulb moments when students not only get it but also see themselves as complete learners inside the story of human history and see their time in theatre class as a springboard to excel anywhere life takes them. In my classroom, I hold the 9 Questions of Utah Hagen and the SoulWork of Cristal Channel Truscott in equal regard. I am committed to continuous learning and research to ensure the representation in my syllabi and the diversity of methodology in my classroom are always current. My theatre lessons are designed to be inclusive and multi-disciplinary, incorporating visuals, music, and technology, and are tailored to meet the needs of each student on any given day. The theatre classroom should reflect the most advanced and consent-informed evolution in professional practice, aligning with students' aspirations for the art form's future. I evaluate the student's progress by providing multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they have learned, looking at the whole person and not just the assessment result. I cannot imagine a theatre lesson that does not build a student's Durable Skills, as outlined by the American Succeeds Initiative. How else can we make art than if fortitude and collaboration are in balance with each other? I am an educator who brings to every class passion for professional practice and dedication to a rigorous classroom that believes in the potential of everyone I work with to achieve growth in all parts of their community and art form.
International Travel Management
2025: Tour Manager for Choir Trip to Greece 2022: Tour Manager for Choir Trip to Ireland 2015: Production Manager and Director for Ben M'sk Theatre Festival in Casablanca, Morrocco
