Michael is a freelance director, producer, and theater maker based in Chicago. He is the Joaquin Oliver Artistic Producer of ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence (enoughplays.com), which calls on teens to confront gun violence by creating new works of theatre that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country. Since its founding in 2019, ENOUGH! has received nearly 600 short plays and created an unprecedented new work pipeline to publication and production for teen playwrights. Twenty-one ENOUGH! plays, selected by some of the country's most prolific playwrights including David Henry Hwang, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lauren Gunderson, Idris Goodwin, Samuel D. Hunter, and Karen Zacarías, among others, have been published across three volumes by...
Michael is a freelance director, producer, and theater maker based in Chicago. He is the Joaquin Oliver Artistic Producer of ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence (enoughplays.com), which calls on teens to confront gun violence by creating new works of theatre that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country. Since its founding in 2019, ENOUGH! has received nearly 600 short plays and created an unprecedented new work pipeline to publication and production for teen playwrights. Twenty-one ENOUGH! plays, selected by some of the country's most prolific playwrights including David Henry Hwang, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lauren Gunderson, Idris Goodwin, Samuel D. Hunter, and Karen Zacarías, among others, have been published across three volumes by Playscripts. More than 140 organizations have participated in ENOUGH!’s three previous Nationwide Readings (2020, 2022, and 2023) to bring these plays to their community, involving nearly 3,000 artists and reaching more than 14,000 people. These readings have raised thousands of dollars for local gun violence prevention organizations, fostered meaningful and long lasting partnerships, and created opportunities for bold community engagement. ENOUGH! is the recipient of the 2023 Goldin Foundation Exemplary Project Award and 2024 TYA Community Impact Award.
Adjacent to his work with ENOUGH!, Michael has collaborated with gun violence prevention activist Manuel Oliver to develop his solo theater piece GUAC: THE ONE MAN SHOW, about his relationship with his son Joaquin, one of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting. He has also collaborated with Carthage College to develop TERMINAL EXHALE, which examines gun violence epidemic through gripping interviews and firsthand accounts of frontline healthcare workers.
As a director, Michael has worked at American Blues Theater, Goodman Theatre, Gift Theatre, Cabinet of Curiosities, The New Colony, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Next Act, Nebraska Repertory Theater, and First Stage, among others. In 2023 he served as the Festival Producer for World Premiere Wisconsin, an inaugural and first-of-its-kind statewide new play festival. From 2009-2013 he was the Founding Artistic Director of Youngblood Theatre, regularly celebrated by the theater community and the press as one of the most exciting new Milwaukee theater ventures in decades. As an educator, Michael has taught at UW-Madison, Roosevelt University, Northwestern, and UW-Milwaukee. In 2020, he authored "Audit MKE," a survey of the race & gender representation of the playwrights of 799 productions produced by Milwaukee's six Equity theaters over a 20 year period. Michael graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a BFA in Acting and from Northwestern University with an MFA in Directing. In 2014 he was named UWM’s “Graduate of the Last Decade.”