My work proceeds from the adages that art proceeds from entertainment, and the experience of both beget emancipatory possibilities. This is why so many of my plays, though often structurally orthodox, are so strange in their premises, their characters and characters’ needs and sprawling in their ambitions. The first person to be emancipated is me, by the act of writing. Each of my plays, over the course of many years, involves and distances my hopes, dreams, and fears, and gives them a form mixed together like a stew, through whose convolution I can better understand my place and trajectory in the world. After myself, my hope is that they open up the imaginations of audiences to other ways to view the stories they live in, by making our familiar stories strange.

Many of my plays are informed by Shakespeare’s original practices, such as audience address, universal
lighting, use of doubling (and many characters), and suggestion of place through dialogue rather than set, so that most of my plays are light, mobile, and celebrate austerity. I also take inspiration from Charles Mee’s lyrical plays, Robert Wilson’s spectacular stage pictures, Noah Haidle’s bizarre and beautiful works, Audrey Cefaly’s empathetic portrayals punctuated by silence, Artaud’s thoughts on theater, the poetry of Keats, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung’s observations about psychology and storytelling, and the work of countless others from whose shoulders I peep at forthcoming possible worlds.

My own plays can be produced by people with little material means, as I have done through several
workshop productions. The language, almost without exception, carries the stories. They involve heavy use of references, from pop culture, world experiences and traditions (history, literature, etc.), to enrich the experience of all who view it. It is my hope that in these plays, I can engage in dialogue with many people on many different levels at once, while bringing them together for a common experience.

Great media point to possibilities of worlds beyond itself. My plays are strange in their content, characters
and premises, in order to accomplish this. Taking a few examples, they are about a court jester trying to usurp their kingdom by making pudding (Rodgrod), a tree trying to rescue her fairy friend from two hunters (Asteria Rising), a man trying to find a talking Dandelion so he can return it to the Dandelion’s aunts and receive an antidote to “poison ivy concentrate” which will kill him (Garlands), a man whose imaginary friend leaves to find God after defeating the Satan-Giant (only to come back empty handed, when the man is 33; As Far as You Can Go), or a three hour play about the girl who tries to save the world because the Sun has left his work of carrying light solely to the Moon, who crashes exhausted down to earth (Polarea and the Cloud Weaver. The fundamental absurdity of these stories is intended to create, at once, a distance to ridicule, and a common-among-the-people familiarity with their inspirations from fable, children’s stories, Shakespeare, Theater of the Absurd, and high and low culture, with heavy uses of
references to other works to layer meaning.

Many of my other plays have tended to take place in more of a side-ways world than an upside down one, in places that resemble our world but could never replace it. These plays often feature characters who are trapped in a space (an actors’ decrepit mansion, an astronomer’s office, etc.), with a limited amount of time to complete a task together. These plays have emerged as an opposite pattern my writing has naturally taken, in which the tension of entrapment is emphasized over breathlessly moving from place to place, person to person, and event to event. Such a play is The Ghost of Jimmy Dean, about an actor who plays James Dean in a movie and goes crazy, believes he really is James Dean, and his best friend and lawyer hires a therapist to come live at their mansion until he’s “fixed.” Another is Collisions, about an astronomer named Asteria who is on the cusp of losing her job when Pandora, a homeless woman with a magic box, moves into her office helps her to keep her job, as they turn to the earth, our
earth, which is a model in Asteria’s office, to different memories, in which both are entrapped.

As a theater practitioner, I have also acted in professional, collegiate and community theater, and directed
and produced several full length and short productions and readings, and two play festivals, through two theatercompanies I founded. The first theater company that I created operated for a year and is called 1YR. The goal, inspired by 13P, was to create a company that would live for only one year and produce several original workshop productions. Between the summers of 2015 and 2016, I wrote (or finished writing), directed (or co-directed) and
produced two full length plays and two one act plays. I collaborated with many of the same performers during each performance, and developed the unique aesthetic I’ve spoken of above. These people that I worked with became and have remained like family. And this closeness and continuous collaboration over many years is something that I plan to continue to hone, and would like to share with other theater practitioners.

Between 1YR and my involvement in the next company, in 2017 I produced a workshop production of
Collisions and independently produced a festival of short works by local playwrights (and one ten minute play by Southern playwright Audrey Cefaly) called Here 2 There, on the theme of Connection.

The next theater company I co-founded alongside another theater practitioner, Krista Pennington, called
Curious Arrow Theatre Company. Together, we completed three projects. The first was the Lucid Festival in 2017, which invited playwrights from around the United States to submit ten minute plays around the theme of dreaming. After reviewing all of the submissions, we selected and produced ten. The audience’s favorite work was voted on, and we produced, as our second project, a staged reading of the playwright, Steven Bogart’s work, The Behavior of Wings. Our third project was a staged reading of the first part of my three hour play Polarea and the Cloud Weaver, which is about a little girl who tries to get the light back in the sky, so the world doesn’t freeze, after the Sun gets too depressed and leaves the task of carrying the light solely to the Moon. Because I’ve moved to Taiwan, the company now remains in the care of Krista Pennington.

In Taiwan, while teaching English to students ages 2-15, I incorporated theater games into my lessons, wrote some short plays performed by teachers based around Western and Chinese holidays, and taught special classes on Drama and Speech. My current job is teaching lessons in front of a camera, for later use by students. My proudest theatrical accomplishment in Taiwan is having had a ten minute play, Coffee for Muriel, produced as part of Taipei Shorts III, which was viewed by over 400 people and praised in the Taipei Times’ and other publications.

As an actor, I’ve acted professionally with the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company for many years, as part
of American Immersion Theater’s Murder Mystery Company, in an improv troupe, and in many collegiate and community productions. I love acting, and the drive to do it will always be in my blood. But I am fundamentally more dreamy and reflective, and most interested in exploring other possibilities of living through writing.

My experience of theater during and after my undergraduate years is not my only inspiration. In my day to
day life, I have worked extensively, directly and in regional management, with people with disabilities (cognitive, emotional, developmental, physical), in factories, on a political campaign, as a barista, in a tea shop, in a kitchen making meals, in catering serving meals, in elder care with people with Dementia and Alztheimers, as a teacher of English as a Second Language to preschoolers and elementary students in Taiwan, and volunteered for nearly ten years with American Model United Nations, helping thousands of university students of many nationalities and backgrounds to work together in the simulation we provide to solve problems. These experiences, which have included great financial and psychological difficulties, while serving others, have shaped me into an artist and person who values empathy, and seeks to create work that actively cultivates care for others.

My broad goals as a writer over the next few years are to write furiously, connect openly, and think
pointedly. More specifically, I would like two write at least two full length plays each year for the next three years.

Now, I usually write one, though the rewriting and editing process is often dragged out. With time and support, I believe that I can finish and polish two, along with other required course work. To connect openly, I plan to meet with as many theater makers and interesting people as I can. I tend to be introverted, but I love people and connecting about ideas and experiences. I would like to actively reach out in person and by using the internet to engage in conversations with people who can inform my work (scholars and fellow artists of course, but anyone can be an inspiration). To think pointedly, I plan to develop my thoughts and to find ways to express my thoughts on theater through essays and talks. And I’d also like to teach writing, because having taught English for a while now, I feel at home interacting with students and finding ways to communicate ideas simply, to enhance learning.

My ultimate theatrical goal is to start a touring repertory company to perform my work and other original
work, to sustain or help to sustain the material, artistic and spiritual lives of myself and other artists. Over the course of my full career, I also hope to continue teaching and writing in other media, including film and television, and work in some capacity in international relations, human rights and development (toward this last end, in addition to teaching English as a second language and my work with American Model United Nations, I have joined the publication Refugee Review’s communication team as a volunteer).
Throughout this career, I will strive to find bridges between my passions for storytelling and helping people throughout the world.

As a writer, I also write poems, short stories, songs, sketches, and screenplays. Several of my short stories
and poems have been published, and sketches performed by Storefront Theater in Chicago.