As a queer and disabled woman who walks with a bright turquoise cane, I am used to being watched as I walk. I decided a long time ago not to let it bother me that my being different was just something other people would need to get used to. The staring is never what bothers me, but rather the moments people avert their eyes when they catch themselves staring. It is these instances of unintentional distancing - driven by discomfort, fear, ignorance, prejudice - that define the other both in real life and onstage. The “other”, like the dramatic outsider, is intentionally held apart for what makes them different; for the outsider, their difference is a cause for alienation, while for the other, difference can be weaponized by the spectator to create shame or lack of belonging. Not only is the “other” marked as different, but also their difference is constantly put on display. Their personhood becomes consumed by the spectacle of their otherness.

I seek to challenge and reinvent the representation of this “other” onstage. My work focuses on ripping open the search for identity by broadening the definition of a neutral body and accessible story. I work to complicate the dramatic conflict of self versus society, especially for female, queer, and disabled voices. Rather than presenting these stories as exceptions to the norm, I use the theatrical space to introduce the audience to a new normal. Particularly in new work development, I hope to broaden representation and accessibility in the arts. The theater I am drawn to tells diverse stories, engages and brings together new communities, and portrays people in all their complexities, rather than reducing their personhood to one part of their identity.

Artists’ manifestos are always expanding and changing as they experience more of the world and the world around them changes. The world I am making art in now is vastly different from the world of four years ago. Most manifestos are rarely ever finished; here’s a working draft of mine.
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To make every room I walk into accessible.

To challenge the definition of accessibility, allowing each room and company to redefine and expand the definition of what fosters accessibility as they see fit.

To always do the work, especially when an experience portrayed is outside of my own. To really do the work.

To foster intellectual rigor, insatiable curiosity, freedom and daring to play, commitment to specificity and precision of story-telling. To build an environment of creation and collaboration built on respect, and the shared sense of joy and magic of having the extraordinary privilege to create art together.

One of the greatest privileges of being an artist is that our job is to inhabit and explore the lives of others. All art is personal, and all art is political. When truth in representation aligns with what an audience experiences onstage, art has the power to be transformative. There is a responsibility to work towards truth, and a cost to everything we put onstage.

To never make art in a vacuum. Theater is made for the audience. It is an act of creation in more than what is on the stage. Theater has the power to bring new communities together, challenge beliefs, and spark dialogue. In the way theater is structured, we build a community, each night, over and over again, from scratch as a new audience walks in our doors. Theater is an act of service, and when we forget the push and pull with what should be an ever expanding audience, we limit its transformative power.

To create art that scares the shit out of me, makes me question my own ideals, sings with poetry, investigates the ethics of representation, and challenges the idea of form. To seek delight in mystery, and remember the power of wonder.