My Artistic Mission and Values
My professional mission is to share authentic stories with my communities that foster laughter, tears, thought and connection in addition to helping others find their voice to tell their own stories and empowering them to take ownership of their lives, chase their dreams and be compassionate towards themselves and others, while making a sustainable living to support myself and my family.
My Values:
compassion, gratitude, generosity, learning, play, creativity, authenticity, vulnerability, courage, connection, faith, forgiveness, whole wellness, sustainability, thoughtful risk taking and living fully in the present.
A Quote that Guides me:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt
My Story
I am a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, in Seattle, Washington, with a B.F.A. in Original Works(2019). In this program we not only studied acting, voice, movement and classical text that the typical Acting B.F.A. students study, but we also study playwrighting, directing and clown in our third and fourth years. I found this program quite by accident but it was perfect for me because I have always been interested in working on, generating and developing new work even in high school. At this time, I am developing myself professionally as an actor and a playwright with the development of new work both others and my own as my focus.
While at Cornish, I was an actor and collaborator in Achilles In Sparta by Sharr White directed by Micheal Place. I was an actor, playwright and director in O’fest 2019, a showcase of ten-minute plays by the third year Original Works class. I premiered my clown Silvia, in The Clown Show curated and directed by Keira McDonald, which I developed in our year-long class with Keira. In my senior semester, I wrote and developed a new one act play called Dead Purple via a workshop and staged reading with my wonderful peers.
Before starting Cornish, in my hometown of Louisville, Ky, I worked on three new plays with Bunbury Theater. I premiered as Mary Sunshine in The New Mrs. Claus, a play about four Santas in a Santaholics anonymous group coming to adjust to their new marital situations, written and directed by Juergen Tossman. Later that season I was the stage manager of another new play of Juergen’s called I Bet on the Nag!, a romantic comedy set at Churchill Downs just after the Derby. I was then the stage manager for Lady Ain’t Singn’ No Blues, a play about Billie Holiday focusing on the end of her life and her civil rights activism, written and performed by Leslie McCurdy and directed by Clyde T. Harper. I also worked with the Savage Rose Classical Theater Company, on their production of Medea as a member of the Chorus. I am so grateful to both these companies for giving me these opportunities to work on their productions while I was in between colleges.
Before I found Cornish, I was pursuing a degree in Arts Management and theater at Indiana University Bloomington. After a year of study there, I decided that Arts Management, as essential as it is to our work as artists, was not for me and Indiana University was not for me. I went back home and took some classes in education which changed my life at Indiana University Southeast, a local, satellite campus to the main Bloomington. During this time, I prepared for the Chicago Unified Auditions with the gracious help and support of Charlie Sexton and Julane Heavens at Walden Theatre, my childhood theatre home.
Walden Theatre, now part of Commonwealth Theatre Center, is an outside of school conservatory program for young theatre artists age 4 through 18. At Walden I had the opportunity to be a part of their eight-show season and take classes in acting, playwrighting, voice, movement, improv and Shakespeare. I also had the unique opportunity of being a generator and collaborator on their Connecting Cultures Program in Coordination with Shawnee High School and New Comer’s Academy, two years in a row. These experiences were essential to my growth as a young artist.
Beyond being a theater artist, I am extremely passionate about education reform, arts education and teaching theater. My first experience as a teacher was being a teacher’s assistant in the intermediate class at Walden with Alec Volz where I discovered the magic of the light bulb moment and the power and importance or arts education in the development of all children no matter their eventual career aims. My passion was further fostered by my experiences in the education classes I took at Indiana University Southeast where I witnessed first hand the power of what a simple phrase as “You can do this” does to a student’s success. I am inspired by programs like Walden as well as programs such as Shakespeare Behind Bars at the Luther Lucket Correctional Facility in LaGrange, Ky. At some point in my journey, I would like to be a part of a theatre arts program that reaches underserved populations of kids and adults.