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Theatre Maker.

Assistant Professor of Theatre, Actor, Director, Dramaturg

In a nutshell…

I am a Chicago-bred, Maine-based Theatre practitioner, educator, and scholar. I specialize in contemporary adaptations of ancient Greek drama. More specifically, I look at funerary performances as they relate to gender in classically influenced tragedies on the Irish Stage. I am also interested in the theatricalization of Motherhood. I am currently based just outside of Portland, Maine. I am an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Southern Maine, where I teach Dramaturgy, Directing, Adaptation, and Theatre History. I hold a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Illinois, an MA in Directing from University College Dublin, and a BA in Theatre Studies from Illinois Wesleyan University.

About

My Values:

Theatre is for everyone, Not just the most visible or dominant members of our society. As an educator, I work to make live performance accessible to students as both a powerful representational medium and a tool for interrogating the social landscape that drama often turns to as its subject. As a practitioner, I gravitate towards work that fosters empathy by asking audiences to relate to experiences that fall outside of their own.

Like many in the performing arts, I wear a lot of hats. I originally came to theatre as an actor. After graduating from Illinois Wesleyan University with a BA in Theatre Studies, I moved to Japan, where I worked as an English teacher for the Aichi Board of Education in Nagoya city for two years. I also worked as an actor and assistant director with the Nagoya Players and traveled to Australia to take part in an acting intensive course at the National Institute for Dramatic Art in Sydney. In 2007, I returned to Chicago, where I acted with storefront theatre companies like the Mill, New Millennium, and Bare Bones Theatre Company before moving to Ireland to complete a Master’s degree in Directing at University College Dublin. I completed my Ph.D. in Theatre at the University of Illinois in 2016 and have presented research involving Funerary Performances, Classical Appropriation, and Gender in Irish Drama at the American Conference for Irish Studies, American Society for Theatre Research Conference, the Mid-American Theatre Conference, and the American Theatre in Higher Education Conference. Prior to landing in Maine, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Criticism at Northern Illinois University.