The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts is a public institution with a strong access and diversity mission. A member institution of the Massachusetts State University system, it consistently ranks nationally as a top ten public liberal arts college.
I joined the Theatre faculty at MCLA in 2016. Most of my teaching has been in design, production, and text analysis. All theatre faculty participate in the production season, and we regularly hire guest professionals to work with the students. In making these hires as well as in season selection, our focus is on the global majority and minoritized communities.
Pictured here are production photos from Passing Strange, Topdog/Underdog, and Into the Woods.
MOSAIC is MCLA’s public-facing program for open arts and intersectional culture. MOSAIC presents public cultural events in the form of exhibitions, performances, workshops, readings, lectures, and discussions. MOSAIC’s high-profile public focus on intersectional and access-oriented arts plays a major role in forwarding the college’s diversity mission.
I have served as Director of MOSAIC since August 2022. In assuming faculty directorship of a program that had previously been administered by staff, I made it a primary goal to integrate programming into college-wide curriculum, and to do so while maintaining the program’s standing with the public.
Photos shown here are of musicians Jake Blount and Grace Kelly, both of whom were presented in concert by MOSAIC in 2022-2023; ReWritten, an inter-disciplinary project produced in collaboration with The Adams Theater; Rudy Ramirez, MOSAIC’s 2023-2024 Benedetti Teaching Artist-in-Residence; a promotional image from our in-progress Fornés Festival; and photographs of the program’s downtown event and gallery space.
P3/east, founded by Robyn Hunt and Steve Pearson, is a theatre company dedicated to the creation of new work and to physical performance training. Both halves of the mission are rooted in Hunt and Pearson’s unique artistry blending Suzuki, Slow Tempo, Stanislavski, and circus techniques.
I am an affiliated artist with the company, and have had the distinction of serving as their primary lighting designer since the mid-2000s.
Productions shown here are Flight, Gravity, and The Water Station.
Co-Founder, Collective Member
Field Notes on Humanity is a national collective of artivists committed to finding new and sustainable ways to create place-based works in communion with our communities, the earth, and each other.
We are cultivating more imaginative, brave spaces that expand the boundaries of how we preserve art making, community connection, and ancestry.
We create, incubate, and produce new works centering global majority and LGBTQIA identies.
Flint Youth Theatre (FYT) started as in-school drama program in 1957, and over time grew to become a year-round professional theatre serving youth and family audiences. I initially worked for FYT as a resident artist for the first four years after college, then came back to join the senior leadership team in 2010. I served as the Executive Artistic Director from 2012 to 2016.
FYT operated several production series, a Drama School, and a staged-reading series. Its flagship program, MainStage, cast all roles with age-appropriate actors. This regularly resulted in area middle and high school students performing alongside adult professionals. We established a formal alliance with the Theatre department at UM-Flint during my tenure, creating an opportunity for college student to benefit from this richly professional and educational environment.
Flint Youth Theatre was part of the Flint Cultural Center, and maintained a large facility on its campus, consisting of two theaters, two rehearsal studios, and was fully-staffed with production and administration personnel.
FYT served a multicultural and socioeconomically diverse community. Building and maintaining a diverse and supportive work environment wherein the community could see themselves reflected on stage, on the creative team, and in administration, was critical to the theatre’s mission and my commitment to social equity.
The organization has since undergone a major mission realignment and rebranded as Flint Repertory Theatre. The Drama School was spun off, joined the Flint School of Performing Arts, and assumed the “Flint Youth Theatre” name.
Productions shown here are The Most (Blank) City in America, The Miracle Worker, Pinocchio, The Diary of Anne Frank, Bloom, 9 x Nourished, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Building Bridges program was conceived in 2012 as a way to connect Flint Youth Theatre's socially-conscious programming with the area young people who would be most positively affected by the work's themes.
Under this program, a community organization was identified for partnership with a MainStage production. Organizations were chosen based on thematic links between mission and production. For example, FYT partnered with Michigan School for the Deaf on our 2013 production of The Miracle Worker.
The partnership took many forms, but typically included preshow and postshow workshops designed to connect the play's content to the daily lives of students.
FYT partnered with the Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center, Boys and Girls Club of Greater Flint, Michigan School for the Deaf, Genesee County Parks, the Crim Fitness Foundation, and Raise It Up! Youth Arts and Awareness, among many others.
SummerStage
In response to a need for summer daytime activities for area youth, Flint Youth Theatre reimagined its summer show as a half-day camp experience. SummerStage produced two shows in rep. While the cast for one show was in rehearsal, the students for the other show participate in the build by working alongside the theatre's professional scenery, costumes and electrics departments. Student and professional actors working together had long been FYT's model, and this summer experience provided young people with the same chance to learn about the production aspects of theater-making.
FirstStage
The casting model for FYT's MainStage season had long been to castsstudent actors, grades seven and up, to work alongside adult professionals. As a result of this age range, the material chosen for this season tended to be plays best suited for older children and teens, as well as the general public. In order to reach out to the younger children in the area, we established the FirstStage series. These plays are targeted for children ages three and up, and are meant to serve as an introduction to live theatre.
