Multiple Locations (The Adams Theater shown here)
Lighting and Set Design
Written and Performed by Matthew Cumbie and Tom Truss
Directed by Rudy Ramirez
Projection Design by Roma Flowers
ReWritten is a dance-theatre hybrid project exploring the personal and professional relationship between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The piece was conceived in 2019 by Tom Truss, a Berkshire-area choreographer, director and composer, and Matthew Cumbie, a then-Washington DC-based choreographer and dancer now at Colby College. The team includes a diverse group of artists and academics from around the country, and I have served as the set and lighting designer on the project since its inception. Aspects of this project include the design and construction of mid-19th Century inspired furniture, two distinct iterations of the set design, and lighting designs executed in locations as diverse as a dance theatre in Washington DC to Herman Melville’s barn in Pittsfield. In its most recent iteration, I also served as Producer when MOSAIC presented the work at The Adams Theater in July, 2023.
Photos by Shirin Kazimov
MOSAIC
Producer, Lighting Designer
DIZZY SPELLZ, an interdisciplinary work conceived and created by Sean Jones and Brinae Ali, offers an Afro Futuristic look at the intersecting cultural and spiritual dilemmas within the African diaspora through the music of Dizzy Gillespie.
The work, currently in concert form, fuses elements of jazz, tap, Hip Hop, and Bebop to articulate the social vernacular language of the African American experience. Mr. Jones and Ms. Ali are partnering with me to add design and staging elements, in order to grow it into a more theatrical experience. The new iteration of the piece is currently scheduled for November 2024, and will presented alongside a companion Afro Futurist art exhibit in MOSAIC’s Gallery 51.
MOSAIC & MCLA Theatre
Producer, Director
Book & Lyrics by Rudy Ramirez
Music by Ammon Taylor
Designed by Michaela Petrovich
What does it take to be The Most Dangerous Woman in America? Emma Goldman knows. An activist and an organizer, a lover and a radical, Emma Goldman found anarchism as a teenager in the 1880s and lived her life by its ideals, fighting for freedom, beauty and equality against the forces of capitalism and the US government. Now, deported to the newly created Soviet Union, Emma is closer to the world she dreamed than ever before, but it will take all she's learned to keep it from turning into a nightmare.
Conceived and written by MOSAIC Benedetti Fellow, Rudy Ramirez, a workshop performance of Act 1 is scheduled for April 2024.
Austin Arts Center @ Trinity College
Lighting Design
Written by Cesar Alvarez
Direction: Michelle Ong-Hendricks
Music Direction: Lisa Williams
Set & Costume Design: Calypso Michelet
MOSAIC, Venable Theatre
Producer
As part of expanding MOSAIC’s performing arts presence, I presented internationally-renowned jazz saxophonist and vocalist, Grace Kelly, in a concert in Venable Theatre. The project was a collaboration with the Berkshires Jazz Society and performed to a near-capacity crowd on June 15, 2023. Ms. Kelly is a Korean-American musician with ties to the area, and her inclusion in MOSAIC’s summer programming aligned with our presentation of The Celestials and WANG Chen’s Gallery 51 exhibit, forming a triptych offering of arts experiences focusing on the Asian diaspora and the Berkshires.
Trinity College Dance
Lighting Design
Choreography & Production Design by Deborah Goffe
Offertory is a companion piece to Ms. Goffe’s longer form work, Liturgy/Order/Bridge, a participatory dance ritual that fuses sacred traditions and secular performance modalities to make porous the border between “audience” and “performance.” In Offertory, this exploration is recast for two dancers in an undergraduate college setting.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Venable Theatre
Lighting Design
Adaptation by Rachel Carson
Direction: Rudy Ramirez, MOSAIC Benedetti Resident
Set Design: Calypso Michelet
Costume Design: Michaela Petrovich
MOSAIC & MASS MoCA
Co-producer, Performer
Written by Peter Glazer
The Celestials, a new play by Peter Glazer, tells the largely unknown-but-true story of Chinese immigrants who came to North Adams for work in 1870. The play is based on the historical novel that tells this story, written by Williams College faculty member Karen Shephard. Over its multi-year development, I represented MCLA in a co-sponsorship of the project with MASS MoCA and Williams College, providing resources and guidance to the director during casting, and ultimately signed on to play one of the leading roles. Over the next two years I continued both to serve as a coordinator and supporter of the project and as a performer when the project was in residence at MASS MoCA. When the pandemic curtailed plans for a final performance, I sponsored a partnership between the director and MCLA’s video production personnel to create an online documentary of the project. The project culminated in a final staged reading at MASS MoCA in June 2023, for which I once again performed and also served as co-producer.
