Director

Hack

By: Jordyn Stoessel
SheNYC Arts at The Connelly Theatre | August 2022

Hack is the story of a young woman who achieves YouTube stardom after her “What I Eat in a Day” video goes viral. As a budding, unqualified wellness vlogger, she is sponsored by a fasting clinic to embark on a month-long supervised water fast. A play that explores themes of disordered eating and America’s obsession with diet culture, Hack is a shitshow that throat-chops the modern influencer.

A Mouthful Of Birds

By: Caryl Churchill & David Lan
“Jewels Three” Miller Studio, Boston University | May 2019

Through mediums of dance, poetry, and spectacle, the play follows the journey of seven individuals through what Churchill calls “an undefended day” where the air outside of ourselves is as violent as our inner state. Adapted from The Bacchae by Euripides, Mouthful of Birds throws ancient dichotomies of Dionysian volatility and Apollonian rigidity into our modern world and unearths gristly questions about human nature and desire. Much like The Bacchae, the play demands an internal balance between morality and primality—else, we risk a descent into violent madness and a soul either unbridled entirely, or stifled and snuffed out.

Cast:
Julian Shapiro-Barnum, Hannah Bebe, Kendra Jain, Maggie Markham, Jackie Collet, Sam Theobald, Ryan Gold, Deanna Drennen, Tatiana Jackson, Oreine Robinson, Aida Neitenbach

Creative Team:
Movement Direction: Maggie Markham; Stage Management: Emma Cavage; Assistant State Management: Rachel Hoy; Scenic design: Danielle DeLaFuente; Sound Design: Jennie Gorn; Costume Design: Francesca Padilla; Assistant Costume Design: Danielle Bazan; Lighting Design: Jonas Hayes and Angus Goodearl; Dramaturg: Emma Roth

26 Pebbles

by: Eric Ulloa
“Jewels two” Miller Studio, Boston University | August 2018

There’s incomprehensible grief that beats in the heart of this play and the question it begs feels impossible to answer. How does a town move on from the senseless murder of twenty elementary schoolers? Is healing possible when the wound has been ripped so wide?

Constructed from interviews with families and community members of Sandy Hook, Connecticut, 26 Pebbles is a play about a town racked by tragedy and how they rebuilt their world after the shooting in 2012. The play works to dim the lights on the sensational, redirect the media spotlight, and truly see the overwhelming power of love and community. In the words of one of the six-year-old survivors of the attack, “Every day there are shadows, but every day there is also light too.”

Cast:
Oreine Robertson
Alex Hatcher
Dillon McGuire
Aida Neitenbach
Sarah Hirsch
Lucy Rydell

The Great God Pan

By: Amy Herzog
“Jewels Two” Miller Studio, Boston University | December 2017

Can a memory be truly forgotten and then remembered? Can a false memory be suggested and then remembered as true? As an inherently difficult field to study and measure, the science and psychology around memory remains inconclusive at best. Several prominent theories of posttraumatic stress disorder posit that dissociation from a traumatic experience can result in insufficient encoding of a memory--the memory is not forgotten but rather never created in the first place. This then begs the question: if a memory has never existed for an individual, does the trauma still exist? Then to further complicate the puzzle, how does accountability of the perpetrator come into play? How can something like this be handled in a legal sense when the key witness has never had a memory of the event happening?

Herzog takes up these questions and breathes them to life in Jamie. As he reaches for concrete answers to an unanswerable question, we are forced to wonder if he would have been better off simply being left in the dark. How does our perception of ourselves change based on a label of “victim” or “survivor”--and if you don’t remember it in the first place, does it even matter to begin with?

Our Country’s Good

By: Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed By: Judy Braha
Boston University Studio One Mainstage | December 2018

Cast:
Conrad Sunqvist-Olmos
Jack Lavey
Kendra Jain
Sarah Hirsch
Ransom Silliman
Christian Scales
Savannah Jooste
Claudia Watanabe
Julian Majerico
Chris Rielly
Aida Neitenbach