Artist Statement
I believe in the question, “Why are we doing this play here and now?” as an essential cornerstone of any theater-making process. I am interested in how stories that are frequently told and re-told may shape civic and community life. In moments when our community experiences intractability, viciousness, or despair, how can our narratives be re-framed or expanded to support movement, dialogue, and vitality?
As a theater director - as well as a community-based artist, educator, writer, and nurturer of artist communities - I am interested in work that maintains a neo-utopian vision, encouraging us to be romantic about the future, not the past.
I find inspiration in the epic and democratic theater of the Greeks, Shakespeare, and Brecht, in the joyful labor of developing and championing new work for the stage, in community-based performance traditions, in artists and organizations that put collaborations with audiences at the center of their work. I’m interested in making and witnessing creative events that ask artists and audiences to take inventory of our cultural assumptions (about power, privilege, class, race, gender, sexuality, ability), to consider the nature of our participation and complicity in historical and contemporary acts of violence, as well in movements toward a more just, more peaceful, more loving world.
Part of my desire as a theater maker is to participate in a necessary theater – one that we feel we must experience in order to make sense of our lives. I am committed to collaboration and interdisciplinarity because it seems to me that necessary experiences are not generated by one person alone, and do not often fit neatly into the proverbial black box. I am indebted to and inspired by organizations that cross genre boundaries as part of a larger mission to bring people together in dialogue: the performance space/restaurant/ bookstore Busboys and Poets in DC, Appalachia’s Roadside Theater and New Orleans’ Junebug Productions, who believe in the power of stories to bring us into thoughtful relationships with ourselves and others, or The Point in the South Bronx, which puts the performing arts at the center of a multi-faceted asset-based community development effort. I’ve been lucky enough to work very closely with two such organizations, The Providence Black Repertory Company and The 52nd Street Project.
Finally, as an Armenian-Jewish Woman, with 20th century genocides on both sides of my heritage, I am aware of the human tragedies that repeat throughout history and geography – tyranny, ideologies of supremacy, the abuse of power, the use of fear to prevent unity and to marginalize movements towards creativity and humanity. When these forces encourage us to view others with suspicion and hostility, I believe that a performance represents a space where we – artists, audiences, citizens – may come together to practice curiosity, compassion, and generosity towards other human beings.
As a theater director - as well as a community-based artist, educator, writer, and nurturer of artist communities - I am interested in work that maintains a neo-utopian vision, encouraging us to be romantic about the future, not the past.
I find inspiration in the epic and democratic theater of the Greeks, Shakespeare, and Brecht, in the joyful labor of developing and championing new work for the stage, in community-based performance traditions, in artists and organizations that put collaborations with audiences at the center of their work. I’m interested in making and witnessing creative events that ask artists and audiences to take inventory of our cultural assumptions (about power, privilege, class, race, gender, sexuality, ability), to consider the nature of our participation and complicity in historical and contemporary acts of violence, as well in movements toward a more just, more peaceful, more loving world.
Part of my desire as a theater maker is to participate in a necessary theater – one that we feel we must experience in order to make sense of our lives. I am committed to collaboration and interdisciplinarity because it seems to me that necessary experiences are not generated by one person alone, and do not often fit neatly into the proverbial black box. I am indebted to and inspired by organizations that cross genre boundaries as part of a larger mission to bring people together in dialogue: the performance space/restaurant/ bookstore Busboys and Poets in DC, Appalachia’s Roadside Theater and New Orleans’ Junebug Productions, who believe in the power of stories to bring us into thoughtful relationships with ourselves and others, or The Point in the South Bronx, which puts the performing arts at the center of a multi-faceted asset-based community development effort. I’ve been lucky enough to work very closely with two such organizations, The Providence Black Repertory Company and The 52nd Street Project.
Finally, as an Armenian-Jewish Woman, with 20th century genocides on both sides of my heritage, I am aware of the human tragedies that repeat throughout history and geography – tyranny, ideologies of supremacy, the abuse of power, the use of fear to prevent unity and to marginalize movements towards creativity and humanity. When these forces encourage us to view others with suspicion and hostility, I believe that a performance represents a space where we – artists, audiences, citizens – may come together to practice curiosity, compassion, and generosity towards other human beings.
