I teach techniques for crafting vibrant and repeatable performances on stage and screen. Students acquire disciplined tools for planting their focus on the tangible environment which allows their work to remain ever present and spontaneous, even as it is repeated. I've trained extensively with Anne Bogart and The SITI Company and Jeanine Thompson has been my mentor in Movement and Intimacy Choreography. Much of my teaching and performance philosophies are rooted in Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Intimacy Choreography.  

Viewpoints requires a rigor of attention; to notice and catalogue how the environment and others in it affect our being. If we wish to utilize this simplistic vocabulary as directors and actors, we must have the discipline to remain present and curious, not only in our theatre making, but in our everyday lives.

Suzuki training puts the actor through impossibly intense choreography to measure focus, vocal and physical ability. Tadashi Suzuki uses the metaphor of a curved line approaching a straight line; the two will never meet, though they get incrementally closer. Through this demanding structure of forms, the actor discovers their innate animal instinct. 

As an Intimacy Director, I offer shared vocabulary and tools to the cast and crew on consent and methods of equalizing power dynamics. With that fundamental base, the actors, director, and I craft intimate/vulnerable moments together by rooting in the physical. My job is to continually ask: if the text were removed, would the audience encounter the same story?

I teach adult classes in Viewpoints, Voice & Movement, and Acting at The Chicago Actors Studio. At the university level, I have taught semester length courses on Acting, Stanislavsky, Stage Combat, Viewpoints and Suzuki. I am an Artistic Associate with Playmakers Laboratory where I teach Creative Writing and Performance to elementary students in the Chicago area. The student-written stories are then adapted into plays, which are performed by professional actors for the student body, and later for the public at large.