Baker Artist Portfolios

From an undergrad fascination with English ritual street theater and Peter Brooks’ THE EMPTY SPACE, through my years in Washington crewing with Peter Sellars’ American National Theater, then as one of the first sound designers on the mid-Atlantic theater scene, to my 27 years in Baltimore, I’ve been interested in theater “in the wild.”  I’ve pursued theater that lives in the interstices of commercial, academic, and regional theater spaces. In this, I have leveraged an outsider point-of-view and emerging technology to create new possibilities for performance in the 21st Century. Of late, I’ve been focusing on creating original music for the stage, while expanding my work as a video, sound and lighting designer and performer.

As the nation was gripped by COVID-19 in early 2020, I found a new focus: finding the ways we can keep theater alive and well, even under conditions of severe isolation and lockdown. Working on “ad hoc” on line performances, and helping venues re-open their doors to limited audiences has reaffirmed my commitment to nuts-and-bolts infra-structure—the armature of community, technology and skill that undergirds theater. Crossing the line between “crew member” and “designer” to keep at least three venues alive and well in the Pandemic Age is as important as anything I’ve done under the rubric of “artist.”