Baker Artist Portfolios

Tessara Morgan Farley is a theater director, producer, and stage manager originally from Minnesota, now based in Baltimore. The worlds she is interested in building onstage are remarkably uncanny. They are familiar enough to recognize and yet strange enough to leave room in them for an audience to see themselves without being told how. Her work is entertaining and grounded in strong storytelling and theatrical craft, resisting the urge towards the overly cerebral or high-concept. What she's after, ultimately, is reconnection. Reconnecting to the body, to feeling, and to the experience of being human.

All of Morgan Farley's work is highly metatheatrical. She is not interested in tricking an audience into believing they are watching real life. She wants them aware of the performance and swept away by it at the same time, where theater is at its most magical. She's especially drawn to plays involving animals, puppetry, or stage blood, elements that are visceral and tangible even as they pull an audience into shared make believe. Theater asks audiences to lean in, to fill in the gaps themselves, which is what makes live performance so personal.

Tessara fell in love with theater as a child, at productions so magical she remembers them not from her seat but as though she were onstage inside them, and she cried and clung to her parents rather than leave. She's still, in a sense, trying to recreate that feeling, to be swept away.

Tessara holds a BFA in Theater from Cornell College, with a minor in Studio Arts. Since relocating to Baltimore in 2027, she has worked with the Acme Corporation, Single Carrot Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Silver Spring Stage, Baltimore Rock Opera Society, The Strand, Submersive Productions, and others. She currently serves as the Director of Production at The Voxel, and is the Co-Founder of Truepenny Projects, an independent Baltimore-based arts organization.