Having started my career as an actress, I worked in theatres across the nation with directors such as Anne Bogart, Andrei Serban, Anthony Zerbe and Joe Bologna and actors including Josh Brolin,  Ed Harris, James Cromwell and Cherry Jones. Because of such a broad exposure, my approach to performance has always been eclectic and a mix of methodologies. Working in front of the camera with actors including William H. Macy,  Matthew Fox and Tyne Daly was where I learned about intimacy, specificity and patience. 

At this point in my career I define myself as a theatre artist and still enjoy performing. But the consciousness I bring to my performances includes an understanding of the event itself - the relationship between myself, the other artists, and the audience as a communal and valuable event. That the celebration of our humanity through shared storytelling can contribute something of worth to our society. 

I believe that my performance experience shapes my approach to directing and to creating community-engaged events. Without this background and foundation I would be a different type of artist. 

Count Down, by Dominique Cieri is a play I was grateful to bring to Baltimore. Produced at the Strand, the production was a potent example of the commitment of young actors to powerful, complex and challenging material. The play followed a teaching artist's experience working with damaged and endangered girls in an institution in New Jersey. It was important that the performances were honest and raw. We kept the set very simple and worked entirely on relationship and need. The text incorporated spoken word, mask work, movement and dance along with a great deal of humor and drama. I was deeply proud of this cast who respected the actual girls they were representing by wrapping everything they had into their work. The love they developed both for their characters and each other was apparent at each performance.

"An Explorer's Desire" began as a collaboration I fostered between the cities of Los Angeles and Florence, Italy. I was interested in demonstrating at that time (2012) that no one country had 'an immigration problem' and that it was imperative we begin seeing one another as members of a 'tribe of man.' This has been a driving force for me as the years have passed and this particular social issue has evolved into a global crisis. Because of this the piece, which was originally concieved as a theatrical performance, has evolved along with the societal reality to be responsive at a more deeper and activism-inspiring level. As my work with community members and young people has evolved, as my questioning of what is the relationship of theatre to its audience in our current global and national political/social climate has deepened, the piece moved from a vision of performance to involvement. I then drew on my background of Judiasm. Inspired by the Passover seder I wrote additional text, commissioned additional pieces from Baltimore writers and set the piece around a table to involve the audience. I've also made this material available to anyone who wishes to stage their own event.

My commitment to the creative process and community renewal was forced onto an online platform. The pandemic gave opportunity to explore new media and technology. During this year of isolation and political/social turmoil I was interested in seeing how I could connect and inspire people within this structure. I sought this goal through these four projects. 

As I've mentioned throughout, community engaged work has been a long-term theme for me. I am interested in how artists can consciously develop empathy through artistic engagement in society. This has been an evolving question for me. I have always been focused on multiple partnerships and collaborations - governmental, not-for-profits (non-arts), educational institutions and artists. Whenever possible, we have also sought multi-disciplinary participation while the focus of theatre, as the main approach for sharing the human narrative, lay at the center.

At this moment in my career I am focused on efforts toward the creation, production and teaching of a replicable approach which folds in the concept of the 7 elements of the Whole Artist: Curiosity (observation-research-inquiry) Passion (intimate alignment to subject matter) Sensual Development (five senses involvement) Connectivity (to others in group, those touched by subject matter, planet) Hunger (for remaining in the gray area of learning and questioning) Knowledge (socially expansive, politically questioning) Courage (facing truths learned and seeking a deeper view) These are elements of exploration I have identified necessary both for an artist to be truly open and ever-expanding and for all individuals to be able to touch into their creative selves from a place of awakening and experiential self-knowledge. At that point, an individual can participate in a creative collective in a way that leaves themselves and others enriched. The process toward community engaged art should intentionally contain and build upon these elements in order to participate in a necessary renewal of the way we live and interact together.

The following projects were some of those that formed the basis for the work of more recent years.

In Florence I met the playwright Stefano Massini who wrote A Stubborn Woman. The piece was written in chapters compiled from the writing of Anna Politkovskaya. Ms. Politkovskaya was the Russian journalist believed murdered by her own country for reporting honestly about the Chechen-Russian conflict.

Stefano's play was written in Italian and not broken into roles. I was interested in doing a bi-lingual version and having three actors represent Ms. Politkovskaya's voice with a Greek style chorus of young voices who would energetically push the moments of each piece to an emotional center and represent the generation influenced by suppressed journalistic voices. 

Since Ms. Politkovskaya was a journalist whose medium was the newspaper, we devised multiple uses for newspaper until, at the end of the performance, the show was littered with crumpled, stamped on material which held so much import for Ms. Politkovskaya that she died for it. I am also interested in the use of objects in unexpected ways, and the chairs which were on stage were utilized as cages or entrapment and to give a sense of imbalance. Water was an important theme in the writing - so this element was also incorporated from the beginning in various ways. 

Both productions - in Florence as a part of the Firenze Estate (Florence Summer) festival and the one at the Los Angeles Theatre Center - were performed bilingually with corresponding subtitles. The question we asked at both performances was why, in our democratic countries, should we be concerned with the issue of violence against journalists. Sadly that inquiry has become all to vital a question in recent years.

This production was created in Florence, Italy to celebrate the legacy of the last remaining Medici family members and gifts they left future generations of art, architecture, literature and design. The show was performed on the alter of Il Fuligno, a baroque church built in 1601. I curated the script toward a performance-worthy text and directed the show. I was interested in enveloping the audience in both the magnificence of the city's treasures as well as the personal and collective struggles of the brother and sister - Anna Maria Luisa and Gian Gastone - as they navigated an imagined last moment together. The challenge of the piece was to create an entertaining and strong human journey while sharing historic information. And to create a definitive, powerful female character. The production ran, in English, for three years with Italian touring versions throughout that time period.

When I founded The Global Theatre Project (The GTP) our inaugural event was to bring attention and activism to the plight of Belarus Free Theatre in their country. This put me in relationship with a few individuals working in that area one being Brendan McCall who initated a global event the following year - Belarus Dream Theatre. 18 theatres participated and The GTP did as well. Representing two of those 18 theatres, I simultaneously produced the events in Los Angeles and Florence (directing the one in Florence). 

At this point I had put together a committed group of artists in both cities who were motivated by the idea of working with youth and community members to bring activism to important social issues as well as stretching their own artistry. Belarus was a European dictatorship masked as a democracy where 1,000 people a year disappeared. The question of censorship was one I wanted those of us who lived in the US and Italy to contemplate. 

I brought together 80 artists and youth associates, identified various partners in both cities. In Los Angeles our artists worked with two high schools, educating them on Belarus, exploring questions of censorship and creating both their own pieces and assisting the designers on the set design. On the night of the event, the students performed in the theatre lobby and the professional artists performed on the set created by them.

In Florence, we worked with Italian and US university students creating a week-long event bringing attention to this issue in partnership with Amnesty International and the Mayor's office of Florence culminating in the final performance at Le Murate.

This piece gave me the opportunity to deepen my inquiry as a director into the relationship with the audience and the artist which was a question I had begun exploring as well as to continue to find my personal artistry in community-engaged social issue programming.

Having participated in Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologue" events for several years, I wanted The Global Theatre Project to be a part of One Billion Rising.  What I envisioned for this project deepened my community-engaged work and the multiple levels of participation and creativity I enjoy layering into such events.

This project saw over 3,000 people come to Piazza Repubblica in Florence, Italy to participate in the global effort to bring attention and an end to violence against women and girls. I brought a choreographer from the US to Florence, and in line with the approach to our community work (engaging artists with youth and community members), had her teach the movement to visiting US students as her assistant teachers. 

Communities who were trained in the flashmob dance worked for two weeks at in-person sessions and watched the online training video over 15,000 times to prepare for the event. I included street puppetry as well as spoken word and partnered with Artemisia Centro Anti-violenza to raise funds for their organization which shelters women and their children who are victims of violence. As with all community events, there were multiple partnerships. Additionally we partnered with the Robert Kennedy Center for Social Justice, the Mayor's office of the City of Florence, the US Consul General's Office, and multiple educational institutions.