RECENT WORK
Twelfth Night
Ophelia's Jump Productions, 2021
Sontag Greek Theatre
This production of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare was the re-opening show for Ophelia's Jump Productions' of its annual Midsummer Shakespeare Festival, after having been shuttered for over a year due to COVID. As such, I wanted to embrace lighter themes and a general feeling of celebration for what it means to share space and revel in live performance with others. Performed in the outdoor Sontag Greek Theatre at Pomona College, this version of Illyria was meant to be a vibrant Queer wonderland, where repression eventually dissolves in the face of unbridled chaotic love in its many forms. Fabian, Feste, and the Sea Captain were combined into one character - a genderfluid long lost sibling to Olivia whose spirit and talents shepherd both the characters and the audience through Illyria.
The OJP Wordplay Festival
Ophelia's Jump Productions, 2020
Online One Act Play Festival
Dark Decisions at Dagger Crag by Ted Puffer (Featured Above)
Homegirls by Julia Stier (View Here)
Her Blankety Blank Life by Elizabeth Jouvenat (View Here)
It Ain't Over 'Til the Pink Lady Sings by Allison Fradkin (View Here)
DM-Tervention by Samantha Finken (View Here)
Like many theatre companies in the world during quarantine, we struggled with having our doors closed for a significant period of time with seemingly no end in sight. And just like many other companies, we began very quickly to put on live readings and events over Zoom and other platforms to try and keep spirits and work going. We realized that we had a good opportunity to take some time to showcase and workshop short new works by local playwrights in a medium that, while not our forte, could allow us to have some fun learning new skills and giving our audiences something a little different to break up their week. So, we produced the Wordplay Festival - four nights featuring different works each evening, pre-recorded but streamed live on Twitch with a live chat and host to discuss the works and create virtual space for audience feedback.
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I directed five of these one acts, and learned a bit of Premiere Pro along the way which has also been a valuable skill. DM-Tervention and Homegirls featured student actors from Cal State University San Bernardino , and DM-Tervention also featured a script written by a ninth grade student as part of an educational outreach we did for local schools. It Ain't Over 'Til the Pink Lady Sings, was also chosen to play at the Triangle Rainbow Online Theatre Festival in 2021.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Ophelia's Jump Productions, 2019
Sontag Greek Theatre
Pericles presents many interesting challenges in its staging as an epic tale of not just the Prince's adventures, but also the trials endured by his daughter, Marina, which take up the majority of the latter acts of the play. To help our modern audience engage with this work that is not as often produced in our Southern Californian area, I decided to stage the production in the style of an irreverent pantomime musical - what I referred to as a bed time story for adults. I chose to eschew the panto tradition of parodies of pop songs, and instead enlisted the talented work of composer Benet Braun to put together a lively score (complete with a number for a dancing horse). Pantomime also allowed us to play with traditional archetypes and gender presentation within the piece, which is something I usually tend to make malleable in my work, as I believe wherever possible that we need to show audiences that good performance is not necessarily bound by binary restrictions we place on characters or each other in daily life.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Book by John Cameron Mitchell, Music by Stephen Trask
Ophelia's Jump Productions, 2019
OJP Studio
No play has been as influential to me as a young Queer theatre kid growing up than Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It presents a playground for not only gender expression and sexuality, but also of what the capability of live theatre can be when given the space to break traditional format and demand a dialogue with its audience. Producing a rock show in our 49 seat studio offered thrilling opportunities for this concept. I worked with our scenic designer to create the remnants of a set for a production of Mother courage, complete with a wagon that could be stripped apart into a merchandise platform , as well as a bombed out wall that provided some cozy housing for our drummer. The Brechtian influence was further played on with a salvaged overhead projector used by Yitzhak to display titles and drawings in real time to chapter Hedwig's life, along with clashing zine style projections done by Sheila Malone. Hedwig breaks herself down much in the same way she breaks down everything around her, only to reveal at the end a bare space and blank canvas ready to be born anew.