The stories we tell -- and the stories we don’t tell -- shape our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. Through my work as an artist, consultant, and researcher, I am driven by my curiosity for the way we perform our identities out in the world, and how we perform in our civic discourse. I invite people into imaginative spaces that can make the seemingly impossible, possible. I create opportunities for people to connect across the lines that divide us. The practices I draw on are oral history, Theatre of Oppressed, cultural organizing, and arts-based pedagogy and practice.
As an artist, I make theater and live art that invites people to investigate the places we live in. I create living history projects to develop forums where people reflect, connect and mobilize across social and economic divides. My theater practice incorporates storytelling (physical and verbal), and methods from architecture and urban planning. The theater I make often combines fact, fiction, and real people's stories, and my usual collaborators are people that do not ordinarily identify as artists.
As a consultant, I use creative play and popular education processes to make inaccessible civic processes more transparent, equitable, and fun. I enjoy the challenge of creating democratic space to host complex conversations, enabling group deliberation and encouraging intergenerational dialogue.
As a researcher, I explore the centrality of aesthetics to navigating complex social issues. Blending my training as a theater artist and urban planner, an ongoing focus is the integration of arts and culture into the way our cities are shaped, preserved and resourced. I specialize in qualitative research, performed ethnography, oral history, and creative practice.
In every endeavor, I am working toward a future where 1) Creativity is part of our social fabric; 2) Our public spaces and physical infrastructure invite belonging; and 3) The criminal-punishment system is destabilized through an ethic of love and the rigor of transformative justice.