Teaching
Peer Review | Sample Class Evaluations | Workshop
As a theatre educator, I feel uniquely situated to engage students in socially important discourse through the vehicle of drama, and provide students the opportunity to exercise their imagination, empathy, and critical outlooks through discussion and role play. I believe the theatre, through its reflection and dynamism, provides students tools for dismantling dominant ideology and thus the imagining of a more just and equal world.
My performance classroom is a student-centered, with a focus on community, rigor, and workshop, modeled after my own conservatory Tisch/RADA training. I integrate intensive script-analysis, physical theatre, Stella Adler methodology, as well as Linklater and various improvisational techniques, and emphasize circumstance, imagination, and collaboration in my teaching. I provide a safe space for risk-taking and workshop, and provide detailed feedback based in class community exchange. Students consistently demonstrate a high level of performance characterized by precision and integrity through this structure.
I believe in the innate artistic ability and joy of imaginative play theatre allows; at the end of each semester, students overwhelmingly thank me for providing an environment in which they were able to recognize and gain ownership of their personal strengths. I was particularly touched by a student who emailed me unexpectedly to share: “I feel like this acting class is my only weekly dose of humanity,” describing herself as “a lot more positive and present,” and thanking me “for the impetus,” while another student described me as “one of their most caring professors at Penn.” Over the years, student evaluations consistently describe me as passionate, detailed, and understanding.
Peer review, such as Dr. Lisa Grunberger’s recent class observation of my guest workshop describes my teaching style as “excellent,” “knowledgeable,” and “sensitive,” while Dr. Alex Randall at the University of the Virgin Islands described my teaching for the acting classroom as “engaged,” “effective,” and “astonishing.”
I have experience teaching, leading workshops, and designing theatre curriculum for the University of Colorado, the University of the Virgin Islands, the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Penn State University, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Pomona College, as well as leading Master Class acting workshops for ATHE, and am qualified to teach a wide range of introductory and specialized coursework in performance and theatre.