WHO I AM
Cowgirl-booted, nature sitter, glitter advocate, gentle risk taker
I am a writer, actor, director, theatre-maker-- any multi hyphenate you choose, as long as it keeps me in rehearsal rooms. I grew up in South Carolina and will always be proud to be a southern girl, showing the world there are rhythms and joys you'd never expect sewn into the South's complexities. I landed in Washington, DC by accident, and have been happily growing roots in DC's unexpectedly potent theatrical ecosystem.
As a creator, I aim to make theatre in which the audience-work relationship is unique and vital to each piece, and in which the audience can be made active but not performative.
I like to look at the creation of work as a comprehensive practice of making, one that is experimental and form-twisting and joyful in process as well as performance. I like finding layers of meaning and unexpected pairings that fuse psychological exploration, historical understanding, and pop culture references, like Prufrock’s isolation paired with Cardi B, or luxurious French dining rituals set atop of human swamps. I explore how internal life interacts with the outer world. I don’t usually go in for simplicity.
When the world is exploding with its own chaos, how can artistic work do any less? So I make broad use of spectacle, love the deliciousness and tangibility of objects. I love characters that exist between real and imagined worlds, and finding what their language sounds like. I try to map the way an emotion feels in words, to express the thoughts that are always inexpressible.
I want to push the boundaries of how we all think about this art form: how we use it, how we engage with it, how we enjoy it, and how we open it up to the world. How can we work with our artists, our audiences, and our arts workers to create new systems of being with each other?
I am also just a person-- who loves the changing of seasons, hot cheetos and birthday parties.
I graduated from the College of Charleston in 2017 with a BA in Theatre, and went on to train at The Gaiety School of Acting's full-time professional actor training course in Dublin, Ireland. I am a co-founder of iiiSTATES Collective, an international theatre-making organization.
I wrote, produced, and performed my original work, Cove Creek Boys and Summer Girls, at the Scene and Heard Festival in Dublin in 2020. My short plays, Homing and For How Janelle Monáe Once Made Me Feel were published by Fishamble, an Olivier award-winning theatre company in Ireland, as part of their Tiny Plays 2020, and For How Janelle Monáe Once Made Me Feel went on to be produced as part of their Tiny Plays 24/7. I have had multiple works produced at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, and collaborated with Rorschach Theatre in DC to produce my short play, The New American Cookbook, and to workshop my full length play, Waiting for Iggy Pop. I was a member of Rhizome DC's Community Supported Art program, for which I created a plantable native seed script, and I am a current member of Sisters Freehold's Horticulture Playwriting Cohort in Baltimore, Maryland.
I participated in The Orchard Project’s inaugural Liveness Lab in 2020, focusing on analog performance methods and theoretical practice. Through this program, I developed The Love Letter Project, a mail-based theatrical experience, alongside my Irish collaborators.
I was a recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission Project Support Grant in 2020, The Franklin B. Ashley Playwriting Award, and The Clarence Award for the Arts at College of Charleston.