Directing

My primary interest as a director, writer, and sound designer is the exploration of ambiguous worlds and liminal spaces; of people and characters struggling to navigate a life in which there are no final answers, only provisional moments of grace. While I often gravitate toward works on the avant-garde, experimental, and formalist end of the spectrum (playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Mac Wellman, Charles Mee, and Suzan-Lori Parks, along with the legacy of the historical avant-garde, Butoh dance, and contemporary companies like Punchdrunk and the Siti Company), such worlds, spaces, and moments are also found in a variety of styles and genres, including the plays of Euripides, Shakespeare, Lorraine Hansberry, Eugene O’Neal, and even in popular musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Pippen, or In the Heights.

Indeed, while ambiguity and liminality may seem inherently solemn, they do not have to be. Faced with an increasingly fractured political and ideological world, not to mention the environmental precipice we are currently teetering upon, I increasingly seek to create works that offer an opportunity for hope, wonder, and joy. This does not preclude my staging or writing darker plays, but it does mean that I refuse to accept violence, the grotesque, or the tragic as the only paths to the sublime.

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"The Sandalwood Box" by Mac Wellman

University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre Lab Series

Direction & Sound Design: Peter Wood
Lighting Design: JC Bardzill

Starring: Laura Carney, Shannon Knapp,
Laura Gray, Trishelle Duke, Ashley Matter,

Mizi Samuels-Waithe, Claire Sabatine, Jason Whiting