About John

I direct in the theatre because I believe that the stage best allows examination of the world we share. As a citizen, I believe that the primary solution to societal problems is to increase the empathy we have for each other. As an artist, I believe that no experience teaches empathy more than seeing theatre. Theatre asks us to imagine what it is to be someone else; in the imagining, we learn to empathize. It is my artistic mission to make theatre that inspires empathy by modeling it.

I am driven to make theatre where there was no theatre before. I enjoy making theatre with new theatre artists, whether they are kids, teenagers, artists from other disciplines, or adults who don’t consider themselves artists. I like making theatre with playwrights, actors and designers in spaces that are not theaters. And I tend to turn extant theaters into immersive performance spaces.

More than anything else, I make queer theater. I am inspired by the queer revolutionaries who came before me, and I seek with every play I direct to either illuminate queer history or demand social justice and equality in our world today.

I am a proud descendant of the industrial mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Today, I live in Brooklyn, NY. In fall of 2024, after seven years at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, I begin a new position as Assistant Professor of Theater at Drew University in Madison, NJ.