Statement of Commitment to Inclusion, Equity, and Anti-Racism

I believe that decolonization, anti-racism, queer liberation, and amplifying the voices of the global majority must be the bedrock of a theater curriculum. In my first five years at Skidmore College, I identified the decolonization of syllabi – i.e., a reconsideration of from where and whence knowledge is constructed that acknowledges the centuries of white supremacy that have regulated knowledge sources - as my most crucial contribution towards anti-racism and equity. Over the course of the last five years, I have evolved my syllabi to center BIPOC, female identified, and queer voices, replacing majoritarian playwrights, practitioners and theorists with the voices of women, queer people, disabled people, and people of color. Students learn directing from a primary textbook written by a woman, and all performance classes receive rigorous training in a diversity of modalities. My students graduate as ready to perform the works of Hansol Jung, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Hillary Bettis as Shakespeare, Williams, and Beckett.

To give students the opportunity to apply these skills in rehearsal, I have worked with both our season selection committee and anti-racist task force to create a departmental culture in which the plurality of the voices produced on our stages come from female, queer, and/or BIPOC people. This commitment began in 2021 with our SpringFest festival, which grew out of a collaborations class I co-taught. Working with a student selection committee, we committed to producing a festival with a minimum of 70% of voices coming from artists of color, queer artists, female artists, and disabled artists. In the year following SpringFest, I chaired our department’s season selection committee, and worked with both faculty and student directors to continue this commitment. This work is supported by my expertise as a dramaturg and a director of contemporary plays. I have trained our students in how to use resources like The National New Play Network to identify underrepresented titles to work on in class, in laboratory productions, and to consider for season programming. My active work in our industry also informs this process; it is through my industry contacts that I have facilitated campus visits from professionals like David Anzuelo and Rocío Hernandez (fight choreographers), Mia Chung (playwright), Donya K. Washington (producer) and Jose Useche and Kolton Bradley (actors) – all members of the global majority who have shared with our students their own journeys towards anti-racist theater making. 

My philosophy of teaching performance is equally rooted in two very different modalities: the psychological interiority originally taught by Stanislavski, Strasberg and Hagen but most effectively applied to our time in the work of Lloyd Richards and Augusto Boal’s forum theater/theater of the oppressed. From Stanislavski, Strasberg, Hagen and Richards, I teach students that interior investigation combines with physical and vocal technique to create truthful performance. Adding Boal’s socio-political practice then equips students to consider how their work will impact their community. Beyond these cornerstone approaches, I teach my students to create their own individual techniques that are globally sourced.

My commitment to anti-racism and equity is facilitated by the consent-based, trauma-informed practices I employ in the classroom and in rehearsal, with a recognition of the inherited trauma that people of color, queer people, differently abled-people, and other marginalized groups carry with them. In rehearsal, I employ a tap-in/tap-out approach that teaches actors to self-regulate and take responsibility for their own well-being while also giving them the space and time necessary to do that self-care. I recognize that consent takes many forms; it isn’t just related to staging sex or violence but also relates to staging other forms of difficult, potentially re-traumatizing content, and that consent can be withdrawn at any point. Beyond a safe space, I venture to make my classrooms, my studios, and my rehearsal rooms a brave space, where I empower an atmosphere of risk-taking that both pushes students past their comfort zones and remains nurturing.