Services
I offer creative consultancy curated to your specific needs:
ART + ARTIST COHORT SUPPORT
As an artistic director and theatre dramaturg, I have worked with hundreds of emerging, mid-career and established authors to focus and uplift inquiry and suggest collaborations that nourish the writing and rehearsal process, always inspired by questions initiated by the artists themselves.
Pedagogy is never academic or hierarchal, but professional and peer generated. The success of a residency is reflected in each artist being able to access their most courageous artist selves.
Impact is also measured when new work finds its future audiences. Both the individual artist's needs and the collective needs of the community must be carefully balanced.
RETREAT PLANNING, CREATION & OVERSIGHT
As a curator and creative leader of artist workshops and conversations over decades with writers, composers, choreographers, performers, musicians, and composers, I bring experience in selecting and supervising artistic residency communities, and focus on admissions processes, and the peer panels who will evaluation submissions. I also advise and curate shorter-term convenings, and lead conversations that focus on a range of issue specific to making new work.
The engineering of effective admissions panels, of broad scope, is at the heart of curation - identifying the contingent of artists and positioning them to achieve their individual goals.
As importantly I design ways for diverse individuals to come together as a vibrant and dynamic community which aims to deepen the role of artist within a community - sometimes as activist, or change-maker, or global citizen.
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT & INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
At Sundance Institute, I expanded what was a strong U.S. program into a dynamic cross-cultural one, coimagined and co-led by artists from a range of participating countries, moving through monumental changes.
I initiated residency labs for artists representing five countries in East Africa, and seven countries in the Levant and North Africa, across multiple languages, to enrich exchange among U.S. artists and artists from diverse cultures.
Now that I reside in Europe full time, I have access to a rich tapestry of cultural artists including newcomer artists who are powerfully influencing contemporary creation across borders.
DRAMATURGY
Creative and effective dramaturgy is a rare, delicate relationship, nurtured over time and with trust. My Individual work with playwrights is about relationship and deep listening.
The art of storytelling takes time and patience and when solicited and well-intentioned, feedback is the ability to understand the 'animating impulse' born from a writer's intention as well as their methods of revision.
Relevant inquiry uplifts the heart of smart dramaturgy, and this is primarily about eliciting questions from the artist themselves about their work. Only then can a productive conversation meaningfully influence an author's rewriting and reimagining process. For me, seeing the larger arc of an artist's career is germane, and a devotion to the body of work that a particular artist has and will create must serve as a touchstone.
