Hometown: Greenwich, CT
Education: University of Notre Dame, 2015
Favorite Credits:God of Carnage (director), The Demise of the Downtown Bar Scene (director, co-writer), Servant of Two Masters (actor, Truffaldino)
Why theater?: It’s humbling. It always reminds me that a person responds best to another person, not to an idea.
Tell us about SHE:SHE is about the personal highs you can reach with someone you’re close with, and the total mystery when that’s all gone three seconds later.
What inspired you to direct SHE?: SHE is an immediate piece of theatre, in every sense. From its dialogue to its story and definitely to its setting (four bathrooms, each different yet very much the same), SHE starts strong and moves forward at a clip. Simply enough, Renée’s writing is deliberate. She doesn’t throw curveballs, and that is what inspired me. The challenge of directing a piece that doesn’t allow for wandering was scary but exciting. And the first step was setting our production site-specifically in an actual high school bathroom. The setting itself has served as inspiration for me; when you make a choice like that, the production needs to justify it. I think we’re doing that and much more.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: I love all kinds of theatre, but sparse plays really speak to me. The sort of plays – or books, comics, paintings, whatever actually – that give just barely enough for me to start mentally sprinting with ideas.
If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: There’s no big name that I want to say. Just the next person that’d be excited to teach me. That person, and my friends that I really want to collaborate with but haven’t yet.
What show have you recommended to your friends?: It just closed, but 10 out of 12 at Soho Rep. In fact, this might coincide a bit with the sort of theatre that speaks to me. I wouldn’t call the play sparse, but it felt like it created lots of outlines and left them for me to fill in.
Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?: Joey Tribianni. It’d be called Joey’s Joey.
If you could go back in time and see any play or musical you missed, what would it be?: Is it fair to say I feel like I’m already about to miss Hamilton?
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?: I’ve got two. 1) The *budduhbudduhbahTINGgggg* when the word “Scandal” appears during at the start of the TV show "Scandal" and 2) jokes about "Scandal" in 2015.
If you weren’t working in theater, you would be _____?: Hopefully becoming a schoolteacher. Probably high school but maybe junior high. I’d be an English teacher and my lesson plans would include as many movies as possible.
What’s up next?: I’m psyched to work more with my Open Booth Theatre co-founders on our coming projects, which we’ll be very excited to share in the near future. And beyond that, Renée [Roden, writer of SHE,] and I are developing a podcast series. It's somewhere between infancy and toddlerhood right now, but we know for sure that it'll be about WiFi passwords and the guilt of accidentally destroying a close stranger's refrigerator magnet.
For more on Open Booth Theatre, visit http://www.openbooththeatre.com/