Hometown: Brookings, SD
Education: Brookings High, Cherubs camp at Northwestern, BFA in Acting from the U of MN/ Guthrie Theater program in Minneapolis, MFA in Directing from Columbia, starting arts 'businesses' and seeing the different ways they succeed and fall apart
Favorite Credits: Vestige, Paper Plane (with 3 Sticks); Misanthrope, or the Impossible Lovers, A Wintertime Tale (with Vintage Theater Collective of Chicago); The Wild Plan - a national tour in a minivan, like a rock band, of backyards and beaches with three plays lit by sunsets and bonfires
Tell us about Bread Arts Collective: This one is based on the simple and not-simple bonds of friendship. We want to 1. Do Good Work (all meanings of 'good' please; all kinds of arts and works please), 2. With people we love (people! connection! invitation!), and 3. Make some dough (literally, we'll give you bread we baked - figuratively, we aim to compensate ourselves appropriately for our creative contributions).
Tell us about Rise and Fall: There's a difference between a fable and at parable. Fables tend towards clear readings, 'morals to the story' - but parables act like riddles, holding both secrets and open interpretations. My favorite parable-makers are Yeshua of Nazareth (a Jewish fellow also known as 'Jesus') and that troublemaker/innovator/provocateur Bertolt Brecht. Rise & Fall is a brilliant, raucous Brechtian parable, translated and transformed from a three hour opera to a whole new beast, a punkplay partyshow.
Why Rise and Fall now?: It invites you to laugh and play along while looking at the violences that live in the heart of a capitalist philosophy. It makes joy while dealing with pain. It does parable work of being open to different ways to see it. Yes! A comedy that doesn't end in a wedding no sir.
What is it like to be a part of Rise and Fall and Bread Arts Collective?: Exciting, powerful, open, creative, uncertain, wild, subversive.
Why should we come see Rise and Fall?: Shh, it's a secret, but if you come and have a good time, you can come back and see it for free if you bring a friend. It's a punkpartyplay in a sexy LES bar, a place to meet sexycool people, a good naughty date, a new way to look at a theater experience, a place to eat tasty bread...