Professional Staged Readings

A significant part of my directing practice is developing new work and excavating older, rarely-seen material of value to the field. On both ends of this scale, staged readings are a vehicle to bring the work to an audience. Representative examples of professional staged readings below include seminal and new work, which occurred both in highly public festivals and in-house, invite-only events.

Mabou Mines 50th Anniversary Celebration

In 2022, I adapted two of JoAnne Akalaitis’ masterworks for the Mabou Mines 50th Anniversary Celebration at Performance Space NY: Dressed Like an Egg and Dead End Kids. To (re)introduce these seminal works to a contemporary audience, I brought together an intergenerational group of actors to perform the plays, intentionally mixing high school and college students who were meeting the work for the first time with professional actors, including Mabou Mines’ original performers Greg Mehrten and Ellen McElduff.

A review of the event highlighted this choice, noting “…this segment of the festival reflected additional hallmarks of Mabou Mines: collective creation, cross-pollination with other companies, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and cultivation of younger artists.” (Don Shewey, Mabou Mines Looks Back on Half a Century of Looking Forward. American Theater Magazine, June 28, 2022.

Fornés Marathon

In 2018, I directed What of the Night? (excerpts) as part of the Fornés Marathon at the Public Theater, NYC. My cast included Broadway star Michael Cerveris, Pulitzer Prize winner Heidi Schreck, noted performers MaYaa Boateng and Vanessa Aspillaga, TV and film actors Carlos Albán and Teddy Cañez, and downtown legends Joan Macintosh and David Greenspan. Please see my Fornés Legacy Overview for a description of my producing work on the marathon.

Select cast from What of the Night? Pictured L-R: Joan Macintosh, MaYaa Boateng, Carlo Albán, Teddy Cañez, Vanessa Aspillaga. Not pictured: Michael Cerveris, David Greenspan, Heidi Schreck, Flora Diaz, Hannah Mitchell. Photo credit: Johnny Moreno

Pen World Voices International New Play Festival

In 2017, I was invited to direct a staged reading of SHIT by Patricia Cornelius for the annual Pen World Voices International New Play Festival, taking place at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the City University of New York. In 2019, Cornelius won the Windham-Campbell Playwriting Prize from Yale University, where I reprised my direction of SHIT for her award ceremony.

Actors Shelly Fort, Britt Faulkner, and Elise de Breton in Shit, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, City University of New York.

Video

SHIT staged reading (performance begins @ 5 min)

  • 00 .00.00 Introduction by curator Frank Hentschker

  • 00.05.00 Performance

  • 00.56.35 Discussion moderated by Peter Eckersall

Town Hall by Caridad Svich

In 2017, I worked with playwright and Obie Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Caridad Svich on developing her play Town Hall at The Lark Theater in New York City. There, it received a NoPassport workshop as part of the Lark’s PlaySpace program, with dramaturgy by Zac Kline. 

Svich and I discussed the work in two online publications: The Lark blog salon “Stages of Resistance” (now Theatre Times) and HowlRound Theatre Commons. Svich subsequently describes my role in developing the play in the IATC journal Critical Stages/ Scènes critiques.

Presence in the Field

Published Conversations

PresS