“We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.”
| George Saunders
A tight-knit pack of nerds tour the competitive air guitar circuit from bar to dingy bar across America in Chelsea Marcantel’s Airness. Along the way they meet Nina, new to the art form and harboring a secret. They introduce her to a subculture that drinks from the chalice of Rock. Transcending the silly, the mundane, and the actual guitars, truth is revealed in a realm of loud, unbridled, face-melting self-actualization most only dream of: the realm of airness. A site-specific production by UIUC’s Illinois Theatre at the City Center in Champaign.
A love letter to our nonrenewable resources with poetry, live painting, dance, theatre, science, improv, music, and games with food and drinks sourced from local farmers and small businesses. I created and organized this all-day, outdoor arts event as a gift from the Principia College Theatre Department to the community for Earth Day.
A scene from Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother for Illinois Theatre’s Great Scenes from American Kitchen Sink Theatre - a live, masked, in-person theatre offering during the pandemic. A mother and daughter making cocoa one night at either the beginning or the end.
A mid-pandemic production of Chelsea Marcantel’s Airness that rocked Principia College.
These two great actors wanted to do John Logan’s Red, and I was fortunate enough to direct it. Passing through a pristine Modern Art gallery, the audience enters Rothko’s studio where he and his assistant paint the Seagram Murals and challenge each other about the creation, nature, and purpose of art.