“A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.” -Eric Ries I’ve spent more than a decade serving disadvantaged communities as an actor, deck manager, and stage carpenter; soon, I’ll be serving additional communities pending a trip...
Several years ago, a friend asked me a very simple question that sparked several years of thought. She was mentioning how she had been dehydrated lately and needed to drink more water. I shared with her my recent discovery (shared...
I was a few months away from hitting the road for an eight-month tour when my friend Ryan invited me out for some bowling. Our group varied in experience. Having only bowled a handful of times in my life, I...
You know that nightmare in which you show up to school in your underwear? Most of us have dreamt it, but as an actor, I’ve lived it. When I started acting, I developed a belief that “right” meant something solid, the...
How do you keep that drive of yours alive amidst the monotony of daily life? You might enter adulthood all revved-up with the energy and determination of an olympic athlete, dead-set on changing the world for the better, but what keeps you from giving up...
Want to have a long, satisfying and life-changing career in theatre? It’s only going to happen if you ask yourself this one question: why theatre? Before you can figure out what’s leading your character’s actions, you have to figure out what’s...
A painting may be art, but art is not a painting. Clear as mud? Let’s look closer. Art is made up of two parts: the tool and the purpose. If you have just one or the other, it’s not art. Use...
Does our work live on after the final curtain? What remains when the show closes? I used to think working in theatre was like building the card towers I spent hours on as a kid. We devote tremendous amounts of time...
The Barter Theatre’s Mainstage production of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is a wonderfully well done and family-friendly stage version of the much-beloved novel first published in 1868. Al-though primarily written for young girls, it pushed many boundaries of the time by...
Sometimes when I explain my theories about story and how its telling sustains and nurtures society, people retort that stories don’t reflect real life–that they’re usually romanticized versions of life in which the good guys always win and the bad...
There are two categories of artists in every field of the arts. The first—well… Imagine this: At a new job, you’re handed a device that prints buttons (the pin-on kind with graphics and such) and the other workers show you how to...
I am, without hesitation, resolved to spend my life exploring story as an active element in societies and individuals and to chart its threads as they weave their way out of and back into the fabric of human existence—that of...
When you haven’t ridden a bike for a while, you begin questioning just how well you’ll remember. There’s no demo version to ease your mind. Standing there, holding the frame upright in front of you, there’s only one thing you...
This past Thanksgiving, my sister and I took a drive into town while visiting my parents in Virginia. We started plotting the Mom and Dad gifts somewhere in the discounted-fancy-things section at the back of the TJ Maxx, and I...
My first thought is that there’s no way we’re at the end of the year already. I know it’s coming because Thanksgiving is mostly digested, the real winter weather is finally settling in, weekends are spent splitting firewood with my...
Relaxation has become my new favorite challenge. A little over a week ago, I went on as the understudy to Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities at Barter. I had no rehearsal with the cast, except 30 minutes prior to...
