“If I could go back in time and give myself a message, it would be to reiterate that my value as an artist doesn’t come from how much I create. I think that mindset is yoked to capitalism. Being an artist is about how and why you touch people’s lives, even if it’s one person, even if that’s yourself, in the process of art-making.” – Amanda Gorman
Hello Freehold Family! I’ve been invited to share news of my upcoming projects and classes, so here we go. It starts with an intensive directing class I’m taking with Karen Kohlhaas of the Atlantic Theater Company. This directing class has been taught only in NYC, so I’m lucky to be able to take it online and “meet” six other directors from as far North as Toronto and as far south as Sydney, and work with actors who are equally spread throughout the globe. I plan to put these new skills to work this summer when directing a sci-fi audio play with Book-It Repertory Theater entitled Zen and the Art of an Android Beatdown.
I am also working on an exciting actor-related app with fellow Freehold instructor Alyssa Keene, which we plan to launch in September. Details to come!
Lastly, I’ve been commissioned by Taproot Theater to write *Sankofa – The Power of Three which will be staged (live!) in April 2022. Our process in *Sankofa involves leading the remarkable people I am interviewing through intriguing, challenging, truth-seeking exercises — the same kinds of exercises I will be teaching this summer in “Tell the T!” If you’ve read Stanislavsky, you know that truthful acting is the highest of goals, but getting there can be a bit of a mystery. The fun-yet-practical exercises we will be doing in Tell the T are designed to help you access your truths so that you may learn and create from them as a writer and/or performer, and also as a human being. I hope you’ll join me.
*“Sankofa” is a Ghanaian word which means to “retrieve” and is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” or “Sankofa w’onkyir” which translates as: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”
