I strive to enhance the storyteller's unique voice in service of creating the clearest and most intellectually stimulating, emotionally impactful, and entertaining treatment of the core themes possible.
The act of developing a new play is asking questions as we work to unearth the biggest idea toward the exploration of which everything functions. The art of developing a new play is keeping at it until I've asked the right question in the right way that ignites the burning ember at the center of the play. I bring to bear rigorous curiosity, facile adaptability, strong textual acuity, acute critical faculty, and the ability to approach a project from a multiplicity of perspectives simultaneously: director, writer, producer, actor, and audience member. I approach the work as the storyteller's sounding board and fellow traveler. I bring a spirit of adventure and love for each and every journey, and I invest--fully.
The new play narrative from the producing perspective is one of risk. I remain skeptical of the universality with which the viewpoint is applied; despite our assumptions as practitioners, how many average regional theater audience members apart from the core subscriber loyalists would be able to name even one of the plays of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, or Eugene O'Neill (if they were even able to identify them as playwrights if asked out of context)? Average modern audience members choose a play for the story, not for the name below the title; to most, every play is a new play. But the narrative of new play risk remains nonetheless the narrative, and given that new plays are the lifeblood of the form and the industry, it is a narrative upon the defeat of which our survival depends. And if we are to defeat it, we must strive to fill our contemporary canon with plays so strongly crafted, so arresting in their ideas, so potent in the emotions that they invoke, so unique in their viewpoints, so vibrant in their theatricality, and so completely and universally human--in a word, so inescapably and compellingly entertaining--that the audience cannot pass them by.
When I begin a journey on a new play, that's the destination toward which I'm working. Every time.
LORT B OR EQUIVALENT
THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE by Andrew Bovell (2019)
ONE HOUSE OVER by Catherine Trieschmann (2018)
Edgerton Foundation New Play Award
THREE LITTLE WORDS by Joanna Murray-Smith (2017)
AMERICAN SONG by Joanna Murray-Smith (2016)
Edgerton Foundation New Play Award
FIVE PRESIDENTS by Rick Cleveland (2015)
Closed as best-selling world premiere in the history of Milwaukee Repertory Theater
LORT D
THE NOT-SO-ACCIDENTAL CONVICTION OF ELEVEN MILWAUKEE "ANARCHISTS" by Martin Zimmerman (TBD)
GRANDMA'S EMPANADAS by KJ Sanchez (TBD)
HOOTENANNY by David Lutken (TBD)
MARK TWAIN'S RIVER OF SONG by Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman (2019)
THE CHINESE LADY by Lloyd Suh (2019)
SONGS FOR NOBODIES by Joanna Murray-Smith (2018)
SIRENS OF SONG conceived by Kevin Ramsey; text by Pearl Ramsey and Kevin Ramsey (2016)
BACK HOME AGAIN by Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman (2015)
Closed as top-ten best-selling production in the history of Milwaukee Repertory Theater's Stackner Cabaret
THE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC ALL AROUND US by Stephen Wade (2015)
AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO by A. Rey Pamatmat (2014)
ATCA Steinberg Award Finalist
LIBERACE! by Brent Hazelton (2010, 2014)
2014 remount closed as best-selling production in the history of Milwaukee Repertory Theater's Stackner Cabaret
TYA
SLAMMED by Kelby Siddons (2010)
D'TENSION by Laura Lynn McDonald (2009)
TWENTY FEET TALL by John Van Slyke (2008)
ONE-ACT AND TEN-MINUTE
ONE FOR THE CHIPPER by Adam Seidel (2012)
SUMMER DAYS by Gregory Lewinski (2008)