I’ve been performing on stage since the age of 6, first in community theater then with my Broadway debut in an 80s-movie-to-musical adaptation at age 11. At 13 I was asked to resign from the national touring production of that same show. I'd grown too many inches and my boy soprano voice had cracked. This was not an easy thing for a 13 year old to understand, but I loved being on stage and couldn't imagine giving up there. I continued performing and training through high school and earned a BFA in Musical Theater from the University of Cincinnati (CCM).
In the first twelve years after graduating, I appeared in some more Broadway shows (Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, Groundhog Day, Matilda, Doctor Zhivago, Wicked, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Grease), at some Off-Broadway theaters (Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage), and at a handful of regional theaters.
In the midst of all of that, I came to realize that all was not well with me. There was an old ache I had grown so used to that I hadn’t considered what it might need to be assuaged. So I took some unusual acting classes, found a couple teachers I trusted, and ultimately began to make my own small theatrical vignettes in a solitary work studio. I developed a solo performance practice through making these vignettes and started performing a full length solo piece in that same work studio for audiences of two, The Study (2016-present).
Not long after beginning that performance, I had a somewhat odd idea. I had been studying Ancient Greek on my own as a hobby for nearly a decade and after memorizing the first ten lines of Homer's Odyssey in Greek, I was so stunned by how the language sounded that I decided I would learn the whole poem and make a durational solo performance around reciting the original text. In order to help achieve this, I went back to school and earned a Graduate Certificate in Classics from Columbia University. I also decided that I would create small, site-specific performances around individual books of the poem with an eye to stringing them together into longer and larger performances until I can string the whole thing together into one massive 24-hour performance. So far I have completed performances for books 1 (2020, 2022-present) and 2 (2021, Present). Work on book 3 is in progress, and we will continue from there until we get to book 24.
I love being on stage. It is where I feel most at home. There is obviously a lot ahead of me, but nothing makes me more excited than climbing through this text and letting it pass through me in my own teeny tiny corner of history.
I hope you'll come along on the trip sometime.
In the first twelve years after graduating, I appeared in some more Broadway shows (Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, Groundhog Day, Matilda, Doctor Zhivago, Wicked, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Grease), at some Off-Broadway theaters (Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage), and at a handful of regional theaters.
In the midst of all of that, I came to realize that all was not well with me. There was an old ache I had grown so used to that I hadn’t considered what it might need to be assuaged. So I took some unusual acting classes, found a couple teachers I trusted, and ultimately began to make my own small theatrical vignettes in a solitary work studio. I developed a solo performance practice through making these vignettes and started performing a full length solo piece in that same work studio for audiences of two, The Study (2016-present).
Not long after beginning that performance, I had a somewhat odd idea. I had been studying Ancient Greek on my own as a hobby for nearly a decade and after memorizing the first ten lines of Homer's Odyssey in Greek, I was so stunned by how the language sounded that I decided I would learn the whole poem and make a durational solo performance around reciting the original text. In order to help achieve this, I went back to school and earned a Graduate Certificate in Classics from Columbia University. I also decided that I would create small, site-specific performances around individual books of the poem with an eye to stringing them together into longer and larger performances until I can string the whole thing together into one massive 24-hour performance. So far I have completed performances for books 1 (2020, 2022-present) and 2 (2021, Present). Work on book 3 is in progress, and we will continue from there until we get to book 24.
I love being on stage. It is where I feel most at home. There is obviously a lot ahead of me, but nothing makes me more excited than climbing through this text and letting it pass through me in my own teeny tiny corner of history.
I hope you'll come along on the trip sometime.