Projects

PAINTINGS 

I started painting with watercolors in 2021 as a way to cope with my caregiver / pandemic burnout. Here’s how I do it: when I’m feeling big feelings, I write a question or statement that’s in my mind on the bottom of a sheet of paper, then tape the sides. I get out the paints and spread it all out on the living room table, and whenever I have a minute, as I’m walking by, I’ll add a little here and there, until the painting tells me it’s done. Then sometimes I write what I see in the painting.

BLACKOUT POETRY

I am making blackout poems from books I loved as a child. Particularly books I now have more complicated feelings about. This is a book I kept from childhood, from an author whose estate is active in promoting his legacy. I don’t know what to do with this book — I still love it, and I have questions about it, I don’t want to pass it along without those questions. For me, making blackout poems out of these books is how I ask those questions.

SOLO PERFORMANCES

Do You Believe in Magic: A series of performance experiments, rituals and spells

January 2017 @ Fertile Ground Festival

“Think Samuel Beckett meets Mr. Rogers meets Dear Sugar.” – Portland Mercury

This experiment picked up where my “weirdly cathartic” solo performance (I Hate Positive Thinking) left off: diving deep into the question of whether magic is real and if so, can we make it happen onstage. Not hokey parlor tricks magic. Real, witchy, hair-raising magic, using a makeshift altar, a magic carpet, a microphone and a DigiTech JamMan looping pedal.

I HATE POSITIVE THINKING: a manifesto against self-fascism

BUY TICKETS

“I HATE POSITIVE THINKING combined all the best elements of performance art, stand-up, and improv into one completely absurd, disarmingly poignant meditation.” – The Portland Mercury

FURY Factory Festival (San Francisco), June 2016
SXSW Interactive (Austin, TX), March 2016
Fertile Ground Festival (Portland), January 2016
Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), July 2015
NW New Works (Seattle), June 2015

I created this performance with barely any rehearsal time and an 18-month-old underfoot, an experiment in embracing failure, writing a show based on thoughts I had in the shower, and following my strong feelings about positive thinking to their roots. Over the year I spent creating and performing the show, I practiced moving into coaching by making a show in which I pretend to be a coach. By the end of the year, I wasn’t pretending anymore.

Undine: a fairy tale song cycle

“An irresistible seduction of flesh, electronica, song, and violence… truly a remarkable, viscerally nightmarish journey.” – Followspot

Theatre Off Jackson (Seattle), January 2010
Ontological Incubator (NYC), August 2009
CounterPulse (San Francisco), June 2009
Conduit Dance (Portland), February 2009

I created this solo performance about a fairy tale book I loved a child, the story of the unlucky water sprite Undine, who is beautiful and kind of creepy. A creature who was born in water and raised on land, who falls in love with a human but does not really understand humans, who feels powerless but wields terrible power. I wrote and adapted songs, performed with looping pedals, and worked with musicians and designers to create the in-between shadow world where this creature lives.