Dramaturgy
I specialize in new play dramaturgy and development and love working with emerging playwrights. I am also equipped to provide dramaturgical support for existing plays and have experience curating and coordinating festivals.
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Braided Sorrow
by Marisela Treviño Orta
Dir. Natalie Villamonte Zito
University of Iowa
From the director: In the Mexican border city of Juárez, Alma has newly arrived to take a job in an American-owned factory in order to help her family survive by sending money back to her parents and helping to provide for her brother and pregnant sister-in-law. At sixteen years old, Alma is shocked by the dangers of the city–the femicides and disappearances–lurking outside the factory’s walls, until she is visited by La Llorona. In Marisela Treviño Orta’s (MFA '18) poetic Braided Sorrow, Alma is set on a treacherous journey calling on her bravery to end the unnatural nightmares of Juárez.
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Queer Horror Festival
Founder and Coordinator
University of Iowa
In the fall of 2021, I co-founded, curated, and coordinated the University of Iowa Queer Horror Festival. The festival showcased five short pieces, written, directed, and designed by queer artists in the undergraduate community. Each piece explored a unique facet of queerness and it's intersection with the horror genre on stage.
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Press: Things to Do in Iowa City this Weekend Include Queer Horror Festival
UI Theatre Celebrates LGBTQ+ Identities with Queer Horror Festival
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The Switch
by Charlie O'Leary
Dir. Ivey Lowe
All Out Arts Fresh Fruit Festival
From the playwright: A podcast within a radio-play within a . . . The Switch is a work of fiction set within a virtual broadcast studio. An analysis of "Freaky Friday" leads to a blurred continuity between caller and host, redefining submission and dominance in an electronic era.
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"The Switch is a work of fiction inspired by the writing of Steve Almond, John Paul Brammer, Daniel M. Lavery, Dan Savage, and Cheryl Strayed; as well as by Sarah Lunnie’s 2016 Salon piece “Maybe the word ‘rapist’ is a problem,” Susan Choi’s novel Trust Exercise, Davey Wreden’s game The Beginner’s Guide - and of course, Freaky Friday."
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Dramaturgical work on this project included script development work, directorial support, and some production and design tasks.
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Essential Workers: A Portrait
by Various
Dir. Alan MacVey
University of Iowa
From the director: Essential Workers: A Portrait brings to the screen seven individuals – a doctor, a firefighter, a truck driver, a teacher, and three more – to help us appreciate why they are, indeed, essential. Over the course of seven episodes we will talk with each of them, watch as their portraits are drawn, and see a series of short plays that illuminate something special about the person and the work they do.
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Dramaturgical work on this project included collaboration with several playwrights in the process of creating new short plays, as well as editing work to develop clean cuts of interviews with various guest speakers.
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Press: Essential Workers: A Portrait Honors Those Who are Needed Most
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Losing Faith
by Rachel Wade
Dir. Rachel Wade
Dramaturg
University of Iowa
From the playwright: Losing Faith follows former best friends Liz, an accomplished musician, and Grace, a hopeful youth group leader, who have lost touch after Liz's strange disappearance ten years prior. Amid coping with the past and present, these now strangers navigate how to rebuild a relationship as secrets about the past are revealed, and a fundamental difference in religious beliefs becomes too hard to ignore. In challenging each other, they are forced to face trauma caused by the church while also asking themselves... is it really so bad to believe in something?
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Mortal Kombat 3
by Dakota Parobek
Dir. Luke White
Iowa New Play Festival Reading
From the playwright: Following the production of of the film adaptation of the ultra-violent video game franchise, the characters of Mortal Kombat™ must reckon with the impending fate of a doomed sequel. Through humor, sorrow, music, and video, Mortal Kombat 3 investigates the coercive power of nostalgia.
**Reading cancelled due to COVID-19
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