UT-Austin | Playwriting I
(Instructor of Record)
An undergraduate seminar that explores the fundamentals of playwriting. Students analyze the craft techniques of a diverse body of playwrights—on the page as well as the stage—and embark on their own experiments with these tools as they develop a working draft of a one-act play.
UT-Austin | The Performance of Prayer
(Teaching Assistant)
An undergraduate lecture course designed to introduce first-year students to college-level thinking, reading and writing, as they examine prayer as a form of argumentation and public performance.
SELECTED WORKSHOPS (COLLEGE & PRE-COLLEGE)
Southwestern University | Introduction to Devised Theater
An undergraduate workshop that explores the fundamentals of devising experimental performance work. Using the framework of Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints, students delve into the incorporation of found text, abstract movement, spontaneous confessional monologue, and strategies for avoiding the performer’s trap of the neutral choice.
Brandeis University (BIMA) | Theater & Creative Writing
A collaborative workshop joining two pre-college seminars. Students try out stream-of- consciousness writing, confessional monologue, and two-person scenes, with a focus on using character objectives, turns, and subtext as generative strategies.
UT-Austin | Fundamentals of Acting for Non-Majors
An undergraduate workshop series focused on the fundamentals of acting, improv, and scene study. Students rehearse story-driven, two-person scenes, apply traditional acting techniques to non-linear texts, and participate in the development of an avant-garde performance piece.
SELECTED COURSES (SUMMER INTENSIVES & AFTERSCHOOL)
Columbia University/Harlem Children’s Zone | The TV Writer’s Room
A pre-college seminar that covers the fundamentals of TV writing. Students generate ideas for original scenes through collective brainstorm sessions modeled on real-world TV writer’s rooms, then launch into the development of their own show concepts and write key scenes for their own pilot.
Harlem Children’s Zone | Collaborative Screenwriting I &II (Horror)
An afterschool seminar that explores the fundamentals of screenwriting, writing as collaborative practice, and the unique tropes and creative opportunities specific to the horror genre. The class weaves the generation of an original screenplay into an in-depth study of how female and black bodies have been portrayed throughout the evolution of the genre, and how black artists have responded to these representations through their own work.
Harlem Children’s Zone | Playwriting I
An afterschool seminar that explored the fundamentals of playwriting, with a special emphasis on students putting their own work in conversation with a diverse body of contemporary American playwrights.
WE-ACTx Summer Youth Program | Devising Theater: Production Lab
A production lab in which students apply the performance techniques they’ve explored in voice, movement, acting, improv and collaboration classes to the creation of an original, ensemble-generated performance piece. A description of pieces created between 2009-2013 can be found here. (Teaching conducted in French, Kinyarwanda and English.)
WE-ACTx Summer Youth Program | Performance as Collaborative Practice
A summer intensive course that explores different strategies for generating original performance as an ensemble. Students try out a wide range of techniques for unearthing personally resonant theatrical material through participating in other people’s experiments and inviting them into their own. The course also pushes student to deepen the skills required to play multiple creative roles within a project, and to make decisions collectively. (Teaching conducted in French, Kinyarwanda and English.)
WE-ACTx Summer Youth Program | Voice & Movement
A summer intensive course focused on liberating the actor’s natural voice from habits of self-censorship and physical tension, connecting breath and emotion with bodily impulse and sound, and promoting vocal and physical ease, expressivity and power. Special attention is given to developing a deeper kinesthetic awareness through close listening to each other’s communication of boundaries through non-verbal cues. (Teaching conducted in French, Kinyarwanda and English.)
WE-ACTx Summer Youth Program | Drama-based Pedagogy
A summer intensive course that introduces young educators to drama-based pedagogy: a collection of teaching tools geared to help students deepen their creative thinking and problem-solving skills through kinesthetic, play-based interactive learning. Participants explore how to use games, music, image work and more to engage students with different learning styles, create a mutually supportive classroom community, and transform interpersonal conflicts into opportunities for growth. (Teaching conducted in French, Kinyarwanda and English.)
Community~Word Project | Photography & the Graphic Novel
A yearlong arts residency, taught in collaboration with a visual artist and classroom teacher. Students in 7thand 8thgrade classrooms study the fundamentals of graphic novel writing and illustration, as well as photography. Each class then works together to brainstorm, storyboard, draft and revise an original graphic novel, and bring the story to life visually through a blend of drawings and photographs.
Community~Word Project | Poetry & Mixed Media
A semester-long arts residency, taught in collaboration with a visual artist and classroom teacher. Students in 1stand 2ndgrade explore poetic devices such as sensory detail, anaphora, and associative logic and experiment with juxtaposing a wide variety of textures and materials into the same piece of two-dimensional visual art. (Classroom included English Language Learners and Students with Special Needs.)