Join us as we study this new musical based on the life of legendary, South African singer and activist, Miriam Makeba. Written and performed by GRAMMY-nominated music sensation Somi Kakoma, Dreaming Zenzile takes us to Makeba’s final concert where she delivers the performance of her life, raising the conscience and the consciousness of a people.

Over the course of 3-5 weeks we will read, dissect and discuss the musical, guided by ArtsEmerson’s trained teaching artists, in preparation to see the live performance at the Emerson Paramount Center. This is a great opportunity to expand your theatergoing experience while meeting new people and extending your social and cultural networks!

ArtsEmerson’s Play Reading Book Club (PRBC) is a dynamic theatre literacy and community education program that provides unique and radical access to scripts, artists, and conversations within the theatre. 

The Play of Delights opens on Thursday 1/27!

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays—some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages—that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. The Play of Delights, inspired by his book of essays, is a response, homage, and meditation on his work, created by the students in the ensemble. Combining both original student-written material and essays from the book, this play mixes comedy, physical theater, music and puppetry to explore and celebrate delight, with all its beauty and complexities

Tickets are now on sale for the Apocalypse Project at Beaver Country Day School!

On the Altierra compound in Texas, young T dreams of the internet returning so she can be a YouTuber and document her generation. When a crisis expels a group, she joins the exiles on a trek across the broken land. This group faces constant danger as they search for safe-harbor—and possibly the answer to the question of what happened—at the rumored New Eden.

​This is a play about what happens when the young are left to deal with the disasters in a world they didn’t create.

This summer, for the second year, I'm leading the Waterfront Ambassadors program with the Trustees of Reservations.  The Waterfront Ambassadors is a youth employment program based in East Boston and has a mission to engage teens on waterfront issues in and around their neighborhoods, including environmental justice, climate resiliency and public access.  You can learn more about the program here.

This summer we're reaching out to young people in East Boston to find out what activities they'd like to do at the future Piers Park III, the Trustees' newest waterfront park.  We need everyone's feedback to make sure the park reflects the needs and wants of the local community so if you're from East Boston, or have a connection to the area, please consider filling out our survey!  There's a version for youth and adults, and it's available in Spanish and English.

I'm so excited to share that Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston has chosen the Coming Together Project as a recipient for one of their inaugural Arts and Culture Community Impact grants! Coming Together is an original show that explores stories of Jewish community-building during COVID. Since January, Rebecca Powell, Jesse Garlick and I have been collaborating with a group of 5 incredible community members to support them in interviewing people in their lives and creating a show around those interviews.

I'm so proud of the work our ensemble has done and deeply grateful to CJP for supporting it so that we can do justice that work. Performances will be live streamed by our community partner Temple Israel of Boston in late May so stay tuned for more info!

I just finished directing a really fun devised show with high school students at Beaver Country Day School in Boston.  It's streaming on the school's website through the end of February 2021!  bcdschool.org/2021/02/the-nest-us-winter-play/ 

The Nest is a show made up of stories about home. And “home” is a complicated, beautiful, challenging thing, especially right now. Home means different things to different people—we wanted to make space for all of this in putting the show together. For that reason, we were loosely inspired by the structure of the radio show This American Life, which has a weekly theme and brings together different (mostly true) stories exploring that theme. The Nest follows a similar structure, and the students act as hosts, guiding the audience through the stories.

The stories in the show were created through a process called devising in which we used writing, storytelling, movement, and visual art prompts to build the script. This is a collaborative process where all students have the opportunity to be playwrights, performers and designers, and we were able to celebrate each individual’s unique skills and perspectives.

Join a supportive, virtual community of diverse Jews through a series of theater-based workshops to focus on the meaning of Jewish community, how we build it, and how it has transformed during COVID-19. In each workshop we will explore methods of telling and theatricalizing stories, including writing personal narratives, creating theater through interviews, and collaborative creation - known as devised theater.

Participants are invited to come to individual workshops or the whole series, and all workshops will be free to attend.  Artists of all levels and ages are welcome, including first time theater makers.  Co-facilitated by myself and Boston based educator and facilitator Rebecca Powell.

Dates: Wednesdays 7-9pm starting 10/28

10/28 - 1st workshop: Personal Narratives
 - Discover and craft a personal story and deliver it in its true form, workshopping the story towards becoming a monologue.

11/4 - 2nd workshop: Interview Theater Part 1*
 - Learn interview techniques and practice them with participants in the room.  Homework will be to interview someone in your life and transcribe or take notes on interview.

11/11 - 3rd Workshop: Interview Theater Part 2*
 - Bring your interview notes (homework from previous workshop) to share with the group!  Together we’ll transform them into scenes or monologues.

11/18 - 4th Workshop: Devising
 - Working as a group, we’ll develop scenes through collaborative improvisation, games, and activities.

Sign up for one or more workshops: https://forms.gle/c3wrsbFi39Y7e7B69
For more information contact: ComingTogetherStories@gmail.com

After the craziness of this summer running a virtual youth program for the Trustees of Reservations (and getting married!), I'm entering the fall with a sense of focus and readiness to face the "new normal" of our COVID-19 world head on.  What that means though as a teaching artist and theater-maker is a lot of unknowns, and a lot of making things up as I go along.  

Back in the spring, the very wise Roxie Myhrum of Puppet Showplace Theatre gave me the advice that yes, this is a crappy moment for the arts and culture sector, and some institutions are going to really struggle and maybe even fail, but our communities need us now more than ever.  She told me to make a menu of all of the things I could teach and get it out into the world, to not wait for other people to hire me, to create the opportunities I wanted for myself.  So here I am world!  Here are some of the things I can teach!  I'm ready, I'm excited and I can do all of it over Zoom,

If you like any of these workshops and want to bring one (or a few) to your organization, school, community or children's birthday party let me know!

The Arts Equity Summit is this weekend, April 24th-26th! #AES2020 is a FREE virtual summit for arts and culture workers committed to building equity. I’m proud to have helped produce it and will be leading a drop in discussion session on Sunday for students trying to learn in this crazy time.

​Registration ends Friday afternoon! https://www.artsequitysummit.org/