I am a recent resident member of Playmakers Repertory Company (2021-2024). In my time as a company member, I performed in eleven mainstage productions, four studio projects, and one touring production. I taught four semesters of “Acting for the Non-Major” and was awarded the Samuel Seldon Memorial Award.

In my teaching, I believe a students’ greatest asset lies in their ability to stay curious. Without curiosity, complacency sets in, and the markers of progress begin to flatline. A great educator tends to this curiosity, stoking it like a fire. In my mind, the most essential role of the teacher is to facilitate students’ inherent curiosities, and so I endeavor to meet the needs of each individual student. It is imperative to cultivate a safe space in which students can dare to fail. In the classroom, we are always in process. Acting is not a perfect science; therefore, the training requires a great deal of trial and error.

Over the years, as a graduate teaching assistant at UNC Chapel Hill, and now as an adjunct at VCU, this principle has been foundational to my success. If the artistic space invests in product, rather than process, the actor will work from a place of fear. Fear prevents the actor from engaging their impulses, and so the work is controlled. Control equates to tension, and tension is the killer of presence