Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Class of 2020

These were the most challenging years of my artistic life by a landslide. The standard of excellence expected across the board at Brown/Trinity Rep was—in my experience—often unattainable.

However, I believe this was by design. As an actor, your job is to deliver the fullest, most honest expression of imaginary circumstances in each given moment. Brown/Trinity taught me that this kind of acting -- professional acting where you deliver what you need to deliver, on time, regardless of your personal situation -- requires self-awareness, focus, flexibility, and a secret ingredient—an internal switch you flip so you can just keep going.

I had to flip this switch in every production while earning my Master’s: Marie Antoinette, A Christmas Carol, The Turn of the Screw, She Kills Monsters, Saltfish, Commedia de las Equivocaciones, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Five Ways In, and A Seat at the Table).

I also took part in a fair amount of strange (and informative) art. Highlights include:

1) My portrayal as the Swan in Elizabeth Egloff’s play of the same name: I entered from the B/T lunch room refrigerator (ass naked), downed a quart of milk, vomited said milk, and then honked and flapped my arms as I humped a chair for the next few minutes.

2) Playing a Jordan-Peterson-Kermit-the-Frog Trash Monster from a garbage can, wearing a literal trash bag jumper I fashioned together 10 minutes prior to curtain.

3) Screaming/singing Dear Evan Hansen in the studio stairwell like no one was watching.

In my time at B/T I also wrote two fun, feature-length screenplays, neither of which will see the light of day until I finish some light enormous edits. My first follows a group of misfit Bay Area high schoolers as they uncover the newly-hired school counselor’s plot to mind-control the student body in an effort to create the safest most progressive school in California. My second screenplay doesn’t even have a damn elevator pitch so come back when I’ve figured that out please and thank you!

I couldn’t have more gratitude for my teachers and mentors and friends during this challenging time. I would like particularly to thank my mentor Brian McEleney. I have never had the fortune of learning from a man so single-mindedly driven to guide me as an artist with such generosity, dedication, and love. Over the last three years, he and my teachers taught me many important lessons — all of which can be applied in life as well as art — not the least of which being: When adversity strikes onstage, be it a complete blunder, a missed line, or a particularly powerful and terrifying emotion bubbling up from my gut, stop, breathe, feel your feet on the floor, be there, and take a step forward. Everything else is just dressing.