I believe the classroom is a powerful stage for change. It is a place of interactivity, where identities and ideologies meet. It is a world of aesthetics and embodiment and feeling and politics. It is a space for dreaming — becoming.

As an educator, I care about my students and their successes. I am sincerely interested in students as citizens of the world, and as change-makers within their communities.

I teach courses in storytelling, directing, performing culture and identity, performance and social change, queer performance, performance art, writing as performance, performance criticism, and research methods.

Performance courses allow for students to use their voices and their bodies as instruments for learning. Across my curriculum, students are encouraged to speak from their personal experiences — often about (the intersectionality of) race, gender, and sexuality — as they begin to understand their everyday identities through and as performance. Much like theatre’s origins, we model how to “be” in community, and in dialogue through artistry, as we work through the complexities of the human experience together. The knowledge that students add to this conversation is what keeps me inspired. Each and every one of us is a teacher.

My passion as a performance educator lies in performance’s efficacy and power to shift awareness and perspective. Whether instructing students in directing, performance ethnography, performance of autobiography, street performance, or performative writing, key to my pedagogy is how the act of performance can lead to real-world change.

Students in my classroom learn how to trust themselves and their capabilities. It is a gift to watch students grow as critical thinkers and practitioners with courage and heart.