Artistic Director Portfolio
This page, best viewed on a desktop or laptop, offers a focused look at my work as an arts leader, producer, and educator. It is organized around the areas most relevant to the Artistic Director role at NMSA: institutional leadership, direction, film production/management, and community engagement. You may click on images for additional context, and links to external resources are provided throughout. To learn more about my work as an artist and an educator, I invite you to visit my actor, director, and educator pages on this website.
Institutional Leadership
New Mexico School for the Arts - Theatre Department Chair
Since July 2025, I have served as Theatre Department Chair at the New Mexico School for the Arts, a public pre-professional arts high school in Santa Fe. NMSA is unique in New Mexico — a tuition-free charter school offering rigorous arts mastery training to students from across the state, where the expectation is not just participation, but professional preparation.
In my first year, I led a two-phased restructuring of the Theatre Department's curriculum. The first phase rebuilt the department's scope and sequence from the ground up, creating a rigorous scaffolding that moves students from theatre fundamentals through culminating creative work. The second phase adapted that sequence to NMSA's semester system, bringing the department into alignment with the rest of the school (effective Fall 2026). I recruit, supervise, and evaluate faculty; manage the departmental budget; and help coordinate school-wide initiatives including ArtSpring, our annual student showcase, and ArtReach, our statewide recruitment and outreach program.
In less than a year, the results have been tangible. Students are consistently engaged and on task in both rehearsal and classroom settings — a cultural shift that reflects the department's new sense of purpose and direction. Most significantly, I spearheaded a Documentary Theatre production developed through verbatim theatre techniques, engaging members of the Santa Fe community around issues of homelessness. The response has been remarkable: community organizations have reached out asking us to present the piece for their audiences. It is exactly the kind of work a pre-professional arts school should be doing — rigorous, relevant, and rooted in the community it serves.
I hold myself accountable for whether students leave NMSA genuinely competitive in the field, with the materials, the experience, and the self-knowledge to present themselves to higher education and the profession with confidence. To learn more about NMSA Theatre Department's new scope and sequence, please click here.
New Canon Theatre Co. - Founding Artistic Director
I founded New Canon Theatre Co. in Monterey, California in 2022 with a mission to stage daring re-imaginings of the classical and contemporary canons and to produce diverse new works that foster empathy and broaden our collective cultural understanding. In three seasons, the company has grown from a founding vision performing Shakespeare in non-traditional spaces into Monterey County's award-winning professional theatre company — earning Best Local Theatre Production honors in 2023 for Much Ado About Nothing and in 2024 for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.
Building NCTC has meant doing every part of the job: defining the artistic vision, managing budgets and contributed revenue campaigns, writing grants, cultivating donors, hiring and supervising artists and production staff, and producing over a dozen productions spanning reimagined Shakespeare to world premieres. The company operates under an AEA letter of agreement and is a proud member of the SDC.
Central to the company's identity is the New Canon Theatre Lab, dedicated to developing and premiering new works by emerging and established writers. Launched in 2023 with the world premiere of C. Wright’s Finding Chase, The Lab reflects a conviction I carry into my educational work as well: that new voices deserve institutional support, and that an arts organization's responsibility to its community extends beyond what it puts on stage. You may click on each image to see more about each production.
Much Ado About Nothing, 2023 Photo: Glen McDowell
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, 2024 Photo: Manny Espinoza
Finding Chase, 2023 Photo: Glen McDowell
Directing — Selected Productions
I am, above all, an actor's director — because I am an actor first. My training is the foundation of how I work in the rehearsal room: I speak the language of the actor, I understand the vulnerability of the process, and I know what it feels like to be on the other side of the table. That experience shapes everything about how I lead a production. My approach is collaborative and ensemble-driven, rooted in the conviction that the best work happens when every person in the room — cast, crew, and creative team — understands why the story matters and feels ownership over how it is told. I have directed classical theatre, contemporary drama, musical theatre, and new works across regional, academic, and professional contexts.
The Tragedy of Hamlet — New Canon Theatre Co., 2024
A modern-dress production that foregrounded the political machinery of the play – surveillance, loyalty, and the cost of inaction – while celebrating the actor’s process. This “trunk show” was produced in an immersive staging at Blue Fox Cellars, Carmel Valley, with a professional ensemble. Photo: Glen McDowell
Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play — The Western Stage, 2021
Anne Washburn's genre-defying meditation on myth, memory, and survival. Produced with an integrated professional and student cast at one of the Central Coast's oldest professional theatres. A production that asked serious questions about what stories we carry forward when everything else is gone. Photo: Richard Green
Macbeth — New Canon Theatre Co., 2022
NCTC's founding production. Set in a sparse, contemporary world, this Macbeth stripped the play to its psychological core — ambition, guilt, and the violence of unchecked power. Staged with a company of eight actors who never left the stage, it established the company's identity as one unafraid to confront and subvert difficult material.
The Miracle Worker — The Western Stage, 2019
A production that sits close to my work as an educator — the story of a young person discovering her voice through the relentless patience of a dedicated teacher. Directed with an integrated professional and student cast, it remains one of the most personally meaningful productions of my career.
Film Production and Management
As with my work at New Canon Theatre Co., my work in the independent film space has given me a deep understanding of what it means to build and sustain an arts organization — not just artistically, but operationally and financially. My background in film production is where much of that training happened.
From 2010 to 2015, I served as Managing Producing Partner at FallBack Plan Productions in Los Angeles, where I co-managed the full arc of independent film production — development, financing, production, and distribution. The company produced several award-winning feature films, including Absentia (2011, E One/Intrepid Pictures) and Oculus (2013, Blumhouse/Intrepid Pictures), both directed by Mike Flanagan.
I am currently the founder of Undiscovered Country Productions, a Santa Fe-based film company dedicated to telling the stories only New Mexico can tell, with a focus on local artists, talent, and crews. Two feature projects are in active development. You can find more about my film credits here.
Community Engagement
Arts leadership doesn't stop at the institution's door. I serve on the Advisory Board of LiveArts! Santa Fe, where I work alongside fellow artists, educators, and organizers to expand access to live performance across our city and state.
At New Canon Theatre Co., I have cultivated partnerships that reflect the company's commitment to equity and community — including collaborations with the Monterey Symphony, I Cantori di Carmel, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, BLAAC (Black Leaders and Allies Collaborative), Monterey Bay Pride, and the NAACP, as well as local restaurants, wineries, and businesses throughout the Monterey region. These relationships have shaped how I think about what an arts organization owes its community.
At NMSA, I have worked to build the kind of external relationships that connect students to the professional world while they are still in school. In my first year, I brought in partners including Santa Fe Playhouse, New Mexico Actors Lab, Theatre Lovers Club, and casting directors from Netflix to work directly with our students. I have continued a longstanding relationship with Creede Repertory Theatre in southern Colorado, and have re-opened conversations with Northern New Mexico College around future academic collaborations.
I am committed to supporting and strengthening ArtReach's existing work — building on the relationships it has already established with rural communities and underserved populations across New Mexico, so that more students and families understand that NMSA was built for them, too.