Performing
Performance has been the center of my professional life for more than two decades and the context through which many of my most enduring scholarly questions first emerged. Across Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, television, and film, I have interpreted new works, revisited classic texts, originated roles, and collaborated with artists across a wide range of institutional and creative contexts. Over time, I came to understand that interpretation extends far beyond the performance itself. It is shaped by rehearsal, collaboration, leadership, and the structures that surround the creative process. These experiences required far more than technical skill. They demanded sustained artistic responsiveness: the ability to interpret complex material, adapt to evolving rehearsal processes, collaborate across disciplines, and remain fully present under the ongoing demands of performance. A comprehensive record of this work is included in my Curriculum Vitae. [See Appendix: Acting Resume]
As my performance career evolved, I began to notice that my attention was increasingly drawn not only to the work being created on stage, but to the conditions under which that work was being created. I found myself observing rehearsal structures, communication patterns, leadership practices, and the subtle ways different environments shaped performers' experiences. These observations accumulated over years of professional practice, long before I began my EdD program. What my doctoral education offered was not the observations themselves, but the methodological framework to investigate them systematically.
This line of inquiry became most visible during my independent study with Professor Joe Salvatore, How Structure and Framing Within Rehearsal and Performance Processes Shape Performer Experience, completed during the Off-Broadway run of Bigfoot: The Musical at Manhattan Theatre Club in early 2026. The study employed arts-based research, reflexive self-study, and embodied observation to examine how rehearsal structures, communication systems, and production conditions influenced performer experience in real time. Because I occupied the dual role of performer and researcher, the production itself became both the site of artistic practice and the site of inquiry. Rather than observing performance from outside the process, I investigated it from within, using my embodied participation as a source of knowledge. [See Appendix: ABR Independent Study]
This experience fundamentally shaped the direction of my emerging scholarship. It reinforced that the questions most central to my research cannot be separated from the realities of artistic practice. The rehearsal room is not simply where performance is produced. It is where relationships are negotiated, identities are shaped, systems of care become visible, and institutional values are enacted. My ongoing work seeks to understand those processes not from a distance, but through sustained engagement with the lived experience of artists.
Performance represents more than professional accomplishment within this portfolio. It is the practice through which my research questions continue to emerge, evolve, and remain accountable to the realities of the field.