Work Sample: Me, More Normal

Selected Documentation

Me, More Normal (2017, SoLow Festival and Philly Fringe Festival)

Me, More Normal was a solo show I wrote and performed, presented by my performance company, Lupine Performance Cooperative, in 2017 for that year’s SoLow and Fringe Festivals. The play included projections (John Bezark), audience participation, performance, and original video creation to explore the ableist construction of “normality,” as experienced by myself and my autistic brother. Direction by Krista Thorp.

Photos (by Dan Schultz)

Read the full Me, More Normal script here, or preview it below.

The end of the piece featured two videos: old home recordings paired with a newly filmed video. The first are clips that capture the playful relationship my brother and I maintained during our childhood, despite our neurological differences. The second was a recent attempt to recreate one of our childhood games in our adulthood: we each try to be the “last one” to eat our dessert, in an effort to make the other jealous. We try all manner of tricks to get the other to eat their cookie first. The video closes with a clip of my brother being celebrated and supported during a game at my twelfth birthday party.

These tender videos played at the end of the piece after I invoke acceptance into my relationship with my brother. After I apologize for making him feel othered, I pass out freshly baked cookies to the audience while the home video and new video play simultaneously on two different walls, culminating in the final birthday party clip. For simplicity, the below video features all the clips in sequence.

Read the Broad Street Review of Me, More Normal here, or preview it below.

As part of our engagement and audience building strategy for Me, More Normal, myself and director Krista Thorp partnered with the Arc of Philadelphia. The Arc of Philadelphia provides services to people and youth with intellectual disabilities in the Greater Philadelphia region. Together, we collaborated to put on a disabilities access workshop for working artists.

You can read more about that workshop here, or check out the preview below.

Additional Community Engagement Work

Úumbal: Nomadic Choreography for Inhabitants (2019), FringeArts

Lead Artist: Mariana Arteaga

Role: Participant Support & Liaison, Community Engagement Manager

Úumbal was an ambulatory dance piece choreographed and performed by Philadelphia residents and artists. In collaboration with and responding to the architecture of the Whitman neighborhood in South Philadelphia, my role was to liaise between neighbors, neighborhood stakeholders, and the artistic team, as well as to provide key support to community performers throughout the rehearsal and performance process. After the production concluded, I, on behalf of FringeArts, continued to nurture institutional relationships with the Whitman neighborhood through creative experiences, this time designed for Whitman’s children. In collaboration with SEAMAAC’s neighborhood satellite site, I hired a music teaching artist to offer music enrichment during the center’s homework hours.

Cartography (2019), FringeArts

Lead Artists: Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers

Role: Community Engagement Manager

Cartography drew inspiration from interviews that lead artists Kaneza and Christopher conducted with children fleeing war-torn cities and seeking refugee and asylum status in Germany. Cartography explored what it means to cross borders and forge new maps, offering an interactive portion in which audiences could shape a map projected onto the wall behind the performers using an app on their phones. My role in FringeArts’ 2019 presentation of Cartography was to build relevance through meaningful and mutually beneficial community programming. The performers of Cartography came to Central High School in North Philadelphia to lead playwriting workshops with 9th and 10th graders. FringeArts also worked with leading accessibility expert Marcie Bramucci to designate Cartography as one of the sensory-friendly presentations during that year’s festival. Additionally, through my stewardship, FringeArts continued its collaboration with community health and art center Puentes de Salud by programming an installation of sculptures made by Puentes community members as a companion piece for Cartography. The premiere installation went up at Cherry Street Pier, just a two minute stroll from FringeArts. You can read more about Puentes’ installation project, Vidas Suspendidas, here.

Everyday Places Artist Partnerships (2021-2022), The Barnes Foundation

Role: Sr. Programs Coordinator for Community Engagement & Family Programming

In my role as Senior Programs Coordinator for The Barnes Foundation’s Community Engagement & Family Programming department, I was responsible for co-creating creative opportunities for West Philadelphia residents with People’s Emergency Center. The partnership, Barnes West, created an artist/community collaboration program, called Everyday Places Artist Partnerships. The program paired West Philadelphia artists with local community organizations and businesses in order to reach neighbors and residents with creative engagements. In its first year, Everyday Places Artist Partnerships reached over 200 West Philadelphia residents to engage them in creative processes that included writing poetry, making music, sewing and designing clothing, healing movement, neighborhood archival, textile and print-making, and more.

You can read more about Everyday Places Artist Partnerships here.

Additional Artistic Work

Troubled Waters (2023), Pig Iron Theatre School

Role: researcher, creator, performer

As a part of Cohort XI at the Pig Iron Theatre School for Devised Performance (University of the Arts), my collaborators and I traveled to Arizona to conduct interviews and qualitative research with residents and key stakeholders about Arizona’s increasingly dire water crisis. The result was a piece of documentary theater, performed by the cohort in May of 2023. The piece synthesized our observations of both people and natural spaces to amplify the calls to action for water conservation. Enjoy photos below from our trip as well as our performance.

Field Calls (2020), Lupine Performance Cooperative

Role: playwright, producer

Designed to be listened to on a mobile device with headphones specifically to keep audiences safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, Field Calls was a solo audience experience moving through the neighborhood of Powelton Village in West Philadelphia. Featuring dragons, gnomes, giants, and pixies, Field Calls took the shape of an ambulatory theater piece and imbued it with a twisting, fantastical alternate future of Philadelphia.

To listen to the first stop of Field Calls, click here.