Teaching
The director and historian Herbert Blau argued in his book The Blooded Thought that all theatre enacts theory: that all theatrical performances constitute a thinking through of ideas, identities, and histories that straddles the fictional in their artifice and the real in their material and temporal presence.
My teaching blends theory and practice so that students can discover how performance influences culture and that they can change culture through their own art and scholarship. This includes teaching students to be attentive to how they study a historical subject and make art, what they study or perform, and the effect or function of both. I create opportunities for students to scrutinize how theatre across the globe and within both hegemonic and marginalized communities variously contributes to, resists, or challenges values, knowledge formation, and power structures.
While such awareness promotes the common good and insists that students think critically and creatively about both their historical and artistic work in my courses and rehearsal halls, it also emphasizes methodology and the execution of craft – vital skills to theatre professionals and historians alike.
Mindful of my own pedagogical methods, historical work on censorship and transnational issues, and artistic practice, I work to scaffold my courses, curricula, and rehearsal process so that students learn foundational skills and ideas and progressively build on them.
To that end, I constitute my classrooms and rehearsal halls as spaces where students have agency in their learning by coupling these values with commitments to inclusivity and embodied learning. I aim to respect and build upon students’ lived experiences and cultivate their critical and creative competency.
Sample Courses
I love learning — and one of the joys of being a teacher is being a part of a wider community of educators, all looking for tips, exercises, assignments, and other tools to make our classes the best they can be. I am the teacher I am thanks to the great teachers I learned from, and who passed on to me their pedagogical techniques, activities, and goals. In that spirit, I offer some sample teaching materials below. Just like the courses we teach and the strategies we deploy, everything here is a work in progress — but I am happy to discuss anything here with you. Alternatively - do you have a suggestion? Let’s have a conversation! Feel free to contact me.
Theatre History and Literature I: Origins to 1865 — Fall 2026
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Department of Theatre and Dance
Core Course in Major, Elective for Minor
This course surveys theatre history and literature from its pre-historic origins to 1865, examining the development of drama, acting, architecture, and theatrical production and their relationship to social, cultural, and political contexts. Particular attention is paid to the relationship of theatre to religion in the ancient and medieval world, secularization and the early-modern state, and national identity formation from the English Restoration through the American Civil War. Students will also gain foundational skills for undertaking research in theatre studies through projects that explore questions on the course themes. The course focuses on western theatre but also includes case studies from Asia and Africa in order to draw global connections and illustrate theatre's capacity to respond to geo-political specificity.
Theatre History and Literature II: 1865 to the Present — Spring 2026
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Department of Theatre & Dance
Core Course For Majors, Elective for Minors
This course surveys theatre history and dramatic literature from 1865 to the present, examining the development of drama, acting, and theatrical production and their relationship to social, cultural, and political contexts. Particular attention is paid to the variety of realist performances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the explosion of anti-realist experimentation that followed, and the global and multicultural world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In addition to gaining further skills in historiographical analysis and methodology, students build on research and writing skills developed in Theatre History and Literature I, including the completion of an original argumentative research paper.
World Theatre — Fall 2026
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Department of Theatre & Dance
Core Elective for Majors, Elective for Minors, Satisfies “The Cultures of Our World” Gen Ed Requirement
This course surveys and analyzes historical and contemporary theatre and performance forms in eastern Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the middle east and north Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Particular attention is paid to theatre's relationship to local customs and philosophies, religious practices and beliefs, political and social contexts, and global cultural exchange.
Multicultural U.S. Drama and Theory — Spring 2026
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Department of Theatre & Dance
Major/Minor Core Elective, Cross Listed with Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Major and Minor, Satisfies “Communities of the United States” General Education Requirement
In this course, students study dramatic literature from multiple cultures within contemporary U.S. society. Texts highlights African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Arab American, Latin American, queer and trans, working and lower class, and disability cultures. Students analyze the plays and research their cultural contexts in order to enhance student awareness, exchange ideas about the multicultural history and culture of the U.S., and develop fluency with multicultural and intersectional methods of analysis.
Directing — Spring 2025
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Department of Theatre & Dance
Requirement for Stage Management Majors, Elective for Performance Majors and Minors
This course introduces students to the theory and practice of directing for the stage. Emphasis is placed on analysis, production preparation, rehearsal techniques, and ethnical collaboration for the presentation of realistic dramatic scenes.
Contemporary Global Stages: Performing Empire(s) — Fall 2018
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Theatre Arts
General Education Course, Major/Minor Elective
This course is an introduction to the analysis of global performance in written, aural, and live forms across multiple geographies. In Contemporary Global Stages: Performing Empire(s), we will explore how empires have been performed as well as how empires, themselves, perform. What do empire and imperialism mean in our contemporary, global age? How do empires manifest in and/or through performance? Throughout the course we will examine performances from around the world, including Ireland/Northern Ireland, Korea, Puerto Rico, Iraq, the Ivory Coast, and the Philippines among others. The kinds of performances we will analyze include theatre, film, performance art, video games, and food. We will also study political performances, such as military parades and their transmission via digital media, protests, and the abuses of state power. Using both historical and theoretical lenses, we will investigate the ways different communities respond to and critique empire and its legacies, and question the relationship between empire and the global through performance.
Enjoying Performances — Spring 2020
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Theatre Arts
General Education Course, Major/Minor Elective
This course is an introduction to the critical field of performance studies.
We are always and everywhere performing. We produce plays and inhabit other places and times. We participate in religious rituals. We occupy public and virtual spaces to protest political injustice. We invest significant time, labor, and energy in managing our social identities. And when we work – if we work – we receive performance reviews. This course engages performance as a lens for exploring embodiment, representation, identity, and history. Drawing upon the breadth and depth of performance studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry over the past half-century, this course will introduce students to performance as both a subject and method of humanistic inquiry. We will also engage sustained inquiry in two areas: “performing identity” and “performing America.” How do various communities mobilize performance to various social, cultural, and political ends? What can performance teach us about sexuality, gender, race, and nationality? Through lectures, discussions, and performance analysis exercises we will explore what a performance studies perspective enables us to understand anew.
Courses Taught
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Department of Theatre & Dance
THA 110: Theatre Appreciation — Fall 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, Spring 2024
THA 130: Multicultural U.S. Drama and Theory — Spring 2026, 2024
THA 201: Dramatic Literature and Theatre Arts — Fall 2025, 2023
THA 210: Foundations of Theatrical Production (5-week Script Analysis Section) — Fall 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022
THA 250: Theatre History and Literature I: Beginnings to 1865 — Fall 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022
THA 350: Theatre History and Literature II: 1865 to the Present — Spring 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023
THA 351: World Theatre — Fall 2026, Spring 2025
THA 420: Directing — Spring 2025, 2023
THA 421: Performance Studio: Stage Dialects and Accents — Spring 2026
Clarion University of Pennsylvania Department of Visual and Performing Arts
THE 251: Voice and Articulation — Fall 2021
THE 253: Introduction to Theatre (Online, Asynchronous) — Fall 2021, Spring 2022
THE 254: Acting I: Introduction to Acting — Spring 2022
THE 361: Acting II: Scene Study — Fall 2021
THE 369: Playing Shakespeare — Spring 2022
University of Pittsburgh Department of Theatre Arts
Instructor of Record:
THEA 0505: Enjoying Performances (Introduction to Performance Studies) — Spring 2020, Spring 2018
THEA 0825: Contemporary Global Stages: Performing Empire(s) — Fall 2018
THEA 0830: Introduction to Performance — Fall 2019, 2015, Spring 2016
THEA 1342: World Theatre History II: 1640—1914 — Spring 2019
Teaching Assistant:
THEA 0505: Enjoying Performances — Fall 2016
THEA 0804: Theatre and Collaboration — Spring 2016, Fall 2015
THEA 1338: Musical Theatre Performance — Fall 2019
THEA 1343: World Theatre History III: 1890—the present — Spring 2018
THEA 1903: Undergraduate Seminar: Embodying Difference on the English Renaissance Stage — Fall 2017
University of Alabama English Department
Instructor of Record:
EN 101: English Composition I: Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition — Fall 2014
EN 102: English Composition II: Research Writing — Spring 2015
Teaching Assistant:
EN 206: English Literature II: 1800—1945 — Spring 2014
EN 209: American Literature I: Beginnings—1860 — Fall 2013