I grew up in a rural mountain town in Northern California across the border from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. With no television to entertain me, I spent my time playing music, training as a ballerina, performing in community theater, sketching mountain lakes and sewing. In a town of 700 people you can't hide, humanity is on display. My first education was discovering the cracks and pores of my community. Yet growing up in such a sheltered environment, I had the youthful desire to soak up experiences and see the world. Excited by the randomness and vitality of the Bay Area, I attended UC Berkeley and studied Anthropology and Arabic. My passion for cultures led me to travel to over 20 countries, including spending time with my mother's family in Sweden and living for a year in Cairo, Egypt. In the Middle East, I discovered that, despite cultural, political, historical and linguistic differences, the lessons about humanity I had learned in my hometown still applied. As my father says, "Everywhere there are good, generous people, and everywhere there are assholes."

After my travels, I returned to the Bay Area to pursue a career in theater. Calling upon my background in dance and Shakespeare, I strove to create poetic work told through physical imagery. My desire to tie my work into the larger international community drove me to study under Gabor Tompa at UC San Diego. Gabor is the Artistic Director of the Hungarian Theater of Cluj in Romania and an internationally renowned director. Under his strict tutelage, I learned to rigorously examine every concept and insure that my vision stemmed from a deep conviction. I also began experimenting with how theater interacts with the culture around it. What does theater provide my generation? How can it spark the same sense of community that I felt in my hometown? Where does it need to evolve?

Currently, I am based out of Los Angeles. Surrounded by a city full of artists, I am dedicated to bringing artists from all disciplines into conversation with each other to create new forms and experiment with engaging audiences. Simultaneously, I continue to work on the international level, seeking to foster more cultural awareness and connect to artists around the world.