My behind-the-scenes creative experience started in the art department for a short film. I went on to work on various projects in Chicago as a designer and eventually began to create my own work: writing, directing, developing, and choreographing. I recently studied acting at Juilliard in NYC and during my time there, I also continued to hone my aesthetic and skills as a director developing various live performances in collaboration with various Juilliard artists. After my first year, the school even nominated me to direct a short film commissioned by Park Ave Armory for their celebration of the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment 100 Years|100 Women Project. Details and links to previous projects, including this one, can be found below. My full resume can be found here.
Upon graduating, Juilliard’s Center for Creative Technology commissioned me to create a new work for their 24/25 season which will integrate various cutting-edge live performance technologies. The piece titled “Motherboard” will be a one-woman show exploring our relationship with “connecting” and “informing” technologies and their effects on our nervous systems when processing grief.
“a surprisingly confident, masterfully-made dramatic short"
-Timeout Chicago review of her first short film atoms of ashes (full article here)
shorts
ReMindHer 2018
atoms of ashes 2017
orphan scenes 2018
the women in me 2020
ladies first 2018
but not like that 2018
music videos
going to hell 2015
jack and jill 2017
hummingbird 2019
moss and candlesticks 2019
live performances
sankofa 2023
a young Black woman contends with the fractures of herself and her self-worth in a world where the standards of beauty and value do not match her identity. she meets herselves in her inner liminal space, the fraught waiting room between trauma and healing. she engages in a necessary rebellion against inherited ideals, weaving past and future, and laying down the threads for the rebirth of her present wholeness.
a 25-minute live performance in the lower gallery at The LMCC Arts Center on Governor's Island as part of the AntiVenom film and video exhibit conceived by performance artist Anna Parisi. Sankofa, an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana, conveys the ancient wisdom in learning and retrieving from the past to ensure a brighter, healthier and wiser future. the piece was inspired by and curated using interviews conducted by Anna Parisi with black women from Brazil, the USA, Trinidad Tobago, and Hawaii on their relationship with their hair. the performers moved throughout the gallery space and through the audience as three large screens projected audio clips from the interviews accompanied by found and generated video footage. created in collaboration with the performers Anna Parisi, Zamo Mlengana, Shareef Kinslow, and Ayana Powell.
photos by Serafeim Sakellariou
all my puny sorrows 2021
two sisters, a floundering writer and a suicidal classical pianist, traverse the depths and breadths of how women support each other through life’s demons and contradictions. trudging through inherited trauma, mortality, the burdens and blessings of creativity, and the what/how/why of it means to love live.
a live, abstract adaptation of Miriam Toews's novel of the same name with all spoken words taken directly from the source. two performers, Greek and Pakistani, embody the two sisters as well as their mother, their friend, a nurse, and abstractions of all women. visceral, strange, humorous, and hopeful, the performers bask in the disconcerting beauty of the pedestrian and explore the restless truths of the abstract. as the play unravels, the pianist plays excerpts from classical works, masterfully and vulnerably disembodying them, bravely stepping outside the rigid, traditionalist expectation of classical performance to accompany the raw, full, and expansive actors. performed at the Juilliard School. created in collaboration with the performers Sara Haider, Ino Badanjak, and Lucia Li.
