Breath. Story. Song.
Archives of experience alive in our bodies…
For the past few years, I’ve been writing a play with music and video (and cakes!) about my Vovó, her life in Brasil and immigration journey to Miami…Grateful for funding from Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a research trip to her hometowns, Recife and Olinda, in Pernambuco, absorbing voices, sounds, textures, colors. This research inspired Saudades, an immersive performance installation, which I conceived and directed at MIT’s W97 Theater in July 2025, with support from a Fay Chandler Creativity Grant, CAST and MITMTA. This community event invited audience participants to co-create a tropicaliá-inspired memory house with an interactive kitchen, recording booth, live samba bands, and lots of homemade orange cake! Exciting collaborations with San Francisco based visual artist Crystal Vielula, local designers and engineers: Joseph Lark-Riley, Kevin Fulton, and Emi Grady-Willis, recent MIT alums and current students.
These days, I’m lucky to work alongside incredible colleagues in MIT’s Theater Arts Program, where I serve as Director of the Performance Program and a Lecturer in Acting. (Imagine a science lab, but with art experiments happening inside — it’s wild!)
My collaborative works bridge performance, place, and community engagement. Last year, I curated Brazilian guest artist Geo Britto’s workshops and artist talk on Augusto Boal & Political Theater, and directed the Theater Arts Spring 2025 Production of Anne Carson’s Antigonick (a contemporary adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone). I’m also passionate about developing new work & have enjoyed making theater and teaching in a range of environments over the years: college campuses, community centers, K-12, pre-k, experimental and regional theaters…
During my time at University of California Santa Barbara, I taught acting courses, directed and devised performances, and assisted with the Launch Pad New Play Development Program, and the Eugene O'Neill Review. At UCSB, I also spent time writing about 20th Century theater, dance and film — exploring bodies as cultural archives, with potentials for acting out political resistance and liberation through performance.
For many years, I enjoyed working as an Artist in Residence with youth in San Francisco Bay Area K - 12 public schools — facilitating theater, creative movement and poetry in performance in ELL classes. I taught Acting, Voice, Speech and directed the New Plays Ensemble at Phillips Exeter Academy — a big highlight was co-directing a site-specific play in the squash courts (!) with my friend and incredible colleague, Sahar Ullah. I loved working with BFA and BA students at Salem State University, in Salem, MA, guiding Acting and Voice classes in the Theatre & Speech Communication Department, voice coaching department shows, and directing a production of Federico García Lorca’s 1933 play, Blood Wedding, at the Sophia Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts. (Thank you forever to that generous cast, crew & stage management team (big shout out to SM for life Lily Barnes & assistant director extraordinaire, Jordan Mitchell). Some of my tech dreams became realities in this one with beautiful live video capture projections! Thank you Michael Harvey!)
As an actor, I’ve performed internationally: most recently at Centro Anidra, Italy in a site-specific iteration of Anna-Helena McLean’s A Voice Lesson, touring with Z Space / Word for Word in Paris at Théâtre de la Tour Eiffel and in Nancy and Angers, France. Regional credits include: Umbrella Arts, SF Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Marin Theatre Company, San Jose Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks and Aurora Theatre, Shotgun Players, and foolsFURY. New York credits: Classic Stage Company, the Lion Theater at Theater Row, Theater of the Riverside Church, The Tank, and Repertorio Español and The Bushwick Starr with Caborca. Member of the Actors' Equity Association and VASTA.
A graduate of the MFA Acting Program at Columbia University in New York, I was awarded the Miller Scholarship & enjoyed mentorship from Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Kristin Linklater, Andrei Serban, and Niky Wolcz. Meaningful apprenticeships with Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont, Gardzienice Theater in Poland, and workshops with Bill T. Jones in California.
I worked with the (formerly vibrant) Kennedy Center and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, serving as a Final Selector for the 2018 Irene Ryan Acting Awards Region 1, and coaching Salem State University students for the 2023 KCACTF Regional and National Festivals.
One of my most joyful work experiences EVER was assisting composer, Holcombe Waller, as a Community Engagement Liaison, with Requiem Mass: A Queer Divine Rite, and witnessing its performance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, produced by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and PICA.
Also so fortunate to have shared time with an incredible cohort and completed the Designation 1 Linklater Voice Teacher Workshop with Kristin Linklater, Fran Bennett and Mary Irwin in Orkney in January 2019. Hopeful for full Designated Linklater Teacher II status in the next year or two…
Link to Acting Resume
Link to CV
Link to New Plays Ensemble / Staged Reading / 11.06.21 / Program
Link to New Plays Ensemble Feature
Link to Cloud of Fools: Excerpts from The Whistling Mortician and Europa