UCSD:

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"Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Performance"

Hands-on immersion into current projects by a diverse spectrum of national and international theatre artists. By exploring script based new plays, multidisciplinary pieces, and ensemble-generated works, students will practice skills for becoming effective collaborators and co-creators in both scripted and non-scripted new work processes.

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​"Senior Seminar in Acting"

Using recent scripts by writers Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the course will provide a map through the experience of reading, preparing, self-taping, monologue and scene work. We will hear from professional actors, directors, and casting directors. We will also explore work made in experimental ways. 

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"Advanced Topics in Acting"

A deep dive into what is asked of and offered to the actor both in times of in-person interactivity and online contact. Attention will be paid to the current time by locating ourselves emotionally and in space(s). Students will be immersed in the analysis and performance of plays by Sylvan Oswald (the auditory experience), Jackie Sibblies Drury (the scene and monologue work), and Christopher Chen (the ensemble experience). The class will also have a free-writing component as a generative tool for the actor to stay connected to the self and the moment. 

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"Cultural Specificities and Embodied Dramaturgy in Neapolitan Theater"

Issues of translation/adaptation, cultural specificity and cultural embodiment will be explored, as an introduction to and contextualization of UCSD's production of Eduardo De Filippo's Napoli. We will operate inspired by the De Filippo ensemble, with dramaturgical, producorial, acting and directorial roles shared and alternating among the group.

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"Italian Theatre:

a Translation Workshop"

An exploration of wide-ranging form of Italian​ performance in translation - from Isabella Andreini's Renaissance work, to Neapolitan Theatre, to contemporary Italian plays, to an Arabic Italian pop song. The Italian lens will broaden to encompass translation processes carried out by students from either a language they are familiar with or older English.  

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"Witnessing, Making, Mixing:

Multilingual Theater"

Students will analyze recordings of multilingual pieces as well as multilingual work that may be happening live at the time of and in proximity of the class, and reflect on how the use of multiple languages shapes the storytelling and theatrical experience. Students will then be guided in constructing original, experimental solo pieces incorporating the languages they have access to. The final, collective embodiment will be a scene study from a classical text, which itself may be in translation, in a mix of languages available to the group. With an open class at the end, the work will implicate audience(s) in the opening up that can happen when the expectation of total understanding is blurred: what else do we notice? What kind of new exchanges occur? 

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"Introduction to Acting"

Fundamentals of acting, establishing a working vocabulary and acquiring the basic skills of the acting process. Through acting exercises and scenes, we will explore the imagination as the actor's primary resource, and the basic approach to text through actions and needs. 

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"Acting 101"

Through acting exercises, structured improvisations, character/scene analysis, and scene work with feedback, this class fosters the actors' imagination and responsiveness. A moment-to-moment action-based approach rooted in needs and tactics will yield actors' choices and interactions that are both rooted and dynamic; bold and vulnerable. ​

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"Acting 102"

This class deepens the work of Acting 101 through group readings, more challenging scene work, and guidance in the choice and effective performance of monologues sourced from The Kilroys collections. 

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Visiting Lectures (selected)

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"Practicing Inclusive and Expansive Communication: Intercultural Awareness between California, Mexico, and Italy"

Drawing from my practice as an Italian - California theater maker, curator, and teacher, I will guide participants towards increased awareness of biases and an intercultural orientation that strives to be nonviolent, authentic, and imaginative.

University of Padova, Italy

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"Questions of Translation"

University of Massachusetts at Amherst

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"Italian Cultural Consulting with Pixar"

University of San Diego​