In that time, life has been full. I’ve taught, facilitated, directed, moved homes, deepened my work through Make Create More, had many endings and new beginnings all while spending the last year as Artist-in-Residence at The Dance Hall in Kittery.
The newsletter may have been quiet, but the work has not.
This summer marks a turning point. The projects I’ve been developing are beginning to leave the studio and enter the world, and I’d love for you to be part of what comes next.
Act One: The Half-Written Play
On June 22, I’ll be partnering with the York Land Trust for The Half-Written Play, a participatory theatrical experience exploring how communities make decisions in the face of climate change.
Performance, civic gathering, and collective thought experiment, this project asks what happens when we treat community challenges not as debates to be won, but as stories we must learn to navigate together. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation and is in collaboration with PowerPlay Interactive Development at the University of New Hampshire.
Venue York Land Trust, 1 Long Neck Marsh Road, York, ME 03909 United States
Act Two: Make Create More – New Work Weekend
June 26–28 marks the culmination of my year-long residency at The Dance Hall.
Over the past six months I’ve been developing three very different plays, each wrestling with questions that feel urgent in our current moment. In fact, I've written six new plays since March but only have time to present these three!
For the past several years I’ve been navigating medical issues that remain poorly understood and under-researched. What began as personal frustration grew into a larger question: who gets to decide what counts as evidence?
Blood, Sweat and Tears follows three women who break into a laboratory to reclaim a body of research. Part comedy, part caper the play explores the messiness of the female body and the cost of being told that lived experience doesn’t belong in the data.
Come if you’ve ever felt dismissed by an institution, questioned your own experience, or wondered whose voices are missing from the research.
CAST: Monique Peaslee Foote as Jennifer, Colleen A. Madden as Dawn, and Constance Witman as Melissa.
Good Breeding: Inside the Process
Matt in the rehearsal room
Good Breeding began with a question about whether I would write a solo piece for actor Matthew Recine. I said "I don't write plays that center men" and then I realized I could write a play about masculinity. This has grown into an exploration of lineage, land, labor, and the stories passed from one generation to the next.
This open studio session invites audiences into the development of a new physical theatre work. We’ll experiment with movement, music, storytelling, and image-making together.
Come if you’re curious about how theatre gets made at Make Create More, interested in rural life and inheritance, or simply want to spend an afternoon helping shape a new piece from the ground up.
COLLABORATING PARTNERS: Matthew Recine and Shawn Crapo
Hand Me Down
When siblings Joan and Hank Mercer invite a celebrated true-crime podcaster into their home to investigate the decades-old disappearance of their parents, the search for a definitive story threatens to sink the only family they have left.
I’ve become increasingly interested in our cultural fascination with true crime and the different ways men and women are asked to carry violence. Hand Me Down explores what happens when private grief becomes public entertainment.
Come if you love mysteries, family dramas, podcasts, or stories that leave room for multiple truths.
CAST: Susan Poulin as Joan, Wayne Asbury at Hank, and Emily Karel as Tanya
These projects are not endings. They’re beginnings.
The plays featured this month will serve as the foundation for future productions, partnerships, and community-engaged projects through Make Create More, a theatre-led design studio empowering visionary leaders and their communities to make lasting systems change.
I’ve spent the past year developing what I’m calling the Narrative Systems Method and Storywork: creative frameworks that use theatrical tools to help people better understand the human systems they inhabit and the futures they hope to build.
More on that soon.
For now,save the first weekend of October.
That’s when I’ll be hosting the next Present Tense Creative Retreat, a gathering for people navigating change, possibility, and the stories they are living into.
More details to come.
I hope to see you next week for lots of new work, with more from me and my studio in July.
