Questions often asked by audience members and my responses:

When did you get started in theater?

My first role on the stage occurred when I was eleven. I don’t remember how I got involved, but I do remember the production was called, “The Bluebird” I auditioned for it with my only present memory being overwhelming fear. I had to read from the script and do some kind of movements with other audtioners. My career ended within 10-minutes. Many years later I had another audition that felt just as frightening, but with a different outcome. I played the part of Judas for a three week run of “Godspell.” It became a mixed experience as into the second week I got sick before a performance and from that time on the stage manager placed a bucket at each wing of the stage for my unpredictable use.

After “Godspell,” I acted in two or three plays a year. Within a few years I began directing, and found a deep love for putting plays together with all that in a community of dedicated artists.

What formal training have you had?

I received initial mentoring from E. Teresa Choate, professor of theater at Keane University. Dr. Choate’s zeal, expertise, and discipline has served me well well in all the years since as an actor, producer, and director. Voice, diction and directing came under the tutelage Gary Logan, professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. Cliff Jewell taught me stage movement, combat, and character development. At the National Theater Conservatory in Denver, my skills grew from the experience of a summer seminar conducted by professionals. By and large, though, I’ve learned by attending carefully to excellent acting, and by that shaping my own craft.

What is your experience as a director and teacher in the theater?

Alongside years of acting, directing stage production, I’ve directed a variety of plays ranging various genres. Twenty-five years ago I founded The Ensemble Theatre Company a semi-professional theater in Colorado. I served as its artistic director/producer. As a university professor, I developed a theater major, and taught courses such as: Introduction to Acting, Scene Study, Advanced Acting, Characterization, Directing, Makeup, and Theater History. I have enjoyed mentoring and teaching acting and directing classes with theater companies in both Colorado and Hawaii.

Do you have specific goals in mind when your acting a role or directing a play?

Yes, I have several goals. I desire that each actor whether novice or seasoned, grow in the craft. A multiverse craft that demands every aspect of the actor physically, emotionally, and intellectually. As a director, I want to enable my actors explore their characters by trying new approaches to their character, and not to settling for the safet of their first choices. Great actors develop their characters through experimentation that involves choice to be vulnerable. P

Finally, we do what do only for the audience. My strongest desire is, by our art, to invite each audience member to become lost in what is created before them: to lose the worries that weighed on them before they entered the auditorium. To lose themselves in the words, colors, movements, and emotions before their eyes and ears.