Scholar
Specializing in theatre history and cultural performance studies, my research examines the spatial politics of queer performance, historical reception, and dramatic adaptation. Through archival recovery and spatial mapping—centered in my dissertation, A Fairly Fabulous History of Chicago Queer Theatre—I investigate how performance acts as an essential medium for community gathering, cruising, and collective grieving in twentieth-century urban landscapes.
Education
Ph.D., Theater Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2025
Dissertation: "A Fairly Fabulous History of Chicago Queer Theatre"
Graduate Minor: Queer Studies
This dissertation explores the unique theatrical landscape of Chicago that fostered the creation of groundbreaking LGBTQ+ plays: Henry Blake Fuller’s At Saint Judas’s (1896) to Jeff Hagedorn’s one (1983). Chicago's history is marked by a theatrical tradition rooted in marginalized queerness, partly due to city-imposed sanctions on theater buildings. Through a dramaturgical approach and theatrical microhistory methodology, this dissertation embarks on a journey from early gay theater to Hagedorn's work, prioritizing marginalized voices and archives. By applying queer theory to historical analysis, this study reveals how Chicago's social and political climate enabled the development of Off-Loop theatre and contributed to shaping the city’s LGBTQ+ community. Ultimately, this dissertation offers new insights into the evolution of both Chicago’s theater and queer communities.
M.A., Theater Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2018
MFA, Playwriting, Actors Studio Drama School at New School, NY, 2002
BFA, School of Drama, Illinois Wesleyan University, 1988
Teaching Experience
Lead Teaching Assistant, University of Illinois 2024-2025
Courses:
Introduction to Theatre (2024–25)
Broadway Musicals (2022–24)
Theatre Histories (2019–22)
Dramatic Literature (2020–21)
My scholarly pursuits deepen our understandings of theatre spaces and spaces that cultivate performance.
There’s No Place Like Homeplace: How Bath Houses Shaped a Queer Aesthetic
This paper, presented at the 2025 ASTR Queer Legacies Working Group, investigates how historical gay bathhouses functioned as vital crucibles for queer community formation, aesthetic development, and audience regeneration. Framed through an innovative post-Brechtian theatrical dialogue set within a contemporary Chicago steam room, the study engages bell hooks’s concept of “homeplace” alongside Jill Dolan’s theorization of utopian performatives to explore the performative labor of queer world-making.
A Tosca too Far
“A Tosca too Far or Restraining Regietheater” examines Calixto Bieito’s Tosca produced at Opera Noske to illuminate the pitfalls of the practice of regietheater in opera. This practice is not foreign in the sphere of theater —in fact a production of Shakespeare using classical/original staging and design concepts would now more than likely be considered positively avant-garde. As Opera (capitalization intentional) moves into this age of re-examination and re-interpretation of the canon I believe that the role of the dramaturg in opera needs to be expanded upon within the production team.
Mapping Performances in Gay Spaces
This paper explores the spectrum of spaces in which a gay identity is performed from the neighborhood bar to the shadowy spaces of sexuality. This exploration will encompass the performances of self-identity of not only the bodies within these areas but also of the spaces themselves as they attract segments of the population to them.
Performance Analysis: Beautiful Thing
This paper critiques the twentieth anniversary production of Beautiful Thing at the Arts Theatre in London.
Playwriting and Performance
Between Us (2021)
Church (2020)
Coasters (2021)
Bedfellows (2016)
What Friends Do (2002)
Dramaturgy & Professional Experience
Lead Dramaturg, Illinois Theatre (2023–25)
Production/Event Coordinator, River Center Adler Theater (2002–07)
Production Coordinator, Navy Pier Chicago (1997–99)
Service and Committees
IATSE Local 85 Education Committee (2022–Present)
Alpha Lambda Alumni Advisory Board (2002–Present)