poetry
(i know, shut up)
art / theater / whatnot
this is not a proposal for a production of othello.
it is a proposal for a production of a production of othello.
othello is not considered one of shakespeare’s “problem plays”. however, in the years between the play’s writing and now, it has certainly become a problem. drawing on the work of black scholars and intellectuals like ayanna thompson, keith hamilton cobb, w.e.b. dubois and many more, another othello aims not to solve that problem, but to finally present it to an audience that has ignored it for too long.
this production (set in the great room of a grand old house) casts iago in not only many of the auxiliary roles (i.e. brabantio) but also the role of director and dramatist, cutting scenes on the fly as if it’s his production. it also splits othello into two parts: his physical presence is played by an actor wearing a large papier-mâché “moor” head and pantomiming everything with the violent bombast that the venetians expect from him, while his voice is provided by the cast’s only black actor in a small booth upstage, played with the nuance and reserve of a man who knows he will always be a stranger in this land.
an inflammatorily-titled, less-long discussion of how art that makes you think before it makes you feel is more criticism than art.
adapted from preston sturges’ oscar-winning 1941 film of the same name, this in-progress musical aims to start in the risk-free silliness of the screwball comedy, follow sullivan into the idyllic tragedy of a romantic epic before suddenly shifting to a bleak, neorealism-inspired sequence as he finally experiences the true realities of poverty, and soon wishes he hadn’t.
below is the most recent draft of the script… that i’ve remembered to upload here. if you like it, and can write/orchestrate music, drop me a line!
(my mom insists this does not count as networking.)
while nine is traditionally cast with 22 women and one man, this production will cast one actress to play (almost) all of the female parts, aided by a combination of prerecording, shadow play, quick changes of both costume and lighting, and puppetry.
an 18-page pitch deck – which includes a set design and plan, a preliminary budget/inventory as well as a fuller exploration of the production’s concept – can be read here.
an in-depth exploration of how mainstream theater performs its progress on stage with “race-blind” casting, while still allowing creative control to remain majority white, and how their risk-aversion is arresting not only societal but artistic advancement. exploring topics from laurence olivier’s baffling 1965 performance as othello (and pauline kael’s equally baffling rave review), to daniel fish’s 2019 production of “oklahoma”, and beyond!
OK, this is kind of embarrassing. I feel like my favorite novel should be something obscure and sexy by someone French or Japanese, but instead it’s this. I know it’s the book that every high schooler studies, the most obvious choice ever, but…
IT’S, LIKE, BASICALLY PERFECT.
Anyway I made a big interactive PDF thing for an adaptation of the play. It’s a little buggy but it works and there’s some interesting stuff in there.
nobody read it at the time, obviously.
my first experience designing costumes was for a hypothetical production of camille saint-saëns’ posthumously-released suite the carnival of the animals , a collection of short, animal-themed pieces, complete with ogden nash’s silly interstitial poems read by a narrator. like the best children’s media, this series has plenty for adults to enjoy as well, and i wanted to capture that in my designs, focusing on recognizable characters and conflicts within each piece.
a work-in-progress puppet conceived for nine, portraying the main character’s mother in a way that made him child-sized. by pulling the ropes, it is possible to control the sheet so that it looks like a shawl being worn by a giant woman who isn’t there, towering over the seated actor (represented in the model below as a corkscrew). the actor reverts to childhood, the sheet becomes their mother, and they dance with her. as the two dance, she begins to bend lower and lower, before settling on the floor.
written in 1931, but only produced after his death, when five years pass is one of lorca’s most surreal plays. it explores the inescapable cycles of desire, memory, and metaphor through a story of a young man whose old love is not how he remembers her, and his interactions with personified facets of both himself and her.
the design centered around ideas of surprising but organically-uncovered set pieces, unfolding and merging the way images do in a dream.
Henry James’ 1878 novella Daisy Miller – A Study in Two Parts is an example of James’ career-long struggle with his trans-Atlantic identity as a US-born Brit, and the tug-of-war between the promised freedom of America and the comfortable formality of Europe.
While over 100 years old, the novella is still deeply relatable: Daisy dies raging against the conformity expected of her, while Winterbourne gives up on his freedom in favor of stability. Collage seemed the perfect medium to express this uncomfortable juxtaposition of the old and the new, the free and the caged.
I’ll finish it one day.
a state-wide awareness campaign
informing people about the private profits made from public water
massive conglomerates pose a number of threats to our survival in their pursuit of maximizing profit. one of the more egregious examples of this is the buying of rights to natural resources one would expect to be publicly owned.
nestlé, for instance, the main target of take back the rains, has argued in court that unlimited access to water is not a basic human right, and therefore sees fit to buy up water rights worldwide, bottle the water, and sell it for a huge profit: nestlé water alone makes $8bn/year.
Blood Wedding is a folk tragedy in three acts by Federico García Lorca, first produced as Bodas de Sangre in 1933. Langston Hughes wrote his translation around 1937, but it was not produced until 1992, sitting in archives for over 50 years.
In the below document, I propose a production of Hughes’ richly poetic translation at 26501 McBean Parkway, an unused lot in modern Santa Clarita, on the ancestral land of the Tataviam and Chumash tribes.
in his 1842 dramatic monologue “my last duchess”, robert browning writes in the voice of an obsessive duke showing a visitor a painting of his last wife. as it goes on, it grows more comfortable in its true form, a terrifying study in jealousy, power, and the unseen. i tried to capture that in this shadow play, underscored by erik satie’s haunting “gnosienne no.4” to match the poem’s slow, inevitable violence.
a semi-fictionalized account of a summer i once spent in colorado, and a portrait of the more ambiguous and important relationships one can have in life, and then let go of. this was a completely individual project, written and illustrated by me alone. I think it turned out pretty good.
the grand hotel was an independent project designed and produced alone as a solo entry to the d&ad new blood awards’ hasbro brief, which asked for a party game for millennials based on an existing game.
inspired by a drinking game and my love for the roaring 20’s, i created a luxurious, witty art deco styled card game for two or more people, printed a rough but fully playable pack, and wrote/recorded/edited a rough silly advert for it.
listen closely to “2”, mac demarco’s first full-length album, and you’ll find that behind the lilting psychedelic guitar and gap-toothed smile, he is detailing an at-once familiar and deeply personal picture of adolescence. he bounces effortlessly between themes, from worrying about worrying his parents to deep, guileless love, to that feeling that life has more in store for him. this album cover was created to reflect that, using dirty and classically teenage objects to create an affectionate and earnest moment.