With a focus on collaborative devising, adaptations, and site-specific projects that incorporate architecture. Here is a sample of projects.
For a complete CV with list of commissions, exhibitions, and choreography hires, click below.
Leda and the Swan
A devised performance event consisting of original text, movement play, live music, and audience engagement, created for the balcony space in Shoreditch, London’s historic St. Leonard’s Church. Facilitated and choreographed by PJ, written by UGPA favorite writer, Luke Wallens, featuring Croatian TV personality and experimental performer, Lada Bonacci, and Cirque Du Soleil alum, Filippos Kanakaris, pictured here. Music devised by jazz saxophonist Daryl Chen, violinist Sara Jane Barnes, and opera singer April Frederick. The company was subsequently invited to re-imagine the event for the Southwark Playhouse’s alternative venue performance series the following season.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A contract hire by Holland High School for Holland Public School District, in Michigan to run the after school theatre program during fall/winter semester 2019. Taught students Shakespeare scoring and vocal performance, basic stage acting skills, and gendered body performance techniques, and worked with a sub-contracted choreographer to teach 1920’s social dance hybrid contemporary dance. Produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in a speakeasy in the 1920’s with live jazz, blues & Charleston dancing fairies.
Movement Direction
Working alongside a director with a particular eye on the embodied performance of the characters, often choreographing stylized movement sequences or dance.
Qualifications include an MA in Movement Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama In London, UK under professors Ayse Tashkiran and Vanessa Euan, referenced in the Wikipedia page on Movement Direction. For further info and explanation watch the What is Movement Direction? video from England’s National Theatre.
Click below for a Movement Direction resume—which includes over 20 movement direction credits.
Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc
An original devised play based on Mark Twain’s novel about Joan of Arc. Using Twain’s text and live original music by Americana band Bevel Summers, six text/movement performers and five musician performers tell Joan’s story through the eyes of her closest followers. Collaborators pictured include performance researcher and dancer/choreographers Marie Garlock and Nicola Bullock, actors Matthew Hager, Sam Corey, Olivia Griego, Paul Kilpatrick, Rajeev Rajendran, Josh Wolonick, and singer/songwriter/actor Jeb Brinkley.
Revelation Project
Hired in 2019 to make a collaborative performance event for Dimnent Chapel around the Book of Revelation. Live performance elements included organ music, three dancers, three text performers, natural light through stained glass, and the progression of the audience through the space in relation to these things.
Vogue Men's Fashions
An original devised two part play, in which a man asks the audience to help him as witnesses to his process of self reflection as a way to process grief and change. Developed with actor John Jimerson, Sci-Fi writer, Richard Butner, and video media artist, Jon Haas.
Click below for a review, an essay on Howlround, and a preview.