“This game is impossible, but we’ll play it anyway.”
When my mentor, Robert P. Moyer, said that to some elementary school kids, quoting Paul Sills and Viola Spolin before him, it struck me as a pretty good life philosophy.
I’ve never been particularly ambitious. It feels more like I bumble around, knocking into walls, until someone says, “Hey, look over there. Maybe you should do that?” and I go, “Okay!” and I bumble into not-walls and then it’s been 20 years and I’ve made a career for myself.
The stuff I plan doesn’t usually wind up happening the way I expected, but the ideas that seem impossible at first glance have a miraculous way of working out. Just as theatre games are impossible, and yet we accomplish them anyway. The result? Just what Paul Sills said, when asked what he wanted from the players:
“Something wonderful, right away!”
“Fortune love you!”
As a teen, I intended to graduate from high school a year early. Then, my mom suggested, “Why don’t you go to the North Carolina School of the Arts? They have a High School Drama program for your senior year.”
Having not the faintest idea how prestigious the school was - it’s currently ranked 3rd in the world - I said, “Okay, I’ll do that!” Luckily, I was accepted, launching me down a pathway that would define my career.
(U)NCSA
I enrolled at and graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts in the High School Drama program. After some living and learning, I returned to my alma mater to get a BFA in Directing from the School of Drama.
The school was always part of the University of North Carolina system, but between enrolling and graduating that second time, they appended the U to the front of the name, so I’ve graduated from both NCSA and UNCSA.
Now, I’m looking to make it a hat trick, as I’m starting the MFA in Screenwriting in the School of Filmmaking in August 2025.
I’ve been teaching and working in the school for some 17 years, having started in the Drama Summer Intensive while I was still in college, and having just completed a term as the Interim Associate Dean of the School of Drama.
As a child and teen, I had the aspirations of many a young thespian, assuming I’d find joy on Broadway stages. I never expected to love teaching as much as I do, and I now find the classroom just as uplifting as stage and screen.
Doing the Work
As with much of my life, my career was primarily up to chance. My Stage Combat professor had a schedule conflict and passed a teaching gig my way: choreographing the stage combat in a 5th-grade production of Romeo & Juliet for a local arts-based elementary school.
One engagement turned into two, then three, and before long, I was the Drama Teacher at The Arts Based School, and I spent 12 years working with young students.
The InvisiQueer
I came up with the term InvisiQueer to describe myself at a time when I wasn’t as visibly Queer as I have become since. I was a genderqueer/non-binary AFAB person still using she/her pronouns; a polyamorous, pansexual person married to a cis man in a monogamous relationship.
So, being invisible to those who weren’t in the know, I could fly under the radar, with people starting conversations a Queer person might not otherwise hear, and queering up spaces before people knew what was happening.
I’ve finally started going by they/them pronouns and presenting more masc-ly, but I still like my little superhero character.
I’ve also added NeuroQueer to the bucket o’ labels, having finally gotten diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 38 and subsequently turned it into my whole personality. Or rather, having finally admitted that many of the quirks and presumed flaws in my personality were attributable to something, I’ve been able to transition from shame to joyful acceptance of a lot of them. And I make it everyone’s problem.
The Family
Any hint of parental instinct I ever had was always for animals, rather than human children. I live with my wonderful human partner, Mike, and our two dogs, Spriggan and Kirin.
As with many pairs of dogs, we have one that is a creature of pure goodness and light and one that is a loud-mouthed, entitled ashhole. And I would lay down my life for both.