Selected Projects
White on White
Hoi Polloi, 2022PLAYWRIGHT
WHITE ON WHITE offers a peek inside the meeting of a white anti-racist group. As the members reckon with sacrifices they must make to live up to their principles, other forces begin to disrupt and unsettle their efforts. An uncanny ode to honesty, forgiveness, and accountability, this ensemble tour de force pulls the audience on a descent from the too-real to the sub-real. NYT CRITICS PICK
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Franklin’s Secret City
PIG IRON, 2021LEAD ARTIST
FRANKLIN’S SECRET CITY is an iPhone app-adventure for two players aged 10-100. Part game, part audience created performance, part audio experience, Franklin’s Secret City is an alternate universe of secret societies, hidden technologies, and inventions that border on magic, all hidden within Philadelphia’s historical sites and artifacts. Script and Concept by Dan Rothenberg and Robert Quillen Camp, Original Music by Rosie Langabeer and Josh Machiz, UX Design / Lead Developer Lisa Szolovits, Sound Design by Robert Quillen Camp, UI Design by Yichan Wang, Directed by Dan Rothenberg.
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Our Ruined House
PETE, 2019WRITER
OUR RUINED HOUSE is fake political history perfomed by inauthentic lovers. How can we understand the crisis in which we find ourselves if we don’t know what’s really happening? Called a “glorious colossus of the bizarre,” Our Ruined House imagines a collapsing domestic world constructed for surveillance featuring giant octopuses, bootleg copies of The Hunt for Red October, and the philosophy of Donald Rumsfeld.
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photo credit: Owen Carey
How To Learn
PETE, 2018WRITER + DIRECTOR
HOW TO LEARN examines the relationship between education, privilege, and knowledge in a provocative performance piece inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s lectures on education. A richly detailed immersive sound environment subverts the traditional lecture form and provides the backdrop to a narrative that juxtaposes the banalities of contemporary academic life with a surreal and affecting exploration of its secret counterpart in the imagination.
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Procedures for Saying No
PETE, 2016WRITER
Procedures for Saying No is an ensemble-driven theater piece, inspired by Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Moby Dick, that interrogates the protocols of the contemporary white-collar office to unpack the deep fears that underpin our most trivial activities. As a group of workers face ecological collapse and are forced to claim their office as a living space, they race to invent more and more procedures, finally leading to a recognition of themselves as both more and less than human. Funny and brutally sad, Procedures places its audience inside a fully built-out office, and provides a set of tasks and procedures for them to complete, replicating the boredom of empty work while punctuating it with fleeting moments of meaning. PRESS & SLIDESHOW
Pay Up
Pig Iron, 2005-2013WRITER, SOUND DESIGNER
Part circus, part laboratory experiment, part shopping experience, Pay Up is an environmental work, a warehouse of unusual commerce consisting of eight “chamber pieces” about handling cash. By forcing its audience to make hard choices about what to see and when, Pay Up interrogates the ways we spend (or waste) money, and more importantly, the ways we spend (or waste) time. Barrymore Award Nominated for Best New Play, 2006.
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All Hands
Hoi Polloi, 2012WRITER
All Hands investigates the seductive power of secret societies, channeling and reconfiguring archetypes of violence and communal fraternity and sorority. Created by Alec Duffy’s Hoi Polloi Company (Three Pianos) with a large ensemble of performers, music by Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812), choreography by Dan Safer (Witness Relocation) and an immersive set design by Mimi Lien (An Octaroon).
PRESS, SLIDESHOW & VIDEO
Chekhov Lizardbrain
Pig Iron, 2007-2010WRITER
OBIE Award, 2009
New York Times 10 Best of 2008
An amalgam of Russian tragicomedy and contemporary brain science in which a lonely, mildly-autistic botanist conjures up a parade of unsettling and comic recollections in an attempt to shape his fractured memories into a comforting fiction.
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The Group
Dodeska, 2008-2009DIRECTOR & WRITER
The Group is a satirical performance piece for small audiences wearing headphones who are invited to journey inward to connect with their inner something-or-other. Guided by a charasmatic leader (Ryan Eggensperger), audience members discover that underneath the absurd humor -- including songs by Alec Duffy (Three Pianos) -- lie profoundly disturbing questions.
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