directing.
THE APIARY
*Assistant Director
22 years in the future, two lab assistants hatch a plan that could change the world. All they need are a few volunteers. A raucous and provocative world premiere by Kate Douglas about sacrifice, ambition, and honeybees.
The Apiary was produced as part of 2ndStage’s New Works Festival. The play had many levels to flesh out; the sci-fi horror of feeding bees human bodies to survive, the ambition of three women seeking their individual dreams, and crafting a tangible dystopian future. At the core, the play spoke to the distance we feel from those close to us, our disconnection from the natural world, and our habit of manipulating the earth for material gain. Starring April Matthis, Carmen M. Herlihy, Taylor Schilling, Nimene Wureh and Stephanie Croussilat
Carmen M. Herlihy recently recieved a Lucille Lortel Nomination for best Featured Actor for her work on The Apiary
Letters from max
*Assistant Director
Adapted from a 2018 epistolary book Letters from Max: A, a Teacher, a Friendship—it was written by Ruhl and her former student, the late poet Max Ritvo. In the book Ritvo openly discusses terminal illness and tests poetry’s capacity to put to words what otherwise feels ineffable. The play explores the two’s correspondence throughout the last years of his life, celebrating and memorialising all the things that make up a life.
Starring Tony-nominated Jessica Hecht (A View from the Bridge, Breaking Bad) as Sarah with Ben Edelman (Admissions, The Gett) and Zane Pais (The Perplexed, Sunday) alternating in the role of Max.
The play was nominated for two Lucille Lortel awards for Best Sound and Projection Design, a Drama Desk Award for outstanding Music in a play and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play.
She Kills monsters: Virtual_Realms
Mirrorball theater Company produced its debut piece in 2021alongside the Atlantic Acting School and TISCH School Of the Arts. Due to Covid, our cohort decided on She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms that would be performed over Zoom. Figuring out how to tell the story in a connected and authentic way when your actors are strung out across the country interacting through zoom boxes was the most difficult yet rewarding challenge that we conquered through forming this show.
FEDA Festival.
An annual competition held at the Joburg Theatre of published and original one-act plays. I directed Popcorn by Ben Elton Due to the subject matter of media entertainment’s criticism and culpability in inciting violence, our production was able to experiment with different visual mediums such as projections and live feed of the performance from multiple angles to engage the audience more provocatively .got recognised for Best Audio Visual at the award ceremony.
The first play I directed at the FEDA Festival and was recognised for the second best-published play of the festival. Through the staging of The Indian Wants the Bronx, I learned how the crafts of acting and directing intertwine as I performed and directed this piece. The show’s themes of xenophobia and alienation allowed us to work with the way distance affects the work both as a directorial choice and also the influence it has as an actor in the play.
