Mission Statement

My work is focused around play. Even when I’m doing tragedy, the idea of play is very important to me. To hold things with a light hand, truthfully. I’m always excited to play with new scene partners, new collaborators. And in my personal work, I have established amazing languages of play with my repeating collaborators.

I’m very curious about other people: what they need, how they think, what they’ve experienced that is different from my experience. For a long time I was curious about psychology in a more formal way but I think, as an actor, I’ve learned that people don’t always know why they are like they are. They sometimes don’t know why they do the things they do. We’re all products of our environments and the random setup of our bodies, how those bodies absorb and reflect (or reject) their environments. So I’ve come to create character from an extremely physical place. I love the feeling of following a thread, seeing where it goes, letting go of control as a performer.

And while play and releasing of control exist as my code for performance (stage, screen), my solo prep time and solo practice time are really technique focused. In my practice, whether I’m taking classes or working on technique alone, I’m interested in how to perform easily, consistently and at will. Something I’ve really codified in my thinking from studying ITM Alexander Technique with an inspiring teacher. As someone from a classical training background, I’m really into the crunchy, analytic text work that is tedious and mental. I love to do all of that stuff alone and then see what sticks when I let it all go and get to set or get onstage. Navigating between the hyperverbal part of myself and the physical part of myself is the back and forth in me that I think, if I’m lucky, can create something dynamic that helps people feel things. I think the classic human predicament is head vs. heart or thinking vs. instinct or spirit vs. head. However you label it, it is something I’m a keen observer of.

I’m a SAG-AFTRA actor based in Los Angeles. I can also work in NY because that is where I am from and my family is all still there. I trained (MA Acting, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School) in the UK. I perform onstage regularly in the alt comedy scene in Los Angeles as well as, when I can, on TV and film. I’m especially interested in characters with unpredictable edges. I love being the funny person within a heavier drama or the serious person in my comedy. I hope to bring some kind of understanding of order vs. chaos into everything I do.

FAQs

Gender?

I am nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer. All three of those words are fine. I have a lot in common, experience-wise, with many trans men I know. But I’m an AFAB nonbinary person who has rejected and then re-found femininity on my own terms. Only after reclaiming masculinity. I’m happy being in the in-betweens. I’m aware that, physically, I will mostly play women (and hopefully other nonbinary people if the roles start existing). I’m interested and empathize deeply with the experiences of women, I’ve had many of them, so I’m in favor of using my skills to empower their stories. As a character comedian, I create almost exclusively male and nonbinary characters. I like exploring male privilege through and absurdist lens, finding both catharsis through my ridicule and empathy through building the characters. My two most re-visited characters are an Industrial Revolution-coded Entrepreneur who stole his invention from his wife and a French Revolution-era noble who doesn’t know how to cope with a common woman telling him no.

I Can’t Afford to Come Out to your Show/Screening but I really want to…

Please email me and I will see if I can get you on the list or get you comps. I hate that things cost money. I’ll do my best!

What is your accent?

I grew up on Long Island but I’ve always had a more “neutral” accent than most Long Islanders. I think I took my first voice and speech for the actor class at age 18 where I learned I had less of an accent than my Long Island peers. I’m easily able to lean into the parts of my regional accent but some of them were never there to begin with, my ear and mouth can just easily create them because of immersion. A lot of the best footage of me is from a movie where I used a Southern Accent, so some people just think that’s my natural accent. It isn’t. But I do have family from the South. Because I trained in England for my MA, my RP is really sharp and with a little work, I can navigate around certain accents from The British Isles. Some people in LA ask me if I’m British or “European” (pretty vague, I think!) but people have been asking if I’m European since I was a kid. I had a therapist tell me that it isn’t uncommon for hyper-verbal autistic people (like me) to have different accents than their regions or families. Either from repeating things on TV that are fun to say and that kind of stuff becoming more stimulating than the way we said it before. Or from being told that letters and letter combos sound a certain way and following that rule precisely. My accent, however, probably sounds pretty neutral in most roles I do. I have more of an idiolect than a dialect and I get frustrated when people think it is an on-purpose affectation. I have never had trouble maintaining a consistent “neutral” or new dialect while playing a character, though. So it’s pretty flexible and that’s “authentic” to me.

Signed Photos?

A few people have DM’d me on instagram asking for signed headshots? Which I find flattering but somewhat bizarre. I don’t do that kind of thing but I really appreciate people who have reached out and are moved by my work. I mean, I might someday give out humorous self-aggrandizing portraits of my characters Le Vicomte or John Newspaper at my live shows. That’s a pretty hilarious idea. The egos on those dudes are out of control. You should come out to my shows. I’m really, really not interested in you becoming a fan of me but I know that John Newspaper and Le Vicomte would love the attention. My feeling is, sometimes, that you’ve asked for these things in a way to own a piece of a pretty girl. It often feels that way. Maybe I just had terrible experiences as a model in my late teens. That feeling of being owned and collected is absurd to me. I’m also nonbinary and all of the people who have asked for photos of me saw me onscreen playing a woman. And I don’t want to presume but I think you might feel dissatisfied with how I present and behave in “real life”. It’s not worth your time, really, please don’t message me. I also just ignore DMs that aren’t from friends or friends of friends and I prefer potential collaborators to email me.