My coaching studio - Stage Door Unlocked - is almost entirely online and has been since 2015. That’s right: BEFORE the pandemic! This photo truly embodies my day to day state. I love that the virtual nature of the studio allows me to connect with and help performers I wouldn’t ever get to work with if I was limited to one market.
In 2020 Stage Door Unlocked Productions presented a virtual production of “A Christmas Carol - A Reading By Charles Dickens.” Due to the limitations of COVID this solo show required me to not only play all of the characters in Dickens’s holiday classic, but also serve as my own stage manager - controlling over 500 lighting, sound, and projection cues in the 2 hour show myself in real time. Oh - and it was done LIVE over Zoom for an audience all over the world! Without question, this was my favorite and most challenging productions to date!
I love to tell stories. When asked “what do you do?” I never really know what to tell them. Somedays, I’m an actor. Somedays, I’m a director. Somedays, I’m a coach. Somedays, I’m a designer. Whatever job I am doing, all I know for sure is that I am trying to tell stories.
I saw my first musical when I was 4 years old. The curtain went up on that community theatre production of Annie Warbucks and I was hooked. I did my first show 3 years later - playing a Lion in a production of Britten’s Operetta Noye’s Fludde (Noah’s Flood) and I have been onstage or backstage telling stories ever since.
By the time I graduated from High School and went to college, I had worked on over 50 productions either as an actor, a set & lighting designer, a scenic artist, or as a specialty props person. I went to the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and graduated with a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a Double Emphasis in Performance & Theatre for Youth Studies / Education.
Since then, I have travelled all over the country working as an actor, director, designer, and as a stage manager. You can find out more about my work in those fields on the different pages of this site. In all of the work I have done, I am most proud of my work as a theatre educator. While I love creating theatre, I love training others in it even more. I founded the online actors training and resource company Stage Door Unlocked, LLC in 2015 and currently work with actors in over 35 states appearing on everything from community and educational theatre to regional, national tour, and Broadway stages as well as in national tV / film and commercial projects. Often times, I find I am more proud of my client’s careers than I am my own.
One of my favorite things is traveling all over the country doing workshops and clinics with young performers and sharing my love of story telling with them. To date, I have had the privilege of working with well over 5000 students.
I moved Stage Door Unlocked back to my hometown of Chippewa Falls WI in 2018. This allowed me to not only bring back to my hometown everything I have learned from my work all over the country, it has also allowed me to bring new life into the theatre community that gave me my start. I debuted the productions wing of Stage Door Unlocked in 2020 and since then our shows have travelled all over the midwest, bringing professional theatre to people and communities that may not otherwise have access to the arts. Watching the faces of people who maybe have never seen a professional theatrical production light up with awe and wonder at the stories they are getting to watch - right in their own backyard - is something that truly brings me so much joy. I truly get so excited figuring out what is the next story I can take out on tour and share with them.
When I am not busy coaching, directing, or figuring out the next stories I can tell, I can be found hanging out with my dog Macchiato and my cat Fibby watching movies or reading a good book.