In 2008, I was artistic director of a small professional theater company in Nelson County, Virginia, a rural county of 14,500 people. Diana Driver, the head of the Drama Department at Nelson County High School (NCHS), called to ask if I knew anything about commedia dell’arte because they had chosen a commedia play for their entry into the Virginia High School League One-Act Play Festival. That’s how my 12-year statewide award-winning work with the NCHS began.
I have found that high school actors have a willingness to commit themselves headlong into the energy of acting, into physical theater, and into the complicated emotional demands of realism. I use all my training in clown, commedia, bouffon, American realism, and improv to open up new vistas for the kids. It’s the most fun for me when we are working on an adaptation of a play where we as a group can make changes in the script based on what happens in rehearsal and in previews. And the students see the way changes in the writing alter how a scene works, how the whole play unfolds for an audience.
In my playwriting work with NCHS, I am energized by the discipline of taking a full-length play or a novel, paring it down to a one-act, 35-minute performance, and in the process finding the most direct, forceful way to tell the story.
Working with NCHS has turned into a wonder-filled part of my work in theater. And I’ve helped create in rural Nelson County a vibrant high school theater program recognized state-wide.
Please enjoy these featured plays:
