What inspires you, as a busy college student, to continue to participate in an art that requires such intense training?

Theater is about craft: moving, breathing, lighting. But it is also about ideas. My theater work and my academic work are inextricably-linked components of my training as a working actor and director. This dual commitment is as central to my college life as a heavy science load would be to the most ardent premed.

Briefly describe your creative process in preparing for a performance. Do you have any quirky or superstitious practices?

I’m obsessive when it comes to the work. When I am directing a play, the projectconsumes every part of every day; it consumes my thoughts, words and dreams. It becomes human to me—I wrestle with and delight in it as if it were a lover or a best friend.

What do you regard as the most inspiring locale on campus? Is there an untapped resource you find especially appealing at Harvard?

I’m thrilled to be living in the Dudley Co-op, a two-house undergrad collective in which all of us are responsible for cooking, cleaning and performing all other duties necessary for a well-functioning household. It strikes me as an excellent model for what theater artists are always seeking: collaboration—making the active choice to commit time, thought and energy to a communal project built on a common purpose.

What has been your most fulfilling artistic/academic experience?

Far Away, the piece I have just finished directing, is a haunting poem of a play that, for the past six months, has pushed me to reevaluate the way that I think about how plays are put together by playwrights—and also the many difficult ways in which actors, designers and directors must disassemble plays and subsequently put them back together. As I’ve pulled at Far Away, it has responded in kind: It’s ripped my guts out but it has ultimately also put them back in place.

Characterize yourself or your taste in arts projects in five words.

Learning how to fail better.

Do you have a favorite character/role you have played or directed?

I loved playing Mephistopheles in Clint Froehlich’s production of Goethe’s Faust 1 because I had the pleasure of working with a director who threw at me brave, daunting and exhilarating ideas, and who also gave me the freedom to make additional bold choices of my own.

Which do you prefer: acting from your own direction, directing other actors, or acting from another person’s directions? What is it like to try to surmount the communication barriers between an actor and a director?

It is crucial that the lines defining the jobs of directors, actors, designers, technicians and producers not be too clearly defined. The best theatrical projects are true collaborations, in which there is not just one person unilaterally calling the analytic and artistic shots. Some of the finest ideas in Far Away and Top Girls (my first directing project) came from the stage manager, an actor, the costume designer and the best times I’ve had as an actor or designer has been when the director has acknowledged that I have a brain and a voice, too.